21 October 2007

By : Pu Chiangdao

Photo : Ongart Decha, Anuparb Nunsong

“…Kon duk tu moeng ma

kruan pran tu moe roen

bae bee nong ga wai

bae bee nong ga wai…

We are the poor without field or farm

We are the poor with no money

Have mercy, have mercy…”

“Actually, Pangdaeng has a lot more to learn about…” Sakunee “Koy” Natpoolwat talked to me one night. Perhaps true. The woman felt for the fate of Pangdaeng villagers. She has been researching on the community together with other researchers at Chiang Mai University for several years.

Their research focuses on the struggle of villagers in Pangdaeng community, Tungluk sub-district of Chiang Mai’s Chiang Dao district. Several factors created this community. Politically, the villagers comprise ethnic groups that fled fighting in Burma. Economically, many villagers had moved into the community to work as wage labourers. They live under the enclosure of the state’s forest management policy, the extension of agricultural lands by the Khon Muang people, the pressure of a market system and competition with earlier settlers for access to natural resources.

“In order to understand why Pangdaeng villagers have been arrested time and again, we need to study the history of the Dara-ang people…,” said Sakunee. Sakunee referred to a study in Burma which was recorded in James C. Scott’s famous “Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan states” written in 1900. In this record, the Dara-ang or Palaung people were said to be the children of the king of the sun.

They preferred to live in the uplands in the area of the Sun River, Northern Shan state. In a Dara-ang family, it is common to see different generations living together. They also had a reputation as great travellers. Later generations of Dara-ang also migrated to the southern part of Shan state in Kentung town. They developed good relationships with the ethnic Tai in Shan state.

The Palaung people are a Buddhist, peace-loving people, as Leslie Milne wrote in her 1910 work “Shan at Home.” “Before British annexation, the Palaung’s neighbours, the Shan and the Kachin always engaged in fighting. However, the Palaung juggled between the two enemies paying tribute to both to continue to live under the conditions of war.”

This reflects the ability of the Palaung to adjust to the conditions and stress under which they live. So researchers have observed that the Palaung play less a role of active fighters than victims of war. Since the time of their ancestors, the Palaung have always been affected by wars; always on the run to escape invasions by other ethnic groups.

The Palaung of today live in great numbers in the north-western part of Shan State and parts of Kachin State in Burma, and in China’s southern Yunnan Province. In Thailand, they live in nine villages in Chiang Mai’s Fang, Mae Ai, and Chiang Dao districts.

“Why did the Palaung scatter in different directions?” someone asked when I returned once again to Pangdaeng.

“Because of the unending war…” Perhaps this is the most likely answer you will get from any Palaung. The old Palaung settlements in the eastern part of Shan State lay in the path of many military groups; the Burmese, Wa, Tai, and other ethnic minorities. The Palaung had no way to escape the effects of the war. Their houses were demolished by Burmese soldiers, their barns were burnt. They were robbed, their sons were abducted and forced to fight in the war, their daughters were raped. Fearful for their security, the villagers fled into the forest, sleeping on the ground and eating whatever they could find. They dispersed in all directions.

“When we were in Burma, we were forced to pay tax. We were ‘asked’ to help in the work of the Burmese soldiers, to work as porters, carrying rice sacks and food. If we refused, they barred us from working on our land.”

“We all feared the Burmese soldiers. There has always been fighting. In emergencies, the Burmese soldiers would ‘ask’ us to help fight their enemy. If we refused, they would force us.” Sakunee relayed stories she heard from the Pangdaeng villagers. Many times, she saw sorrow in their eyes; at other times their eyes were blank.

“When we lived in Doi Lai, there were many Burmese and Wa soldiers. We had to hide in the forest, sometimes for five or six months. They took away half our rice. It was dispiriting to working the land for the whole year and not have enough to eat. Sometime the soldiers came to ask for chillies or tua nao (fermented soybean). We lost our pigs, our chickens to the military groups,” Yod Lungmoeng told Sakunee.

