Check-points

Traveling by bus from Bangkok to Mae Sot....

8 hours and 3 or more check-points. The bus stops, Thai police get on and check your identification. A caged-truck waits outside. Express to the hands of the Burmese military.

My work college sitting beside me, a Burmese women who has been living legally in Thailand for 6 years, had her passport SCRUTINIZED at every check point. Meanwhile, my visa could expire in a week, and I never even had to pull it out of my bag.

I felt really frustrated by this - it became really predictable at every check-point. I suppose it mimics what happens in airports with "random" security checks. But it's just blatant discrimination. My college was irritated, pulling her passport out, waiting, understandably nervous, despite it being legal. It's no different from the treatment she gets every day in Thailand really - people are constantly questioning "what are you doing here?" in one way or another - they just don't always ask to see her passport for the answer.

There's two sides of it. When the police ask for her passport, they're both making sure she's legal, and telling her they don't like her here. If they liked her, they wouldn't look for this "legal" excuse to get rid of her.

Making sure she's legal. She is. She doesn't just have papers, work permit, but a passport too. But even if she didn't... is she really illegal? I would really like to question this. We all wear t-shirts at work that say "No human being is illegal." I believe that. How could she be illegal here - how could anybody in their right mind send her back to an un-safe place. Legal and illegal are set up to separate right from wrong, are they not? How can doing the legal thing open a door for something terrible to happen (I'll be less vague: something terrible = forced labor, imprisonment, torture). How can it be legal to allow that to happen?

It can't be. It's just that they don't like her. I hate to believe it but it's obvious everywhere - in every construction of the society, in the wages, and in the actions and reactions of too many of the Thai people (not all, of course not all...) But the discrimination is wide-spread and more or less accepted. People don't hide it like we do in Canada (pronouncing I'm not racist to hide our racist actions and attitudes). My landlady is a great friend of mine here, but today I hated the look of disgust on her face and the words she spoke when I told her I was moving out and into my Burmese friend's home.

I confess that sometimes I am disheartened by this "land of smiles".