Shackled by the Neck by Antonio Graceffo

Two years ago an 18-year old Karen girl named Zember, living in a refugee village within sight of the Thai-Burma border, staged her own little personal revolution. She removed the rings she had been adding around her neck each year since she was seven or eight years old, the age the girls take the first ones that ultimately turn them into human giraffes.

The Padaung Karen, or long-neck Karen, so-called because of the multiple rings that elongate their necks by deforming their collarbones and pushing their shoulders down, have been described for decades as one of the closest things in Asia to a human zoo. But their condition points up just how much of a zoo it is. They have found dubious refuge in artificial tourist villages where visitors, both Thai and foreign, pay a heavy entrance fee to gawk at them.

The Padaung Karen are a tiny offshoot of the larger Karen people, natives of Burma who have long been caught up in a civil war against the government. The Karen – and other Burmese minorities have never been fully integrated into the country and the current military rulers of the country have spent decades trying to suppress the various rebellions. Estimates claim that as many as 2 million refugees, many of them tribal peoples, have fled over the border into neighboring Thailand.

What Zember wants, as do most Karen on the Thai side of the border, are more comprehensive residency rights and the ability to move freely. But since removing the rings, she finds herself in double jeopardy. Now, not only is she a stateless Padaung Karen refugee living in a sideshow, but the elders in her village shun her as a traitor to the ring-wearing community.

The Padaung Karen are typically singled out by Thai entrepreneurs because of their appearance, scooped up and deposited in the tourism villages before reaching United Nations refugee camps. Allowing Padaung Karen to gain refugee status would be bad for business because the village owners collect money from the tourists. Owning a group of long-necks is a lucrative business – lucrative enough, according to Som Sak Seta, a guide who takes tourists to the villages, that entrepreneurs come and take Padaung Karen to their own villages elsewhere in Thailand.

“Some Thai made a fake village in Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai and stole some Karen from here to live there,” Som Sak Seta said. “They charged 1,000 baht (US$30.70) or more for the entrance fee.”

Huai Sua Tao is a Padaung Karen village located in Thailand’s Mae Hong Son Province, near the Burmese border. After paying their entry fee, tourists find an entire village that is one huge shop, with women and children selling goods and posing for photos. There are no men to be seen. Karen in Burma traditionally live by planting and cultivating rice, gathering forest products, raising animals, and hunting as their people have done for centuries. But in the tourism villages, the Padaung Karen work as trinket vendors. Normally, the Karen would be tied to the land, but now, as salespeople, they are losing their culture. In Huai Sua Tao there are no rice fields.

“It’s their choice,” Says Som Sak Seta. “The Karen can make money wearing their neck rings in the camp, or they can go back to the refugee camp. They don’t have a right to stay (in Thailand). This is the compromise of the governors of this place, so the Karen can stay inside the Thai border and make some money, and the governors can get some money as well.”

Prasit Leeprechaa, a lecturer at Chiang Mai University, is himself an ethnic Hmong, a group persecuted in Laos for fighting alongside the Americans in the Indochina conflict. While millions of Hmong families have been resettled in the United States and others still languish in refugee camps awaiting resettlement in the USA, Prasit uses his education to study and help the region’s many tribal people.

“The Karen are faced with four options,” Prasit says. “Live in a tourist village, become official refugees, go back to the war in Burma, or, number four, some countries like New Zealand offer them a chance to go live in cultural tourism villages abroad.”

These are only options if the tribal people are made aware of their rights, which most are not. All legal residents of Thailand receive some type of ID card, with various rights attached. Obviously, citizens get the most rights. Legal aliens may be granted rights such as employment or residence. But because the Long Neck Karen in the tourist villages have no legal status, they have no rights of residence, employment, or freedom of movement in Thailand.

A Padaung Karen girl named Mali – who was born in Thailand – said she hadn’t been given any type of ID, although she had already lived in Thailand for more than 12 years. Asked if she has residency papers, she responded: “No, I don’t have anything. They just let me stay here.”

She is allowed to go into nearby Mae Hong Son, but, she says, “I can’t stay overnight. I can just go there and buy some food. Afterwards, I have to come back here. I have to stay here.”

Other Karen have explained that the Thai government is willing to give ID cards to babies born in Thailand as long as the birth is registered. The same Karen said they were either unaware of the law at the time their children were born or that the owners of the villages actually prevented them from obtaining ID cards for fear of losing revenues.

Mali explained how the Karen business works. “If we stay here and wear the rings around our neck, they will give us 1,500 baht per month, each. But the men don’t get money because they don’t wear the rings.” Each Karen receives another Bt180 for rice and food. “If we don’t wear the rings, we don’t get the money. So, the men won’t get the Bt1,500. They only get Bt180 for rice, per month, per person.”

