Chiang Rai is a vision of paradise.
Tucked into the northernmost tip of Thailand, where the borders of neighboring countries Laos and Myanmar meet, the province is ruled by rolling hills and protruding mountains stretching for miles into the horizon of lush, dark green jungle.
Water buffaloes graze lazily in tall fields of grass that sway in the cool breeze sweeping down from the mountains.
Acres of rice paddies spread over the valleys in quilt-like patterns. Hunched workers dot the paddies, where thatched shelters sit on stilts plopped in muddy pools.
It is so quiet and peaceful in Chiang Rai that the chirps of birds and wind whistling through bamboo trees echo from the hills cresting below and the mountains rising overhead.
In a place of such enchanting natural beauty, visitors would have little reason to expect to find fear and suffering. But the anxiety is palpable.
The jungle farming villages are home to thousands of Hmong refugees originally from Laos who migrated to the province after camps sponsored by the United Nations elsewhere in Thailand closed in the 1990s.
It’s a world between two worlds — one a homeland in which the refugees are wanted enemies of the government, the other a temporary haven where they are illegal immigrants.
The people scratch out a subsistence living, weary of a life on the run and with only the slightest hope of living in the freedom and peace that 15,000 of their countrymen from Wat Tham Krabok are about to experience in America.
Yer Thao, 35, a mother of three, leads a somber existence in a small Chiang Rai village.
At night, her dreams take her back nearly three decades to when her family was hiding in the jungles of Laos fighting forces of the Pathet Lao communist government, which took over the country after the Vietnam War.
“I (was) about 6 then — a child,” Thao said. “But my father and brother were CIA soldiers and our family paid heavily for their roles. For nine years, the smell I came to know from running for our lives all those years was rotting flesh. That smell has never left my nose. When I sleep, I dream about the women who died in the jungles with their living babies still drinking their breast milk.”
On the move
As allies of the United States during the war, many Hmong fled to Thailand to escape genocide in Laos. The refugees, so-called Hmong-Lao, ended up in Thailand by following Gen. Vang Pao, a revered Hmong war leader who had recruited them to fight alongside the CIA in a secret war against the Pathet Lao.
Laos was a neutral country during the war, under the terms of the Geneva Conventions, and officially off limits to the Americans and Vietnamese. But it became a strategic location for both sides.
The North Vietnamese carved the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos to funnel supplies and soldiers to the Viet Cong in South Vietnam. The Americans recruited Hmong, a mountain people in Laos, to disrupt the trail and rescue American pilots shot down in the country.
When the war ended and the U.S. military left, the Pathet Lao turned on the Hmong because of their allegiance to the United States.
Vang Pao moved to the United States, and many Hmong-Lao followed him in the first major immigration. But just as many stayed behind. Some feared what a life in America would bring. Others hoped democracy would return to Laos, permitting them to go home.
Chiang Rai, dotted with Hmong-Thai villages, received many of these Hmong-Lao.
Others went to the U.N. camps. But without financial support, the camps eventually closed, leaving the Hmong to face forced repatriation to Laos. In response, many fled.
About 30,000 sought shelter from a welcoming monk at Wat Tham Krabok, a Buddhist temple in central Thailand.
Now the Thai government is preparing to close Wat Tham Krabok, the last of the refugee villages. The U.S. government is accepting residents who registered there, and some already have joined relatives in states such as California, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
OLD VS. NEW HMONG
The Hmong-Lao’s status as traitors in the eyes of the Lao government and as illegal immigrants to Thai officials has opened the door to discrimination, particularly financial abuse.
Choua Pao Lee, a Hmong-Thai who lobbies for the rights of Hmong-Lao in Chiang Rai Province, said Hmong-Thai often scam the Hmong-Lao out of thousands of dollars with false promises of obtaining Thai citizenship. The Hmong-Lao also are overcharged for land rented to grow food or build a home, and they often receive less money for their crops than Thai and Hmong-Thai.
“I’ve tried hard to help them get the same rights as the Hmong-Thai from the government,” Lee said. “But there are many Hmong-Thai who are benefiting too much financially from this situation to allow the Hmong-Lao equal rights. They don’t hesitate to tell the government lies about the Hmong-Lao to make sure that this situation remains as it is.”
The social divisions are evident in Chiang Rai, where the Hmong-Lao are called “new Hmong” and the Hmong-Thai who have raised generations of family in Thailand are called “old Hmong.”
Youa Pao Xiong, 55, is a new Hmong who fled to a Hmong-Thai village in Chiang Rai after the refugee camps closed. He said seven stitches in his forehead are from a beating at his village leader’s home, to remind him of “who’s really in charge.”
Xiong’s trouble began last spring. He said he bought land from an old Hmong. But another old Hmong turned up, claimed the land, and demanded payment. Xiong was forced to fork it over.
A third old Hmong then showed up and claimed the land, but Xiong refused to pay.
The village leader then invited Xiong to his house where he was beaten. The beating was reported to Thai police, who fined the leader 3,000 baht, or about $75. The leader, however, then fined Xiong 3,500 baht, or about $87.50.
“Things like that happen a lot up here to the new Hmong,” Xiong said. “But the old Hmong know they can do whatever they want to us new Hmong because, for one, we have no rights living in this country and, two, we are wanted people and they will threaten to turn us over to our enemies.’”
MISSING OUT
Chiang Rai has become the province with the most Hmong-Lao in Thailand. In the past several years, many Wat Tham Krabok refugees went there in search of farm work or to rent cropland.
Some who left Wat Tham Krabok unknowingly missed out on a chance to go to America.
Blia Xiong, 27, and her husband, Hue Lor, 28, said they never would have left the camp if they’d known there was a chance to resettle.
The couple moved two years ago to Chiang Rai after a decade at Wat Tham Krabok. Blia Xiong said they had no choice but to find work outside the camp to earn money for land to grow food for their children and parents. Four of their children live with them and they left a young son behind with grandparents at the camp.
At Chiang Rai, the family’s existence remains meager.
Blia Xiong and Hue Lor have labored in fields digging up ginger or picking corn on steep hillsides to sell. But they have yet to earn enough money to rent their own land.
Blia Xiong said it would take six to 10 acres to grow enough rice for a year’s feeding. Renting 10 acres would cost 8,000 baht, or about $200.
Because Blia Xiong is Hmong-Lao, the cabbages she picks sell only for 1.5 baht, or 4 cents per pound, to Thai or Hmong-Thai people, who can resell them for 12 baht, or about 30 cents per pound.
In early July, Blia Xiong decided to open a shop selling papaya salad and noodle soup instead of doing fieldwork.
“I sell food for only 5 baht (about 12.5 cents),” Xiong said. “On a good day, I’ll make 100 baht ($2.50).”
Youa Pao Xiong, who also lives in Chiang Rai, feels he has little choice but to continue living amid the Hmong-Thai. He fought in Laos for the CIA beginning at age 16 and fears for his life.
Youa Pao Xiong said that when he heard the United States was registering only Hmong refugees from Wat Tham Krabok to go to United States, he cried.
“We Hmong-Lao who are living outside of Wat Tham Krabok have had no easier of a life,” he said. “I want to remind the Americans to remember that we were their allies. We still are; that’s why we’re suffering through this rather than give up.”
