(Photo from BarBlut Eugene Sein)
“You cannot get tertiary education.”
Growing up in a refugee camp on the Thai-Myanmar border, BarBlut Eugene Sein is very familiar with that frustrating sentence. An official said it when he was 15: he cannot go to university because people on the border have never been recognized as refugees by the Thail government. So he should give up any hope of doing so. However, those demoralizing hardly affected Sein. “I can shut it down in certain way”, he said, “It was something I did.”
Sein, now 22, is a freshman at the Hong Kong Institute of Education majoring in Liberal Studies Education. Having a solid command of English, Burmese and his native Karen language, he is also learning Spanish in preparation for his exchange to Spain next semester. “I feel like I’m loving my life right now”, Sein said with a big smile, “It’s a long way for me to come here, so I have to make the best out of it.”
Born in Myanmar, Sein lost his father at the age of 10. His mother had to bring up three kids, among which Sein is the eldest. “It was hard for her to support us,” Sein said.
They are Karen people, the third largest ethnic group of the 135 in Myanmar, a country where ethnic issues have been problematic. Under the military government, more than 140,000 Karen people went to the Thai-Myanmar border to settling down in the refugee camps to escape killing, rape, torture etc. Mea La is the largest of nine refugee camps on the border.
Edward Tsoi graduated from Hong Kong University majoring in Law. Hearing from social calling for his profession, he built up Connecting Myanmar, an organization to support Myanmar people, with Hong Kong University schoolmates.
He has been to the Thai-Myanmar border for 11 time. “The security in the refugee camp is much tighter now, those refugees and migrants can no longer go out of the camp to the-near-border town to go for work or doing other stuff,” Tsoi said, “The treatment to refugees are worse as well.”
Having relatives in the camp, Sein’s mother decided to move from Karen State in southeast Myanmar to Mae La when Sein was 13.
Sein can still remember the pressure inside Myanmar when it was under the military government, although he left the country almost ten years ago. “It was not an open country, if we want to see some certain videos, we had to hide, we closed all the doors and windows,” Sein said.
In fact, Sein doesn’t call his country Myanmar at all. He calls it Burma, the old English name before the military government took control of the country. The military regime changed the name in 1988. Most democratic opposition groups reject the name change, according to the book, The Karen People: culture, faith and history.
Although houses in the camp are made of bamboos with roofs made of leaves, the education system there made a turning point for Sein. Before he went to the camp, he even didn’t know what English was. “While I studied in the Burma, I couldn’t really speak English, I didn’t have critical thinking, and I dared not to ask teachers questions,” he said.
The learning experience on the border inspired his eagerness to learn. He lived in a strict family, but as a good kid, he was never scolded by his mother and grandmother, so much as they did his younger brother, who fell in love with drama rather than studying. But, Sein encouraged his brother to work hard and become a professional actor.
Sein always held Plans A, B and C in mind. His Plan A was to get scholarship to continue studying, Plan B was to get a good job outside the camp, and if he failed them all, he planned to do research in the camp, providing information for the outside world about the reality of the refugees living there.
He didn’t want to waste time, even when he couldn’t find a way out of the camp. Luckily, he did.
Sein is playing piano. (Photo from BarBlut Eugene Sein)
Sein has also learnt to play classical music. He is good at violin and piano. “I always keep myself busy,” he added, “The education in the camp definitely made me to become a better person.”
However, not everyone is as lucky as Sein. As black markets widely exist on the border, many kids, especially those born in the camp, lost themselves by abusing drugs. They think there are no future for kids in the refugee camps, according to Sein.
Though the temptation and barriers of the camp are big, it’s a turning point for people who can make the most out of it, according to Sein.
The year 2008, the last year of his high school, is one that Sein will never forget. Different voices came and brought his life ups and downs. On the one hand, the officer told him he cannot get higher education because they are not recognized as refugees by Thailand government, instead, the camps on the border are called “temporary shelter” by the government.
On the other hand, Laura Bush, the American first lady between 2001 and 2009, came to the camp making speech. Sein was quite encouraged.
That year too he met his idol Zoya Phan, a Karen political activist who grew up in the camp. Now she is the Campaigns Manager of Burma Campaign UK, a human rights organization. She devotes herself to promoting the country’s democratic reforms and has published her autobiography, Little Daughter, in the United Kingdom in 2009 and the United States in 2010.
“I met her personally, I was speechless, I couldn’t speech at all,” Sein said excitedly, “She is like…‘Try hard, try hard for other people’…yeah, I will.”
After the mental battle, the positive voices won in Sein’s mind. “I said to myself, it’s OK, I can study myself,” Sein added.
After graduated, he became a teacher in high school at the age of 16, because of a shortage of teachers at that point. It was another turning point, transforming a shy boy to a mature young man, according to Sein.
(BarBlut Eugene Sein’s Facebook)
He gained educational certificates from the Leadership and Management Training College in Mae La Camp and the Australian Catholic University in Mae Pa during 2010 and 2013, and worked in two non-governmental organizations, the Mae Fah Luang Foundation and the Karen Human Rights Group between 2013 and 2015 before studying in Hong Kong.
When Sein looked back today, he felt satisfied for himself.
“You run and you never stop, and you keep running to where you want to be. All of the sudden, you stop and look back and see how far you have come and you feel satisfaction. That ‘feeling’ can’t be replaced with anything,” he said in his Facebook.
End
Benita Zhang 