Some Palaung people who used to live in the central and northern parts of Shan State walked four to five months across the mountains to reach the Thai border. Those living in Doi Lai, which is much closer to the border with Thailand, walked for three days and three nights without a rest. The exodus sometimes took over two weeks, with stops for the elderly and the young to catch up.

Some put into their mouths insects

Others substituted rice with leaves

To ease their hunger, to survive

Some became sick and died along the way

“There was no time for a proper burial. We just covered the corpses with banana leaves, and hurried on with our escape. The Burmese soldiers had threatened to do away with us if we didn’t move out of Doi Lai,” uncle Kham Jongtal recalled sadly why the Palaung had to migrate to the Thai border.

During 1980-1981, when the Palaung first came to settle in villages along the Thai-Burma border in Chiang Mai’s Fang district, they developed good relationships with Thai soldiers and other hill ethnic minority people in the area. However, they continued to live in difficulty as the area was under the influence of the Shan drug lord Khun Sa, whose soldiers forced them to work in their fields and grow poppies.

In 1982, the Palaung refugees heard about the visit of His Majesty King Bhumipol of Thailand to Doi Ang Khang where the King was scheduled to meet Lahu villagers and other hill ethnic minorities residing in the Doi Ang Khang royal project. About 200 Palaung villagers planned to petition the King. They prepared a Buddha image, a tray of flowers, and Palaung clothing to be given to the King. This was to show their loyalty to the King and to show their similarity to the Thais in being Buddhist. Symbolically, the giving of the Palaung dress signified their submission as subjects under the rule of the Thai King.

Kham Jaiyod relates that the King asked the Palaung villagers who they were and if they were Buddhists. The Palaung then knew little Thai. They said their lives had been difficult. They wanted to reside in Thailand, to become Thai.

“The King said, so stay as you wish. He asked where we would like to live. We didn’t know what to answer because we didn’t know the area…,”

“The King allowed us to stay. He also gave 5,000 Baht to us to build a temple. We were very happy. We believed we could come to live in Thailand. We settled and built our village in the area which is now known as Ban Nor Lae.”

“…Adue ang grang raeng jor hor kam jai krue Jor hor kam bueng moeng kun moeng rok dooe plan La ba tan

rok dooe don moey a mai kun moeng

Jorng ong man a due mai la ba tan koe ampoe

Joy ong rao tae yemoe due boi jo gon

We are the red-sarong Dara-ang

The Queen gives us clothes

The King rules the country

He loves the poor

He loves all ethnicities

We ask the Khon Muang to give us a village to stay in

We asked from the King and the district chief gave us lands

For us to live on peacefully and for our grandchildren too…”

That is the Ding song the Palaung people composed and sing until now. However, wars continued on the other side of the border in 1982-1984. Many Palaung villages were burnt, and villagers lived in fear. How could their dream of a peaceful homeland become true in such a situation? With increasing violence, many more Palaung fled into Thailand.

“Before I left, I had just put rice into the barn. It was a good harvest, 600 buckets. But I had to leave to escape the Burmese soldiers in time,” said one Palaung man.

“Burma in war time is lawless. There were many powerful groups without clear rulers. They all competed for power and always fought each other. There was no peace like in Thailand. Here there is the King, a good administration, forest law. We know we won’t die of hunger here,” added another man.

Many Palaung villagers believe that they were allowed by the King to live in Thailand. Therefore, more and more Palaung refugees came from Doi Lai to live with their relatives in Ban Nor Lae. In order to survive, some villagers worked as wage laborers in tea plantations, lychee orchards and in the rice fields. They migrated to several areas within Chiang Mai province.

According official surveys, the Palaung or Dara-ang people live in nine villages in three districts of Chiang Mai: Ban Huay Wai Nok and Ban Huay Sai Khao in Mae Ai district; Ban Huay Janu, Ban Huay Mak Liem and Ban Nor Lae in Fang district; and Ban Mae Jon, Ban Huay Pong, Ban Pangdaeng Nok and Ban Thai Pattana Pangdaeng (Pangdaeng Nok) in Chiang Dao district.

