Mae La refugee camp
Gallery of Mae La Refugee Camp
Residents of Karen refugee camps along the Thai-Myanmar border are facing difficulties, particularly patients receiving treatment at the clinic, due to the temporary suspension of services by the American Refugee Health Assistance Group (International Rescue Committee, IRC), one of the patients receiving treatment at the clinic said.
All health services, including OPD, IPD, RCH, and other departments and health activities within the camp, were suspended by the IRC organization at around 11:00 a.m on January 27th.
Due to this suspension, long-term patients, including those with heart disease, pregnant women, and individuals with diabetes, are facing difficulties.
It was reported that all the offices under the IRC have been closed and are no longer providing medical treatment. Some pregnant women can no longer go to Umpiem for their appointments.
Additionally, the patients receiving treatment at the hospital were forced to leave, and only some patients remained. They are fearful that the situation could worsen, particularly for heart disease patients who are receiving oxygen and were forced to leave, said a local resident.
When the announcement of the hospital closure was made, patients who were at the hospital were transported by cars along with their respective families to their homes.
The temporary shelters, refugee camps, for the refugees in Myanmar were established on the Thailand-Myanmar border since the 1980s. According to a UNHCR report in January 2023, there are approximately 60,000 refugees living in Mae La, Umpiem and Nu Po camps in Tak province of Thailand.
The words of Emma Lazarus’s famous 1883 sonnet “The New Colossus” have taken on a new resonance with Trump’s second inauguration.
Lines 10 and 11 of the poem are quoted with the most frequency—“Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”—and often by those aiming to highlight a contrast between Lazarus’s humanitarian vision of the nation and the president’s rhetoric.
It is a promise enshrined on the Statue of Liberty.
Former FBI director James Comey tweeted a bit of the sonnet, along with his interpretation of its meaning: simply that “this country’s greatness and true genius lies in its diversity.”
But this week the U.S. State Department suspended funding to groups that assist refugees with housing, job placement and other needs as part of a broad pause on aid, a letter reviewed by Reuters shows.
The letter, dated Friday, said the agencies must stop all work related to the paused federal grants and “cancel as many outstanding obligations as possible.”
President Donald Trump halted the resettlement of refugees from overseas indefinitely as part of a broad immigration crackdown after taking office on Monday, calling for a review in three months to determine whether the program sufficiently benefits Americans.
Trump also ordered a 90-day pause in foreign development assistance, a move that could affect humanitarian efforts around the world, including in Afghanistan, where relief operations are already stretched thin. Clearly this impacts refugee work in Thailand.
The Border Echo reported yesterday that Humanitarian programs along the Thai-Myanmar border are in a position to be stopped after US President Trump signed a signature that international development plans will be stopped.
According to the data from a Thai border based organization received by Border Echo, the US government funding programs include not only USAID but also US government gift monies, so the activities in/out of Myanmar need to be stopped.
U Htoo Chit, Director of Education and Development Foundation, told Border Echo that the orders issued by President Trump in Washington have affected many areas of the conflict, and these conditions are affecting the Thai-Myanmar border faster than expected.
Most of the US government’s gift monitored funds including US-funded USAID along the Thai-Myanmar border are mainly used for Myanmar refugees and war refugees, and displaced Myanmar citizens among the nine refugee camps that are arriving at the Thai border for various reasons, health, sanitation and social welfare of Myanmar refugees.
In addition, many ethnic health organizations rely mainly on U.S. government funding for cross-border health care and water cleanup operations in conflict-stricken areas where it is impossible to enter locally.
The halt of travel this week, which took refugee agencies by surprise, scuttled hopes of last-minute arrivals as fallout from Trump’s refugee shutdown began rippling across the country and the globe.
Trump has long portrayed the program, which has historically enjoyed bipartisan support and resettled more than 3 million refugees fleeing war, persecution and violence since 1980, as a security vulnerability and a strain on communities.
But supporters say refugees admitted under the program constitute some of the country’s most vetted immigrants, spending years going through security checks, medical exams and interviews before they’re resettled with the help of local agencies in cities across the country.
And we are still in the first two week’s of Trump’s four year presidency.
I feel very helpless