Asked if she had ever thought of going to work in town, she answered: “No, I can’t go. I just can’t go.” Someday, she said, “I would like to go to work in town. But we wear this metal around our neck, so I don’t think we can go. I think we just can stay here and sell souvenirs.”

The trinkets the women sell were identical in both villages. Many were sealed in plastic, obviously made in a factory. They essentially told us they get the souvenirs dropped off in the morning and the money is collected in the evening. They implied that the women didn’t get to keep much, if any, of the souvenir income. Som Sak Seta said all of the income is put in a pool and divided up, with the owner getting the first and largest share. But it isn’t clear if in some months the women earned more than 1,500 baht, for example if they had good sales.

As I spoke to the villagers, some Thais– probably off-duty soldiers or employees of the owner hung around, taking pictures and eavesdropping. Finally, to avoid putting anyone in jeopardy, I asked Som Sak Seta take us to a “real” village, called Baan Nai Soi, where it was much easier to do interviews. It was there that we found Zember. Som Sak Seta explained the soldiers were only there to guard the border, a few kilometers away.

While the soldiers sat on a cooler, sipping Cokes, Zember told the story of her predicament. Her hair cut in Japanese pop fashion, she says she would prefer to have a normal life. Her skin is light and she is very slim and attractive, her neck is only slightly elongated and there is little sign of the rings she once wore. If she were wearing western clothing in Hong Kong or Bangkok, she would be a normal Asian teenager. In addition to taking off the neck rings, she no longer wears traditional clothing, dressing like any rural Thai, but she is stuck here in a kind of limbo –no longer willing to wear the rings but not free to make a future for herself either.

In recent years, Thailand, like many Asian countries, has been rewriting its laws to increase human rights and freedoms. The issues facing the tribal people do not seem to result from a lack of legislation but rather a lack of enforcement. Too often, it seems the whim of the local authority prevents people, both Thai and tribal, from accessing rights granted them by the government. High rates of illiteracy among the tribal people also add to the problem. Add to this the ever present specter of deportation to a war where they are considered the enemy, and it is no wonder that the tribal people feel isolated.

For the Padaung Karen women, the rings around their neck may be seen as cultural shackles, but they are faced with a brutal choice: return to Burma and risk death or remain a stateless sideshow attraction in Thailand.

Imprisoned in Rings of Brass

Thai authorities refuse to release a valuable tourist attraction, writes Connie Levett, in Nai Soi, Thailand.

Zember was an original poster child for long-neck tourism - at 12, her neck coiled with brass rings, she sat on display at a Bangkok tourism fair - helping to create the buzz that drew gawkers from around the globe.

Now, aged 23, her neck is bare, the rings stripped off in anger after provincial authorities in Mae Hong Son, northern Thailand, refused to let her migrate to New Zealand, concerned about the negative impact on tourism of an exodus of long-neck women.

"When I was young I wanted to wear the rings and keep my own tradition, in one way I feel sad [that I've taken them off] but now I go to the city no one cares, no one stares," she said. "The people who control us say if the people see us in the town they won't pay to see us [in the village]."

Zember, also called Mu Lon, has not rejected her culture, but she now sees her rings as a weapon of exploitation by powerful Thai authorities.

Long-neck tourism is big business in Mae Hong Son, but little of the money returns to the Kayan people; the operations have always been run by Thais. "It is the No. 1 attraction in this area; it's why tourists come here," said Wanchai Thiansiri, a Chiang Mai-based tour guide. "They may go to see caves as well, but the long necks are the attraction."

Mae Hong Son tourism officials play down their importance, saying tourists visit the province for "the beautiful scenery, architecture and culture, and that the long-neck women are not the main attraction or a key revenue factor".

Thai authorities deny they cancelled the exit permits for commercial reasons, but in July last year Direk Kornkleep, then governor of Mae Hong Son, told the website Chiang Mai News "a New Zealand non-government organisation has interviewed the long-necks for selection of relocation, and the New Zealand Government will build a village for them. If this is the case, no more visitors would come to Mae Hong Son. "The Long Necks are very popular among European tourists. The Mae Hong Son administration had requested the Ministry of Interior to withhold their exit permit and set up this Long Neck Cultural Conservation Village [at Hway Pu Keng]," Mr Direk was quoted as saying.

About 100 Kayan (also known by the Burmese name Padaung), fled across the Burma border to Thailand from Kayah state in the late 1980s when civil war between Karenni separatists and the Burmese army became too intense.

Zember, who was five when her family fled, said: "When we first came we didn't know anything. In Burma we had to work really hard, and when we moved here [we worked hard] too. We don't know they are getting money from the tourists. We [couldn't] speak English or Thai."