The population of Dara-ang or Palaung people in Thailand is estimated to be about 5,000-7,000. Anyone travelling in the northern part of Chiang Mai into Mae Ai, Fang and Chiang Dao districts will encounter people who dress distinctly. Men wear Tai-style, black or blue loose pants with long-sleeve t-shirts. Women wear hand-woven red sarongs with short, bright, long-sleeve blouses open at the front without ties or buttons. The blouse is usually decorated at the wrist with sequins, metal disks, and bright tassels. Women also wear a turban, but what catches visitors’ attention most are “nong ku” – hoops of silver or rattan they wear around their waist. That is the Dara-ang or Palaung people, the ethnic group who fled war in Burma to reside in the peaceful land of Thailand.

Translated by Mukdawan Sakboon

Source:Pangdaeng…repeatednightmare(2) http://www.prachatai.com/english/news.php?id=327

ATLANTA—The cost of a typical week’s grocery bill in the United States was all it took to change a life. Money given last summer to the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Offering for Religious Liberty and Human Rights is being put to use to help hill tribe people in Thailand obtain legal status in that country. Individuals and churches also contributed a substantial amount to help with this project.

About $45,000 was collected at the 2005 CBF General Assembly for the first Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Offering, to be shared by the Fellowship and the Baptist World Alliance. The remainder of the CBF portion will be used to fund projects with Fellowship partner churches ministering in areas where religious liberty issues exist. The offering will be collected again at the 2006 General Assembly June 22-23 in Atlanta.

For 5,100 baht, or about $123, a Palaung is able to register for an alien resident card, which offers significant residence rights. “That is a lot of money for most Palaung families,” said Rick Burnette, one of CBF’s Global Missions field personnel. “They make somewhere between a dollar to two dollars a day.”

He and his wife, Ellen, work with various hill tribe people as liaisons with the Palaung and Kachin minority networks, assisting communities in finding ways to make a living, including sustainable agriculture, and dealing with related rights issues.

“This offering has been extremely timely,” Burnette said. “We don’t think it was merely coincidental.”

The Palaung registration fund fit the criteria of the Carter Offering, noted Don Durham, CBF Foundation president and chair of the committee responsible for disbursing the offering funds.

“This is what being the presence of Christ looks like when we engage the grassroots at home with the grassroots around the world,” Durham said. “A significant number of CBF churches were already involved with the Burnettes in funding this registration project. And there were individuals with no rights of any kind. Basic citizenship rights are the first step toward religious liberty rights.”

Providing direct assistance to those whose religious liberties are endangered or non-existent is a key objective used by the committee to determine where to distribute the funds, said committee member Jimmy Allen, chaplain and senior minister of the chapel of Big Canoe, Ga.

The Palaung registration fund “seemed a good fit for beginning this process,” Allen said. “They need help meeting the high costs placed on them to get the protection of being citizens of Thailand.”

Many of the Palaung and Kachin fled civil unrest in Myanmar during the last two decades and have settled in Thailand near the border with Myanmar. As immigrants, it has been difficult for them to get documentation to allow them to work.

Using $10,000 of the Carter Offering, along with another $30,000 in donations from churches and individuals, the Burnettes—working with a Christian development project—set up a revolving fund for those eligible to get this documentation.

First Baptist Church of Lee’s Summit, Mo., heard of the need after their pastor, Scott Harrison, returned from a two-week trip to Thailand, where he met the Burnettes and some of the Palaung. “The need was overwhelming, and knowing that our CBF missionaries would be able to oversee its distribution and make sure it got into the right hands was important to us,” Harrison said. “It was a tangible need, something we could do.”

Greenwood Forest Baptist Church in Cary, N.C., found out about the need when leaders contacted the Fellowship.

“It was a different way to help people in a far-away part of the world,” said Amanda Atkin, associate pastor.

Currently, the Thai government has said immigrants are eligible if they came to Thailand before Oct. 13, 1985. There is hope those who entered after that also will have opportunities to register.

