Nine-year-olds on drugs: Has the world abandoned Myanmar?

Edward Blakeney (0:02)

This is a podcast by The Straits Times.

Ravi Velloor (0:11)

Hello, and welcome to Asian Insider. I'm Ravi Velloor, and my guest today is Edward Blakeney, a British psychotherapist and researcher with extensive experience working with refugees in Myanmar and Thailand. The subject of our conversation today is Myanmar and its refugee crisis. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, there are an estimated 1.6 million Myanmar refugees outside the country and about 4 million internally displaced people within Myanmar.

But too much of the reporting and commentary in Myanmar has centered around geopolitics and diplomacy. And it's a pity that there's so little focus on the suffering of the Minmaris people, particularly those uprooted by the war. And this podcast will therefore discuss the plight of Burmese refugees.

Thank you for coming, A Nation Insider, Dr. Blakeney.

Edward Blakeney (1:09)

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here, Ravi.

Ravi Velloor (1:13)

Ted, you have actually run a company inside Myanmar, and then you worked in an NGO that helps Burmese refugees. What drew you to work with people affected by Myanmar's conflict, and what keeps you there?

Edward Blakeney (1:30)

Well, I'm married to a Burmese journalist, and so it certainly made sense for us to be based in Northern Thailand, where a lot of Burmese journalists continue to report on the situation in Myanmar. And to speak personally, after leaving Yangon after the military coup in 2021, it was really a question of asking, how can I make myself useful in this situation? And that's what took me to the border and to work at the NGO that you just mentioned.

Ravi Velloor (2:06)

It's been more than five years since Aung San Suu Kyi was ousted in Myanmar, and the refugee flood started pouring out of the country. Could you give us a sense of the refugee situation today?

Edward Blakeney (2:20)

Yeah. I mean, it's a situation also that's been in existence for decades at the time in our border. But as you say, since the coup has got a lot worse, I'd say there are two tails to it.

There's the one which is on the Thai side, which would be about 100,000 refugees in refugee camps. And then millions of migrants in Thailand. But just to take Thailand, the Thai Myanmar border as an example, on the other side of the border, you would have five times as many, half a million IDPs in camps of a far inferior quality to those that you'd find on the Thai side.

Ravi Velloor (3:02)

An IDP being an internally displaced person. Right. But give us a sense of their plight.

What is life like for them?

Edward Blakeney (3:12)

Well, it's a life in some sense of increased security. Most of them have fled a situation where their villages have been bombed by the Myanmar hunter, which has a policy of bombing, for example, schools and hospitals in areas that it doesn't control to try and make life unlivable. In a sense, that is exactly what happens. It does make life unlivable.

Some of those people will also have witnessed ground incursions into their areas.

Arson, rape, torture, very normal forms of violence from the Myanmar military. So they fled that. So in a sense, they're now more secure, but they're now confined. They don't have any freedom of movement. And I think probably what is particularly difficult to deal with is that there's not really any sense of a future and what to live for. And I think that's particularly challenging. And so it's in that kind of circumstance that you start to get drug addiction and whatnot.

Ravi Velloor (4:24)

I see. You know, I mean, you mentioned people in Thailand, you mentioned the other refugee crisis on the other side of the border. But, you know, even in Malaysia, which is right next door to Singapore, there are an estimated 200,000 Myanmar people living as refugees, I'm told.

And it looks like there's quite a refugee diaspora now, including even in Sri Lanka and India.

Edward Blakeney (4:51)

Yeah. Yeah, correct. Yeah. I think probably it's hard to track the figures sometimes. I think probably Thailand is still the main place.

But yeah, as you say, all the way through Southeast Asia, and then of course, there are diasporas further afield in America and Australia and the UK.

Ravi Velloor (5:09)

You know, Ted, as a psychotherapist, could you just paint a picture of what goes on in the minds of these people?

Edward Blakeney (5:19)

Yeah. I mean, for a lot of people, and they would say in their own words, in a sense, it's not really a life like you or I are able to enjoy one. It's just a fight for survival day by day. And that's the reason why drugs are an increasing problem.