UPDATE: The profile below was written after my first visit to Umphang in 1996. Ten years later, I can see a lot of positive changes. Many rural homes have solar panels to provide electricity. The village of Bung Krung has its own appropriately scaled hydro-electric project. Roads are improved and a growing tourism industry is supporting more family run businesses. Most important from my point of view, the current director of the local high school, Ajarn Somprasong, encourages all children to attend, even those who have no national identity card. But thousands of refugees from Burma still live in the limbo of refugee camps. The boy Kay is now a man with a wife and baby who are Thai citizens, yet he still has no national identy card.

Boy Without A Country


Umphang, Thailand 1997


This boy does not have the right to work or study in the country of his birth

A Nissan pickup followed the high crests of Thailand's western mountains near the Burmese border. Passengers huddled in the bed of the truck under the low metal roof, crowded by boxes and baskets. I thought I was the only passenger for whom this was not a familiar ordeal. The Burmese and Thai merchants, the Hmong and Karen farmers, all wore expressions of resignation as the truck rolled and rose, fell and swayed, with the dizzying contours of the land. Then, I noticed a teenage boy on the opposite bench. He looked a bit different from the others. His mouth was set in a tight-lipped smile of serene satisfaction. His eyes seemed to mist as he gathered a farmer's child onto his lap, but the subtle smile lingered. I noticed that his clothes were a bit cleaner, his skin a bit lighter, and his belongings a bit newer than our fellow passengers'. I began to construct a story about the boy in my mind, as one is apt to do during a long wait among strangers. I guessed that he had been working in the city and was returning home to his people; his land.

We didn't speak during the five hour trip. Only once, he caught my eye and gave me a look of approval as I rearranged a sleeping child onto my lap. When we arrived in the remote district of Umphang, the teenager bravely joined me for a bowl of noodle soup. He verified my guess. He worked in a motor shop in Bangkok and was returning to his village for a Buddhist holiday. He hadn't seen his parents for a year.
The boy's village would be three more hours in the back of another Nissan. "There's nothing there," he told me, "but will you come with me?"

I spent three days at the boy's home and learned a little about his life. My young friend, Kay, was born in Thailand, but his family had migrated for generations throughout the area divided now by an international border. Some of his relatives live on the Myanmar side and others on the Thai side of the border. They speak a Lao dialect at home. Kay attended the Thai school in his village until he finished the third year of secondary school (M3), the end of compulsory education in Thailand.

Kay wanted to continue school. He would like to be a teacher, but found his way blocked. Because he had no National Identity Card, the school could not issue him the M3 Certificate that he would need to register for the upper level.

At the age of 14, he left home to look for work, but without an identity card he could not work legally. Like thousand of others, he became the victim of unscrupulous employers. He made his way to Rayong on the Gulf of Thailand where he worked on a fishing boat, then to Bangkok where he worked at a variety of dangerous, low paying jobs. Even to get some of these jobs he is sometimes forced to act criminally, presenting falsified documents to the employers so they will not be prosecuted for hiring him.

The plight of boys like Kay is similar to the situation faced by millions of undocumented immigrant workers in the United States. The difference is that Kay was born in the country that refuses to give him legal status. He has no other country to return to.

Many families in Kay's village have the same problem. Some are Thai-Lao speakers, others Karen and Burmese. They have been promised house registration documents for years by Thai officials, but promises are not kept.


The Nation February 3, 1998:
The 1997 Report on Human Rights noted limited progress in the government's attempt to integrate ethnic minorities and immigrants into the mainstream of society. Only half the estimated 500,000 to 600,000 members of hill tribes possess documentation that either identifies them as citizens or certifies their eligiblity for future citizenship.

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