“Among the Palaung and Kachin, we have identified 247 persons who are eligible to receive assistance from this fund so as to secure legal registration,” Burnette said.

After determining who is eligible, the group is screened by their communities, and if they are considered in good standing in the community, they can benefit from the fund, and thus obtain legal registration. They are expected to pay back what they have borrowed, with interest, over time, thus creating a sustainable fund.

“This fund eliminates a lot of uncertainty,” Burnette said. Legal registration “gives them rights to reside in Thailand, to access various benefits, including healthcare and education.”

Legal registration provides a first step for the Palaung and Kachin peoples toward realizing the religious liberty guaranteed in the Thai constitution.

The group hopes the Palaung and Kachin peoples will be able to access the sustainable fund for other applications related to land rights and forest rights, Burnette said.

Sources: http://www.baptiststandard.com/postnuke/index.php?module=htmlpages&func=display&pid=4836

The Palaung traditionally have practiced a mixture of Animism and Buddhism. (Although there has been a small amount of recent Christian missionary work among them.) Whereas many associate Buddhism with a pacifistic lifestyle. Like many others in Myanmar and Thailand who are nominally Buddhist, the Palaung also still practice various forms of Animist ritual from their religious past. The most famous such ritual is known as “Nat worship.” Nets are believed to be the spirits of otherwise inanimate objects such as rocks, mountains and rivers, as well as the spirits of deceased ancestors.

There are traditionally 37 different nets, to whom offerings of, for example, betel and tobacco are made on various ceremonial occasions – or simply to appease these spirits if someone falls sick or if a crop harvest has been bad. “Nat wives” are women who have “married” such a spirit, and are sometimes transvestite and/or homosexual men (see the documentary link below). Offerings to nets and other Animist rituals are performed at events such as weddings, births and funerals by Palaung shamans, who are both respected and powerful in their communities.

In 19th Century Myanmar, under British colonial rule, the Palaung were far more powerful in terms of land ownership and political representation than they are today. The British even recognized the Palaung-controlled kingdom of Tawnpeng. Today land ownership is being taken away from the Palaung by Myanmar‘s military government. In Thailand many Palaung work as hired laborers on Thai-owned farms. To the extent that they continue to own land, they farm a variety of crops including tea, grain, rice, opium poppy, betel and corn.

The photographs left and right show the Palaung harvesting corn and carrying it back to their village. While corn is a recent introduction to the crops of the Palaung, others such as rice, tea and opium poppy are generations old. Historically, and extending to the present day, opium poppy has been a lucrative cash crop to the Palaung. In Thailand government control and the efforts of non-governmental organizations have, for the most part, persuaded them to cultivate alternate cash crops such as coffee and beans.

Efforts along these same lines in Myanmar lag behind those in Thailand, but are now underway. Nonetheless, peoples like the Palaung live in poverty relative to their immediate neighbors and due to the power of local drug-lords, as well as the corruption of law enforcers, it will be a long time, if ever, before they abandon opium poppy cultivation. (A recent news link is given below with some reporting and opinion on this issue as it relates to the cultivation of opium poppy among ethnic groups in Myanmar. The visitor to the border areas of northern Thailand can expect to be spot searched for drugs by Thai authorities.)

Besides alternate cash crops, the Palaung have recently begun selling handicrafts to tourists to supplement their income. This is especially prevalent in northern Thailand, where many tour operators and guides take trekkers into Palaung villages. This type of tourism takes place to a lesser degree in Myanmar also. They sell, among other things, shoulder bags, wallets, hand-woven cloth and hand-made clothes. The visitor can overnight in some of these villages, which have basic yet comfortable wooden guest huts that have been purpose-built to accommodate tourists.

The visitor might be surprised by how well these guest huts are built. The Palaung are highly skilled in construction. Their own houses are also wooden huts, which are raised high off the ground on stilts. These days their houses are typically much smaller than in the past. Traditionally their houses have been longhouses accommodating extended families of 50 or more! While the typical house is home to fewer family members these days, the Palaung continue their tradition in which parents host their married sons and their daughters-in-law. Every Palaung village has a headman, whose duties involve making decisions for the village and ruling in disputes.

