Long road from Thai border back home to Myanmar 

Kyaw Htoo was just 12 years old when he left his impoverished family in Myanmar for Thailand.
The year was 1988. A military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters had left thousands dead or imprisoned, and universities closed.
Prompted by friends’ suggestions, he sneaked into a remote Thai border camp for refugees, hoping to gain asylum in a third country. But his dream of life in the West never came true.
Last year, only months after Myanmar returned to civilian rule for the first time in decades, the 41-year-old returned to his hometown in Thanbyuzayat, Mon state, that he had last seen as a boy. He had no job and about $750 in resettlement aid.
“My parents sometimes give me money for tea,” he says. 
He has returned to tapping rubber, hoping to save enough to start a business. “I have no friends... I don’t go out.”
It has been a bumpy road back for the 71 Myanmar asylum seekers who formed the first batch of Thai border camp residents voluntarily repatriated under a deal between the two countries.
While many have reached out to kin for help, some say red tape and prolonged job hunts have cooled their hopes for rapid change under the government led by the National League for Democracy (NLD).

Camp funds shrinking
Thailand currently hosts about 100,000 who have fled Myanmar since the mid-1980s to avoid junta oppression or being caught in the crossfire of the Myanmar military and armed ethnic groups.
Most identify as ethnic Karen and are housed in nine border camps in the northern provinces of Tak and Mae Hong Son, as well as Kanchanaburi and Ratchaburi in the west. The camps are largely funded by international aid, but the budget is shrinking in the face of more urgent humanitarian emergencies in countries such as Syria and Sudan.
Thailand, meanwhile, hopes to shut the camps down.
Under the pilot programme last October, each voluntary returnee received a Bt8,300 grant for resettlement from United Nations’ food and refugee agencies, plus a further 400,000 kyat (Bt10,000) from the Myanmar government and Red Cross. They were transported to their requested destinations within Myanmar, and left to build a new life after years of daily rations, education and healthcare within the camps.
Five months later, several admit that the homecoming has been harder than they thought. Securing jobs is an issue and so is integrating children who have known only life in a camp.

Expectations shattered
In Yangon, Thant Zin Maung, 48, who lived for over a decade in the isolated Nu Po camp in northern Thailand, says his expectations for rapid transformation in his country have been shattered. “I thought things had changed a lot in Yangon,” he says. “But from what I have seen, I now know that it will take a long time.”
Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD government marked its first year in power in March amid heavy criticism. While its sweeping win in the 2015 election sparked huge expectations, change has been incremental and blocked by a constitution that gives the military control over the Defence, Home and Border ministries, as well as a quarter of all parliamentary seats.
But it has also come under fire for keeping a tight lid on information and concentrating decision-making in the hands of a few.
Thant Zin Maung got a taste of red tape soon after his return when he asked a senior official for help to renew an expired driving licence. “Don’t worry, I can get it for you,” the official assured him. The licence finally arrived last week – four months after his initial request.
“It’s like there are two different governments here, one at the top and one at the bottom,” he says.

Former political prisoners
On the industrial outskirts of Yangon, 60-year-old Khin San Yee lives with her husband and son in a new government-built apartment. The former political prisoner secured the 10.2-million-kyat flat on a reduced down-payment thanks to pressure in the local media.
The flat is almost bare, with straw mats doubling as beds and sofas. A curtain divides the single room for her 31-year-old son, who has so far been able to get only casual construction work.
Elsewhere Khin San Yee, an NLD activist who lived for seven years in Nu Po to avoid military persecution, is optimistic about the future. “I want to support this new government,” she says, leafing through a stack of photographs of her younger self with Suu Kyi, now the nation’s de facto leader. “If the military had stayed in power, I would have stayed on in Nu Po.”
Upstairs in the same block lives four-year-old Zin Ko Win, who was born in Nu Po camp to political activist parents.
The quiet, watchful boy longs to return to the bamboo huts and dirt roads of his first home. “All my friends are in Nu Po,” he says.
According to Thailand’s Operations Centre for Displaced Persons (OCDP), which oversees the border camps, some 200 people are ready to return to Myanmar in the next round. No date has been set.

Distrust lingers
“Most of the people registered in the camp are preparing to go home,” Soramongkol Mangalasiri, assistant chief of the OCDP, explains. “But if they see Myanmar as unsafe, they are prepared to stay on in the camps.”
Sally Thompson, chief of the Border Consortium which coordinates aid in the camps, stresses that while more residents are now discussing whether to repatriate, “the movement to return has not picked up pace”. 
“It is static,” she says.
Distrust of the military still runs deep, given the powerful position it continues to hold in the NLD government. Meanwhile, access to medical facilities and schools – which were provided in the camps – remains patchy or non-existent in many parts of Myanmar.

Push comes to shove?
But deteriorating conditions in the camps may ultimately nudge dwellers over the border. Camp funding has been cut by 30 per cent in the last four years, resulting in reduction of food rations, says Thompson. Adults are now given 9kg of rice per month, compared with 16kg in the mid-1980s.
“We are on the threshold now as to how much further we can reduce rations,” she says. “We are at the minimum.”
As funds dwindle, camp residents may have less material to repair their homes, and fewer opportunities to learn new skills on site, says Thompson.
“It’s inevitable the camps will close,” says Thompson. “The question is, what will be the trigger? We hope that the situation inside Myanmar would be a pull factor to make people move back. “