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Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Aung San Suu Kyi offers hope to Burmese migrants in Thailand

 


Aung San Suu Kyi
Aung San Suu Kyi waves after meeting migrant workers in Samut Sakhon province, Thailand. Photograph: Wason Wanichakorn/AP
Aung San Suu Kyi has received a rapturous reception in Thailand from crowds of Burmese migrants who flocked to celebrate her first trip outside her home country in nearly a quarter of a century.
Thousands of people lined the streets, waving flags and holding aloft pictures of the Nobel peace prize-winner as she arrived to give a speech from the balcony of a dilapidated building in an industrial zone on the fringes of the Thai capital, Bangkok.
Labour activists estimate there are at least 2 million Burmese migrants in Thailand, many sending home part of their wages to help families in a country where a third of the 60 million people live below the poverty line.



Aung San Suu Kyi said she would work to improve their rights and working conditions. "Don't feel down, or weak. History is always changing," she said.
Many held signs saying "We want to go home", and Aung San Suu Kyi said her visit was aimed at learning how she could help them. "Today, I will make you one promise: I will try my best for you," she said.
The pro-democracy activist, who arrived in Bangkok late on Tuesday, left the capital on Wednesday for the nearby town of Mahachai, home to Thailand's largest population of Burmese migrants. She will also visit Burmese refugees in border camps later on her four-day visit.
Thousands crowded around her and chanted: "Long Live Mother Suu!"
"I had only seen her on TV and in newspapers," said Saw Hla Tun, who left Burma's Karen state seven years ago and earns a meagre wage carrying heavy salt sacks on his back. "I couldn't hold back my tears when I saw her."
After speaking to the crowd from a fourth-floor balcony at a community centre, Aung San Suu Kyi met migrant workers who told her they face mistreatment from employers but lack knowledge of their rights and have no legal means to settle disputes.
She has spent 15 of the last 24 years under house arrest. During intermittent periods of freedom, she dared not leave Burma – not even to visit her dying husband because she feared the military junta ruling at the time would not allow her to return. Now, in a sign of how much life has changed, the democracy activist and newly elected member of parliament is travelling across Thailand, where she will speak later this week at the World Economic Forum on East Asia.
She will return to Burma briefly before heading to Europe for a five-country tour in mid-June. Her stops include Britain, where she will address parliament and Oslo, Norway to formally accept the Nobel prize she won 21 years ago.
Fixing a battered economy is one of the most crucial challenges facing Burma as it opens up in the wake of 49 years of military rule that ended last year.
Thailand hosts around 2.5 million impoverished Burmese who fled there to work low-skilled jobs as domestic servants or in manual labour industries such as fisheries and the garment sector.
Andy Hall, a migrant expert and researcher at the Institute for Population and Social Research at Thailand's Mahidol University, said up to a million undocumented Burmese migrants make up between 5-10% of the Thai workforce, contributing as much as 7% of the nation's GDP.
Many are exploited and paid reduced wages. Some have been trafficked; some have had their passports confiscated by employers. Hall said they were nevertheless "the lifeblood of a lot of the Myanmar [Burmese] economy, sending home money to support families who don't have enough money to eat".
"They have no voice, they can never speak up or stand up," Hall said. "So for Aung San Suu Kyi to visit is like a dream come true, someone who finally may be able to bring attention to their suffering."
One of the migrants, a 26-year-old woman named Khin Than Nu, works at a Thai canning factory and dreams of her home in Burma's Mon state.
"We left our parents in Burma, and all my brothers and sisters work here to support our parents," she said. "I hope Daw Suu will help develop our country, and bring jobs so we can go home."

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