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When the Myanmar military launched a coup on February 1, Kaung Latt’s career as an artist came to an abrupt end. As an important supporter of the deposed National League for Democracy (NLD) government and a social media star with hundreds of thousands of followers, Kaung Latt knows that he is likely to be a high-profile arrest target.
On the morning of the coup, Kaung Latt went into hiding as security forces began rounding up NLD officials, activists, and influential public figures. His neighbor later told him that the security forces had visited his home twice that day to look for him.
In the following month, Kaung Latt took refuge with different friends in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, but when the military issued an arrest warrant, accusing him of “using [his] Popular through social media to incite people to “undermine the law and order of the country”, he believes that staying with the host is too risky for him.
Unable to fly out of the country, he secretly entered neighboring Thailand in early March and has been in a state of uncertainty ever since.
“Because of my undocumented identity, I feel that it is not safe to live here,” he said. “This is the first time I have come to another country without a document. I feel very small-like I have lost my identity.”
Kaung Latt was one of three people interviewed by Al Jazeera who fled to Thailand after the coup.
They are worried that they will face danger to their lives after returning to Myanmar, but cannot apply for asylum in Thailand. The Thai government has not distinguished refugees or asylum-seekers from economic immigrants, and regarded undocumented or unauthorized entry or stay as “illegal immigrants” “.
Therefore, dissidents are trying to travel to third countries on humanitarian grounds, while coping with their anxiety about the future, and struggling to deal with traumatic memories in the ongoing violence in the country.
In order to protect the people who appear in this article and their families, Al Jazeera has used pseudonyms and anonymized some details in their accounts.
Kaung Latt said that the coup upended his life, destroyed his career and his sense of security in Myanmar. “I have been anxious about when [security forces] He might come to arrest me,” he said. Fearing that he would be tortured or missing by the army, he started to feel unwell. “I don’t have a heart attack, but I feel pain on the left side of my chest. When I told my friend , They said it was caused by the trauma I faced,” he said.
Seven months after the coup, neither his grief for the country nor his concerns about personal safety disappeared. He said: “I still feel uneasy, injured and deprived of votes when the coup first occurred in February,” he added, adding that he continues to have nightmares because the military is looking for him. “I feel better here [in Thailand] But I still have trauma,” he told Al Jazeera.
In August, he decided to seek humanitarian protection in a third country. A friend linked him to a foreign embassy, and he is now waiting for a reply regarding the status of his case.
“Because I lost my identity, I am trying to resettle,” he said by phone from a small town on the Thai border. “If I get my status after resettlement, I will do my best to help my country.”
‘I worry about my life’
During the former military rule of Myanmar from 1962 to 2011, the border town of Mae Sot in Thailand and the northern city of Chiang Mai became a gathering place for dissidents in exile. In the 1980s, armed conflict in southeastern Myanmar triggered massive displacement for more than 20 years. With the support of a consortium of international non-governmental organizations, nine camps were established in the border provinces of Thailand.
The number of refugees in these camps reached a peak of 150,000 in 2005, and tens of thousands have since been resettled in third countries. Hundreds of refugees returned to Myanmar through the voluntary repatriation program launched by the Thai and Myanmar governments in 2016, but problems include the continued military presence in refugee villages, fears of recurring conflicts and unexploded landmines, and weak options for education, healthcare, and livelihoods Many people hesitate. Today, more than 90,000 refugees remain in the camp.
Since the coup in February, thousands of Burmese have sought asylum in Thailand after air strikes and armed conflicts on the southeast border of Myanmar, but Thailand has not granted them any formal protection.
According to human rights organizations, when more than 2,000 civilians tried to cross the border during a military airstrike in Kayin State in late March, they were forced to return, even though the Thai authorities insisted that the return was safe and voluntary.
In April, May, and June, thousands more entered Thailand to escape the military attack in Karen; human rights groups said they were also forced or forced to return.
Dissidents and others who managed to escape to Thailand after being persecuted in Myanmar are also vulnerable. In March, three reporters and two activists were arrested in Chiang Mai and sentenced to 7 months in prison for illegal entry. After strong protests from rights groups, they were granted asylum in an undisclosed third country.
At the same time, the Burmese media Irrawaddy reported on September 7 that the Thai police had been alerted to arrest anyone related to the opposition National Unity Government (NUG) in Myanmar and raided places suspected of sheltering NUG members.
Among those wanted by the Myanmar military for participating in anti-coup protests and opposing the military on social media is the performance artist Ko Moe.
When he fled his home in Yangon in March, Gao Meng had no plans to cross the border into Thailand. “Even if I cross the border, I don’t know where to go or where to live. Also, if the Thai police arrest me and send me back to Myanmar, it will be very bad for me,” he said.
