More than two million refugees are living in camps on the Myanmar-Thailand border. In Ban Nai Soi camp, Ipsita Paul speaks with Karenni refugees to understand what forced them to flee Myanmar, what life is like in the refugee camp, and what the future holds.
Maw Mae’s open hands couldn’t conjure the right thoughts, mulling over the clamminess of damp forest leaves. Seventeen other weary and exhausted bodies had already surrendered beside her, onto the wet grass, quick breaths rushing in and out of their nostrils, bereft of strength, or thoughts.
Mosquitoes buzzed over blistered feet that had walked for three days straight, in search of a vague idea, the Myanmar-Thailand border. They had waded across the river, climbed high mountains, and fumbled through the jungle avoiding landmines, carrying cooking tools, clothes and food on their backs.
Running out of water, they dipped into small streams. Mae’s aunt carried a newborn baby in a makeshift cotton sling along with other heavy belongings.
Just before the slow anticipation of sunset, the Karenni Comrade, their protector and the only one who knew the way, chased a deer and brought it back to the circle for dinner. Food had to be cooked then and there, while sunlight prevailed. No fire should flicker in the hooting of night owls. The Burmese Military Drones were watching out for them.
In that mandated darkness, puffed out of life, Mae and her extended family were not unfamiliar with living off the forest. They had known it when they had found a new hiding place in the jungle last year.
For eight months, the family squeezed itself inside a little tent, the way insects vanish under the soil, sleeping beneath the protection of heavy canopies, in a brittle shelter fabricated with wooden sticks.
Mae’s mother would forage vegetables from the forest and her father would collect other necessary ingredients from the villages beyond. These areas were under the People’s Defence Force (PDF), one of the opposition armed groups. They believed the PDF would protect them.
Mae’s village, Nant Koot, was too close to a Burmese military camp. Fights would break out at any hour between the military and the Karenni revolutionary armed forces. Bombs would fall like firecrackers.
A 500-pound bomb killed Mae’s friend, who was just 20 years old, and that triggered the family’s first exodus into the thick woodland.
They weren’t alone. Displacement within Myanmar has seen the establishment of new communities – almost villages – inside the forest. Some even have community-led schools operating in secrecy.
But this time they were off to the border.
Mae had warm memories of Myanmar; the wintry-evenings watching television dramas, munching on corn harvested from their farm and snuggling with her youngest siblings under a thick blanket.
But now, lying on the wild grass, she knew tomorrow she would officially become a refugee, another displaced ethnic minority who had fled the ‘world’s longest civil war’. She would be alone and would grapple with depression.
“If I had chosen to live in Myanmar, my life would have been hopeless,” Mae recounted later. “Living in the camp is definitely better than being in Burma [which changed its name to Myanmar in 1989], in my opinion. But my mental health is the biggest problem. Depression, constant lethargy and financial problems – I worry a lot and when the night comes, I overthink. Everyone says I am worthless. I live with my own noise – ‘you cannot’ ‘why can’t you?’ I want to be a stronger woman… a good woman.”
Houses where the Karenni people live in Ban Mai Nai Soi refugee camp.
Myanmar’s politics and the Karenni State or Kayah State
In Myanmar, the military government latched onto its autocracy in 1962, and ever since then, the country has been under despotic rule, governed by ethnic cleansing, the victimisation of ethnic civilian populations, and violence against insurgent groups. Airstrikes and artillery attacks are their superpowers now, backed by countries like China and Russia.
In December 2024, according to Radio Free Asia, Myanmar’s military commissioned six Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters, six Chinese-made FTC-2000G fighter jets, one K8-W fighter jet, and one Y-8 support aircraft.
“I hate the civil war, the discrimination against the ethnic people and the current situation.”
Mae’s words are deep-rooted. The Burmese military dictatorship has overseen the largest forced displacement in Asia with an estimated 3.2 million citizens fleeing the country due to extreme political, economic and human rights crises since the military coup in 2021.
In 2021, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing staged a coup after his party suffered a major blow in the 2020 election. Instead of accepting the election results and focusing on democracy as promised, he charged de facto civilian and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi with corruption and put her under house arrest. The country has fallen into an abyss of inexorable airstrikes ever since.
Similar military coups had taken place multiple times over six decades. Myanmar has been at war indefinitely.
Conflict-induced displacement has resulted in an influx of ethnic populations to refugee camps at the Thailand-Myanmar border, which now hosts over 2 million refugees. Ethnic frontier states – regions primarily inhabited by ethnic groups including the Karenni, the Rohingya (many of whom have fled to Bangladesh), Shan, Chin and Kachin – which constitute one third of the total population and strategically enclose Burma’s central plains covering 60% of the country’s land area, have consistently sought state autonomy.
The Karenni people are one of Myanmar’s 135 ethnic minority groups. They are from the Karenni or Kayah State, recognized as an ‘independent State’ or a non-legitimate State of Burma, even during British rule from 1824 to 1948.
Inside Karenni State, Tatmadow or the Burmese army has set up a permanent Regional Operational Command in the capital Loikaw Township by installing battalion headquarters and deploying roving battalions surrounding the State.
As a result, the earliest recorded mass arrival of displaced people into Thailand was in 1984 with the exodus of about 10,000 Karenni people after the Burmese military launched massive offensives inside Karenni State.
Many of the refugees in the age bracket of 18-24 resonated on their reasons for leaving: a lack of educational opportunities, harsh and brutal living conditions and refusing to exist in constant fear under an authoritative regime.
