METHODOLOGY

We conducted seventy interviews for this book over the course of twelve months in 2009 and 2010. The interviews ranged from several hours to several days in length, and more than 400 hours of audio were recorded.

When we began working on this book, both of us were based near the Thailand–Burma border, working separately on projects with local Burma organizations. We met our interviewees through our networks of friends, colleagues, and the local leaders of community-based and human-rights organizations. We would like to acknowledge and thank a small core group of colleagues who helped shape the scope of this project from its initial conception. Throughout the process of compiling this volume, they continued to offer their guidance and feedback in structuring the book. They were instrumental to our process of identifying interviewees, arranging logistics, and undertaking additional research.

We worked with interpreters to conduct the majority of the interviews in this book; the interpreters, who were often working with community organizations, generously volunteered their time. The narrators have a range of native languages through which interviews and interpretation were done. Follow-up interviews were done in every case possible—in most cases, several follow-ups were made. Of the seventy individuals who told us their life stories, twenty-two were chosen to be included here. Although we could include only a limited number of the interviews, it was truly an honor and an integral part of the process to listen to and learn from each person we met.

The book is divided into five sections, by country: Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Burma, and the United States. The book follows the geographical order where interviews were first conducted and how the project took form. The variety of locales where we held our interviews reflects the wide range of circumstances in which the narrators live.

In Thailand, interviews took place in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Mae Sot, and Khao Lak. We met Ma Su Mon, for example, at a Starbucks café in a bustling modern shopping mall in Bangkok, where she works and studies—a world away from the Burmese prison where she was held in solitary confinement. In fact, Ma Su Mon confessed that every time she drinks a cappuccino or dines at a nice restaurant, she cannot help feeling guilty as she thinks of her friends who remain behind bars. Other interviews in Thailand were conducted in venues ranging from a home in the middle of a rubbish dump, to the office of an organization of exiled monks, to the house of a group of underground youth activists. Thailand is known to be the reluctant host to thousands of Burmese migrant workers and refugees, and as the central hub of Burmese political activists in exile.

A few months after we began interviews in Thailand, we traveled to Malaysia, where interviews took place in Kuala Lumpur and Puchong. One day we drove to the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, the capital city, and took a short hike through the jungle to meet a group of refugees living in what had become known as a “jungle camp.” When we arrived at the wooden hut that marked the entrance to the settlement, a group of dogs surrounded us, snarling and advancing until a man hurried over and warmly greeted us. Only a handful of men were there; the residents had gotten news that the camp would soon be raided by Malaysian law enforcement officials. All of the refugees had fled farther into the jungle to escape arrest, and these men had returned to assess the situation. Everyone sat nervously during the interview, listening for law enforcement to possibly arrive on the hillside. After a phone call of warning was received, we had to cut the interview short. Other interviews in Malaysia were held in hidden community refugee centers bustling with people recently arrived from Burma, and the single-room apartments where refugee families—sometimes twenty people or more—lived together. The interviews featured the stories of urban migrants and refugees who are perpetually vulnerable to the high rates of human trafficking, the absence of refugee camps, and the presence of multiple detention centers, within which more than 1,300 people have died since 2006.

In Bangladesh, interviews were conducted in Dhaka and Cox’s Bazar, as well as inside two large unofficial refugee camps, Kutupalong makeshift camp and Leda. We walked through the sprawling Kutupalong makeshift camp, home to more than 20,000 Rohingya refugees. The refugees had built simple huts with walls of mud, sticks, and sheets of plastic. The Burma–Bangladesh border is home to thousands of stateless Rohingya refugees who fled severe religious and ethnic persecution and are now living in both official and unofficial refugee camps with scant resources, as well as living as migrant workers without security. This border area also hosts refugees from other ethnic nationalities who have fled from western parts of Burma. The people of the camp generously accepted us into their homes, where they told us the stories of why they had to leave Burma, and about the current challenges they face in Bangladesh.

In Burma, interviews were conducted in the country’s two biggest cities, Rangoon and Mandalay, as well as at the Loi Tai Leng army base of the Shan State Army-South. We cannot share the precise details of where and how we conducted interviews inside Burma, as it would compromise the security of those who must still resort to largely secretive methods in order to share important information with foreign visitors and journalists.

In the United States, interviews took place in Utica, Brooklyn and Buffalo, New York, where thousands of refugees from Burma have been resettled. One can only imagine the monk U Agga’s initial arrival in upstate New York in the dead of winter, never before having seen snow. Yet despite the vast adjustments required of them, the people we met—monks, students, a journalist—were steadily and successfully building their new lives. Their households were filled with English, Burmese, and Karen language, Burmese curry and cans of Pepsi, computers and longyis, the traditional sarongs worn in Burma by both men and women.

We have taken many measures to protect the security of the narrators in this book; most names of narrators and the people they discussed have been changed. In addition, many place names have been omitted, and other identifying details have been left out. In most cases, the final edited versions of the stories were sent to the narrators for their review and approval. In the few cases where it wasn’t possible to contact the narrators again, they had given us approval in the initial interview to edit and publish their narratives at our discretion, following their requests for security.

We conducted the majority of the interviews outside of Burma, mainly for the plain fact that anyone caught doing an interview with us inside the country would stand a real risk of arrest, torture, or imprisonment. We therefore limited the number of interviews we did inside Burma and took great measures to protect our narrators’ security while working inside the country. However, the majority of our narrators interviewed outside of Burma had only recently left the country, and spoke mainly about their lives before leaving.

Those who spoke to us from neighboring countries also experience little security. Often living without documentation, there is a constant anxiety in the awareness that they could be arrested at any time, exploited, and possibly even forced back to Burma. Even our narrators who have been resettled to the United States must still consider the security of their family and friends in Burma, as the military is known to threaten and harass the families of anyone they perceive to be tied to the opposition.

The act of speaking was for some narrators an act of resistance; for others, a plea for help; for others, catharsis. Many narrators were committed to sharing their stories in order to help others avoid facing similar traumatic situations. But for every narrator, the risk of speaking out was and is very real—the act of speaking demanded great courage.

The ubiquitous presence of informants and military intelligence (now called Military Affairs Security) has led to a prevalent sense of distrust among the people of Burma. And though one of the military junta’s most successful strategies has been to capitalize on division and a culture of fear, they have not succeeded in diminishing the deep warmth and hospitality shown by many people we interviewed.