He first hid with relatives in Yangon, but when it became too dangerous, he sought protection on the territory of an ethnic armed group on the Thai border and arrived there in April before the arrest warrant was issued.
Since the coup, ethnic armed groups have been fighting the military, some of which have been fighting the military for decades, and even as the fighting in their territory escalated, they sheltered thousands of activists and dissidents. Ko Moe said that soldiers of a unit of the Burmese army were stationed near the house where he lived, and he did not even dare to go out.
A friend helped him initiate the process of applying for humanitarian protection in a third country, but according to international refugee law, he needs to live outside Myanmar to qualify.
After careful consideration, he decided to seize the opportunity to enter Thailand.
In the last scene before he left Myanmar, he recorded a protest song, calling on people to unite and sympathize with each other. “I want to send a message to the people of Myanmar, I am with them as an artist,” he told Al Jazeera.
On that day, with the help of his friends, he crossed the border secretly.
“The main reason I am here is because I am worried about my life… [security forces] You can arrest me at night and call my family the next morning to pick up the body,” he said.
Although Ko Moe feels safer in Thailand, he has avoided going out due to his undocumented identity. He is now waiting to transit to a third country and has completed the screening process.
Living in seclusion
It is difficult to determine the number of Burmese who have fled to Thailand since the coup, because many fugitives, such as Ko Moe, are undocumented and go into hiding.
Thailand pledged in 2016 to establish a national screening mechanism to identify people in need of humanitarian protection, and formally approved the establishment of a screening mechanism in December 2019. The bill was originally scheduled to take effect in June 2020, but according to Naiyana Thanawattho, the executive director of the Asylum Channel in Thailand, the details of how the law will be implemented are still under discussion and have not yet been introduced in practice.
Asylum Access Thailand is an alliance of more than 40 civil society groups that calls on Thailand to speed up the implementation of the law and ensure that NGOs that promote the rights of refugees and stateless persons are meaningfully represented in relevant discussions.
Alliance members hope that the screening mechanism will allow recognized asylum seekers and refugees to live and work in Thailand without being arrested or deported. But among several concerns, people living in refugee camps, people from certain nationalities, and newly arrived refugees will be excluded from the law. The committee established to review asylum applications includes many members with national security backgrounds.
“We worry that the purpose of the law is to exclude people, not to protect them,” Tanawato said. “[The government] Refugees should not be excluded from protection. “
There are also very few options for obtaining humanitarian protection in third countries. In 2020, UNHCR identified 20.7 million refugees of concern worldwide, of which less than 1% were resettled.
Al Jazeera contacted the governments of eight countries with a history of providing humanitarian protection to the people of Myanmar, as well as UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration, but could not confirm the specific details of how many people have been persecuted by the Myanmar military. The coup has received humanitarian protection in a third country.
New Zealand stated that it has received 11 refugee and protection applications from Myanmar nationals in the country, all of which are under consideration, and since the seizure of power, Germany has approved 6 asylum applications in the country. Australia stated that during this period, it received 2,097 humanitarian visa applications from Myanmar nationals from abroad, but did not mention the number of people it granted protection.
The United Kingdom did not provide details, while the United States, the Netherlands, Spain and Canada did not respond to requests for comment.
For reasons of confidentiality and protection, UNHCR declined to comment on what kind of temporary protection, if any, the refugees provide during transit in Thailand.
“I want to live legally”
Kaung Htoo is one of those who managed to get in touch with foreign embassies and apply for protection in a third country, but currently lacks the support of any organization in Thailand and is worried about being arrested. He only goes out when necessary, and his wife and children do not go completely. come out.
The university professor joined the nationwide civil disobedience movement and went on strike from his post in central Myanmar a few weeks after the coup. In May, shortly after the start of the college year, the military news channel aired his name on the arrest warrant list and warned that those who tried to hide educators would also be charged.
The next day, Kaung Htoo took his wife and children on an arduous jungle journey, crossing the border into Thailand a few days before the security forces ransacked their home. “We don’t know what to do or [what organisations] Contact when we arrive in Thailand. Our friends told us not to go out, otherwise we might be arrested,” he said.
Some Myanmar friends helped the family find a place to live in a village on the outskirts of the border town. In August, his parents joined them. “In Myanmar, I have been a professor for 17 years. As a civil servant, I don’t even drink or smoke,” he said. “I want to live legally.”
With this in mind and the hope that his children can continue to receive education, he decided to explore a third-country protection program for himself and his family. After that, he contacted foreign embassies and started the screening process.
“[My wife and I] When we think about our plans, we mainly focus on the future of our children,” he said.
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