Refugee camp 'not fit for human beings'

Alex Abela is home in Auckland to recover for a month after working as a volunteer teacher for three months in a refugee camp on the Thailand/Burmese border. Picture / Greg Bowker

An Auckland man who spent three months in a refugee camp on the Thai/Burmese border believes the only humanitarian thing to do with the camp is to close it.

Alex Abela, 73, a retired computer manager, responded to an article in the Herald in March about the need for an English teacher in the Tham Hin camp west of Bangkok. He went there in May as a volunteer and is at home to recover from illness before returning.

Although he has also worked as a volunteer teacher in China, Samoa, Papua New Guinea and the Solomons, he was shocked at the living conditions of the 9000 Burmese refugees who have fled from fighting in Burma to Tham Hin.

"The first thing that hits you is the state of the streets. They are not streets, they are dirt alleys. Whenever it rains, the water goes down, and after a while it seems like a gutter," he said.

"The second thing that strikes you is the smell. The houses have no toilets. All they have is a hole under the house. They use it up and cover it with lime, and when it rains there is an overwhelming smell of lime.

"The third thing is the lack of hygiene. People become so dirty for so long, because washing is just a bucket. At 2pm every day they can get water from a tap in the street for two hours, and every family has to get a bucket of water. That is used for drinking, washing and everything else that you need water for. Once a month they go to the river and have a bath."

Mr Abela was lucky. He stayed with the camp administrator in a village about an hour away down a bumpy track. Like everyone else, he shared his bed on the floor with rats, cockroaches, mosquitoes and lizards.

That was luxury compared with the people who slept inside the camp in cramped bamboo huts, with plastic sheets for roofs, which turn the huts into furnaces during the day. The huts are raised on stilts so the people can live underneath them, where it is cooler in daytime, going into the huts only at nights.

For most people there is nothing to do in the camp, and they are not allowed to go outside it to work. Mr Abela said that when he walked along the alleys in daytime he would see hundreds of people just sleeping because there was nothing else to do.

Western aid agencies provide rations of rice, fish paste, cooking oil, firewood and some vegetables and chicken for every person in a family. There is one doctor.

"Their health is pathetic, really," Mr Abela said. "From time to time there are outbreaks of malaria and sometimes there are other serious outbreaks - I don't know what they are. Whenever there's an outbreak, old people and pregnant women die."

There are three schools and a Baptist Bible college, as most of the people are of the partly Christian Karen ethnic group. But Mr Abela was the only foreign teacher, and his classes were so popular that some people moved to Tham Hin from other camps along the border to attend them.

"They want to be resettled in America, Australia or other English-speaking countries, so English is very important to them," he said. "But they are losing their education. They are going down, down, down. So when I teach English I tell them that English is only a tool to education."

He had 120 students in his class and needs two more volunteers to go back with him to help - even for just a few months on their way to or from overseas experience elsewhere.

"It's impossible to stay a long time because of the general conditions, the lack of cleanliness or hygiene, and the weather," he said.

"It's very hot and it really dries you up. You can't teach more than three hours a day because your throat just finishes. I had to take pills all the time for the throat."

Many Burmese refugees in Auckland have friends and relatives in Tham Hin, and the New Zealand Immigration Service has agreed to take 125 Burmese refugees as part of its United Nations quota of 750 refugees in this financial year.

The US, Australia, Canada, Finland and Sweden are also accepting Tham Hin refugees, and Mr Abela said others would like to stay in Thailand or return to Burma.

"I agree with the Thai Government that the Tham Hin camp should be closed completely, forever," he said.

The Thais want it closed within two years.

"We can't continue with this place. It's a terrible place. It's not fit for human beings," he said.

"It is the responsibility of the UN and Thailand and other nations to accept more of these refugees."

* Anyone interested in teaching in Tham Hin can contact Mr Abela at 09 483-7597 or email him using the link below.