Zember sits on the balcony of the family's flimsy wooden hut in Nai Soi, one of three villages where tourists pay 250 baht ($9) to take photos, talk to the women or just stare.

Women who wear the rings are paid 1500 baht a month to run souvenir stalls, and men receive a rice allowance of 260 baht a month. They make a little more from the traditional scarves they weave and sell.

In one village, Hway Su Thao, the women have had their wages docked for riding motorcycles, talking to foreigners outside the village or attending educational courses that keep them away from the village during the day.

The older generation were grateful to have a means of surviving, said Zember in basic English, and they did not understand tourist comments that they were a "human zoo". "Ours is the first generation who can read and write." In nearly 20 years the community has grown to 520, still living in poverty, with few rights in Thailand or hope of return to Burma.

Because of their commercial currency, the Kayan people - unlike other refugees - have not lived in the largely sealed off refugee camps, a fact the Thai authorities are now using to suggest they are economic refugees rather than political ones. Provincial officials have also said the Kayan are in fact registered as a Thai hill tribe and so do not have the right to seek asylum.

For years the Kayan had no recourse, but the status quo changed in Mae Hong Son in 2005, when the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees opened registration for third-country resettlement to about 50,000 refugees in the area. Almost every Kayan family applied, and three families that included women who wear rings were successful. In Nai Soi two families, including Zember's, were approved for New Zealand and one family for Finland. Zember takes the precious crumpled confirmation letter from UNHCR and their International Organisation of Migration medical cards out of the plastic sleeve.

"When we heard, we were really happy. We think we can go there. We are really excited. Our friends from the [refugee] camp who have already gone to New Zealand told us they have seen the house we will live in."

Before she, her sister, brother in law and their four children could leave they needed the governor's approval for an exit permit from Thailand. He would not sign, reportedly drawing the analogy of "an endangered species on the verge of extinction which needed protection" in discussions with non-governmental organisations. At the governor's office in Mae Hong Song, a district officer, Waricha, insisted this week that the Long Neck Karenni had never been approved to leave Thailand on refugee status because, according to Ministry of Interior data, "they have been registered as Thai hill tribes".

Later, the vice-governor (security), Wanchai Suthivorachai, clarified they were registered with the Ministry of Interior as people of "asylum" but there was a problem, because this status only applied to someone living in the refugee camp and who was a war refugee.

A spokeswoman for the UNHCR in Bangkok, Kitty McKinsey, said: "It is surprising at this stage to hear that any Thai authority is questioning their status as refugees. There are 520 Padaung registered as refugees. They came with other Karenni tribespeople fleeing fighting in Myanmar [Burma] and were accepted as refugees as a group by the Thai Government.

"Their status as refugees was confirmed by a reregistration carried out in all the camps in Thailand in 2005. The reregistration was carried out jointly by UNHCR and the Thai Ministry of Interior. The so-called long-neck women were given registration numbers by UNHCR on the specific instruction of the Thai camp commander."

A large group of Padaung was submitted to New Zealand, but there had been no progress on these cases because no Padaung had been allowed to leave in the more than two years, Ms McKinsey said.

New Zealand was told there were registration issues with the people concerned, said a spokeswoman for the New Zealand Department of Labour, which oversees refugee resettlement. "The embassy in Bangkok has raised its concerns with the Thai authorities about the delay in the issuing of exit permits for UNHCR registered refugees approved for resettlement to New Zealand".

While the then governor blocked their departure, he also announced a plan to consolidate all three long-neck villages in one place, to preserve their culture and make one tourist centre. As an incentive, the new village project at Hway Pu Keng offers the Kayan their own house, free from a Thai controller, with a possibility of Thai citizenship at some future point. No other refugees have been offered this preferential deal. Eighty-nine Kayan have moved to the new village, but many, including Zember's family, stayed in Nai Soi.

Zember took off her coils in anger, but even bare-necked she attracts attention in the village. Tour guides now point her out as one who rejects tradition.

"I take off my ring so they will let me go [to New Zealand].

"When I stay here in the village, they make money from tourists, and I don't like that way. I don't want to earn money from other people [looking at me]. I want to get my own education, work by myself and own by myself."
Hemmed in

>>> From as early as five, girls start to wear the rings and every few years the brass coil is replaced with a longer, heavier one. A mature woman wears up to 25 rings that weigh up to 13 kilograms.

>>> The coil gives the effect of elongating the neck, but in fact the weight of the brass rings severely compresses the shoulder bones and ribcage, creating the illusion of elongation.

>>> There are different theories on how the custom originated: that men put the rings on their womenfolk more than 200 years ago to make them less attractive to rival tribes; that they were intended to deter slave traders.