The headman usually comes from the largest family in the village. This Palaung village was geared to tourism and doing a good job of it. We stopped here for lunch and met an arriving bus load of Italians as we were leaving. The Palaung are called Bulang in China. They are closely related to the Wa people that live on the border between Myanmar and southern Yunnan. The open porch where we were having lunch was soon surrounded by these girls offering very well crafted souvenirs. Lunch and trinkets for tourists were only marginal sources of revenue. This prosperous village had their own pickup truck on which they can be seen loading a squealing pig going to market. The kids as usual were darlings. These Palaung are also recent refugees from Myanmar, notice how some of them are still wearing longish.

http://myanmar-society.blogspot.com/2006/08/prominent-palaung-tribe.html

Tea is served at every social or religious ceremony or function. In every household there is at least one member of the family who likes to have a cup of plain tea as soon as she or he gets up from bed.

The first duty of the house wife when she gets up is to boil water and prepare a pot of tea, not only for the grandfather, grandmother, father or husband, but for herself and her children. Guests, near and far whoever comes for a visit is offered a cup of plain tea? It has become customary for everyone in the Shan State to give tea as gifts to visitors either in dried leaves or in pickled state.

Tea shops are crowded with people young and old alike. Holding a cup of plain tea and slowly sipping it, is quite refreshing. People would do their business well at the tea shops by the road side. Tea serves many purposes -social, economic and religious. Nobody can run away from tea. Tea has become a national drink and tea drinkers always say . I don ‘ t drink water the whole day. But I take plain tea instead, it is safer and is good for my heath.”

Where does the tea come from? Who plants the tea ? How is the tea made into drink? And how is tea consumed? The chief crop of cultivation among the Palaung is tea. The tea tree or tea-shrub is indigenous and grows wild all over the hills, but the cropping is closely associated with Tawngpang.

But tea is abundant in places like Mong Long, Mong Mit, Mong Khe, Panglong and in Petkang areas of Keng Tung State. This shrub likes a high latitude, shade and dampness. Tawngpang is the most suitable place for such conditions. The tea is made in two forms: one, Neng Yam or wet or pickled tea, and the other dry tea. One needs skills and experience for picking, drying, curing of tea leaves. The leaves are steamed in a wooden strainer with a perforated bamboo bottom, which is placed over a large cauldron of boiling water.

It is steamed for a few minutes just to moisten and soften the leaves, so that they can be easily and quickly rolled with the fingers on a met while another lot is being steamed. These steamed and rolled leaves are spread out on the screen resulting in dry tea. The picking seasons for the tea are: May to June, July to August, September to October and November, each of which has its name.

The first picking is always the best, and it is called Shwepyi (Golden Land). The making of the pickled variety is more complicated. The steamed leaves are heaped together in a pulp mass and thrown into basket and left until the next day. The baskets are then put into pits in the ground and covered with heavy weights placed on top of each. Inspection is often made to see how fermentation is progressing and sometimes there is re-steaming .

Palaungs are the only tea growers who produce the “pickled tea ” and some call it “salad tea “. The Palaung tea plantations are on steep hill-sides. It takes three years to get a crop, and after ten years;; or more the plants weaken and the output is poor.

Much of the dry tea goes to different parts of Myanmar and some to Yunnan across the border. Pickled tea is transported down to Mandalay and Yangon for general distributifn. Myanmar people like pickled tea more than anyone else and it has become a delicacy for them and is eaten mixed with a little oil, salt, garlic and topped off with sesame seeds.

The Palaungs there would not be much tea for home consumption and the tea drinking culture become could possibly elapse. Therefore tea cultivation should be encouraged and research on it should be made for better production and better preservation, so that good quality would be available not only for domestic consumption but also for export . Food technology should also be applied to make tea not only as a beverage but as an item of nutritious food in the future.

http://myanmartravelinformation.com/mti-myanmar-food/laphet.htm