Even in the aftermath of the earthquake of March 2025 which killed more than 3,500 in Myanmar, the military junta hasn’t stopped the airstrikes.
The Four-Cuts Policy, a counter-insurgency measure, was launched by the junta to wipe out resistance armies while also agitating the ethnic civilians believed to be sympathizing with the rebel groups. In the face of violence, counter-violence had to be inculcated.
What forced the Karenni people to leave their homes behind?
Way before the 2021 coup, Myah Reh, now the principal of the camp’s Karenni Social Development Centre, had crossed the border in 2003, at the age of 37. Within two years of arriving at the camp, he met his future wife and the love of his life. She was a Karenni woman from his neighbouring village, although they had never met back in Myanmar.
Back in the Karenni State, as a high school teacher for over a decade, Myah Reh used to teach local children how to read and write in Burmese and English, as well as teaching maths, geography and the history of Burma.
Myah Reh, principal of KSDC, giving a speech at a the graduation ceremony
He recalls memories from 23 years ago. “They [the military] always had guns like terrorists. They would kick our doors looking for the insurgent groups. They can kill you if you look suspicious.”
At 37, beset by safety concerns, he took the plunge to cross to Thailand. He did this secretly, for he believed the military spies and detectives were covertly watching over him.
He relayed information to his friend to get the message across to the district officer of the armed group. They were ready to escort him to the border.
He needed the armed group, for protection during the unknown journey ahead. A copious amount of strength was needed to navigate the landmines that had been laid down by the military during the week-long hike on foot.
Reaching the camp, he had no idea he would stay here for 22 years to come – and more. He says his only wish is to live in a house with 24-hour electricity. At the age of 57, he still dreams of it.
What is life like for Karenni refugees in the camp?
Sketchy mud ditches, mountainous roads and thickets of trees on scrawny slopes. After the first checkpoint where the Thai police watch every refugee entering and exiting, the roads continue.
After four kilometers of mountainous roads, there is a health clinic run by the International Rescue Committee through foreign aid. There are also dilapidated wooden houses, and people… in their thousands.
Perhaps the only difference between living in Myanmar and the refugee camp is that sleep doesn’t have a soundtrack of bombing. Here, there is physical safety.
I was granted special permission by the Thai authority to enter Ban Mai Nai Soi refugee camps, after living on the other side of the gate for two months. Here, I met Maw Par Myar, a Karenni refugee.
She says: “I left Burma before turning 12. However, there are many times I have been separated from my parents since childhood.” Par, aged 20, is vocal and poised, aspiring to be a women’s leader and translator.
“In Myanmar women have long faced oppression, violence and rigid traditional norms that have prevented them from achieving equal opportunities with men,” she says. “I want to work towards empowering women to take leadership roles in politics and to enhance their political awareness and knowledge of current affairs.”
Par is studying law and human rights at the camp under a local community-based educational center called the Karenni Social Development Centre (KSDC). Bubbling with vigor and determination, she repeatedly restates how giving up would mean migrating back to Myanmar, a fate many immigrants are forced to embrace.
A group of young people playing UNO in a circle at KSDC, a local community-based educational centre.
There are only two ways to sustain their existence. They either have to find a job in the border offices, being employed by NGOs and CBOs as staff, teachers or clinic and health workers, or rent a house at the refugee camp. Or else, they move back to Myanmar.
“I consider being born as a Myanmar citizen to be unfortunate, because even under the care of my parents and grandparents, I have never experienced freedom.” Par continues,
“Myanmar’s education system has been designed by the ruling regime. Not only are we not allowed to learn about our own history, but we, the ethnic people, are also prohibited from learning our own language. They fear that we will come to know the true history.”
Renting a house in the camp costs a minimum of 1,000 baht ($30 USD) a month – a challenge for those with no source of income. A small percentage of these ethnic people are involved in weaving traditional clothes and running stores or illegally working in Thailand.
Most of them have relatives working in other countries like Singapore and Thailand as cleaners, sweepers or gardeners, who are financially supporting them from overseas. Otherwise, one house is shared among many to curb the cost.
Those staying in the camp rely on a monthly budget of 300 baht ($9 USD) per person provided by The Border Consortium, a non-profit organisation that has spent three decades working on the Thailand-Myanmar border with refugees.
“Our regular meals consist of chicken bones and Lakyi (fermented bean paste), which we have to buy,” Par says.
Cooking together at the refugee camp in the Kayah State.
Life in the camp can be chronically expensive. And as refugees with no registered ID, crossing to Thailand is not ‘officially’ permitted.
“Shortage of food. No freedom of movement. If the Thai police demand an ID, we will be sent back to Myanmar,” says Khun Soo Reh, a 22-year-old refugee.
Par Meh had never known Myanmar. She was only one year old when her parents fled after their village was attacked. She has only known the camp, no country – neither Myanmar nor Thailand.
“I grew up in Refugee Camp One. I have no freedom in the camp. Not enough space, food or water. I used to hike up to the mountains to find food.” The refugees still do this from time to time.
The Trump Administration’s decision to suspend US humanitarian aid has had an immediate impact on the lives of refugees here, facing healthcare and food shortages. The refugee camp’s only health clinic – which was equipped with rudimentary facilities that could cater to mild symptoms only – is now closed. Concerns among the refugees are stirring, with many fearing what will happen when they get sick.
*Reference: Factual information about the Karenni State was outsourced from KNWO’s (Karenni National Women’s Organization) documentation report: ‘Tales of Terror And Grief: Voices of Karenni Women Caught in Armed Conflict’.
Main image courtesy of The Border Consortium. All other photography by Ipsita Paul.
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