“State of Place”
Jack Picone
Network / Rapho
Hundreds of thousands of displaced Burmese and ethnic minorities live precarious lives on the Thai/Burma border. They have fled persecution by Burma’s brutal military government whose soldiers have burned their villages to the ground, razed their crops and destroyed their livelihood.
Preview
The junta has crushed their communities through a relentless campaign of violence: murdering men, raping women and girls, and orphaning children. Survivors who make the long and dangerous journey through dense jungles and across mountains and rivers in their flight from oppression often illegally cross the border into Thailand.
On the porous, shambolic border of Thailand they scrape a living as cheap labor in sweat shops or rice fields, building sites or grimy brothels.
With no official status or "state of place", their existence is permeated with fear, stress and hardship. They may be captured at any moment, deported at the whim of the Thai authorities, and returned in cattle trucks to the evil regime in Burma which they have fled.
Yet still they flock here to the Thai/Burma border, striving to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.
