Her name is Suthisa; she does not have a last name
Suthisa is the name I gave to the baby girl born nine months ago. Her mother went into labour on the night I was the only one home, so, with my very poor driving skills and eyesight, I drove her to the hospital. When I finally got to the emergency room do
She arrived unceremoniously and expediently right after her mother got out of the car. Her entrance into the world happened without any assistance from anyone. When I asked the nurses who wheeled her out of a room in the emergency area if the baby was a boy or a girl, they admitted that they had forgotten to check because they were stunned at the speed and ease of her arrival, something that was not mentioned in their textbooks.
I was the first human being who saw her whole in the hospital’s nursery, as her mother was being treated by a doctor on a different floor. It was my first time. This little baby made me understand why everybody is nature’s wonder. The first and only thing that I said to her outside of the glass panel separating us, and while she had no way of understanding, was that I hoped she would grow up to be a good and decent human being, nothing more and nothing less. I gave her a nickname – “Nu Dee”, meaning a “good girl”.
The next thing she made me understand is how important it is to have a country we can call home.
The baby’s parents work at our house. Her father is from a larger subgroup of the Kachins; with the mother, it’s complicated.
“Ple” as in “Apple” – her anglicised name, belongs to a very small minority subgroup of Kachins in northern Myanmar, about 9-10 hours’ walk through jungles to the Thai border. She and the baby’s father had a wedding ceremony in his hometown, but there was no marriage license. She says she is not considered a citizen of Myanmar by the central government in Nay Pyi Daw, nor does she consider herself or want to be a Myanmar citizen. She says she grew up with the sounds of guns and bullets. Men from her hometown were taken by the Burmans – the majority ethnic group (making up two-thirds of the total population of Myanmar) – who used them as forced labour, with no monetary compensation. Most of the men never made it back home. From time to time, people in her hometown can trade with Burmans and other people from outside the area, but sometimes the town is closed off by the government and they have to buy and sell within their own impoverished region.
Children from Ple’s ethnic group, when they reach 13-14 years of age, usually leave home to find work in Thailand. They pay over Bt20,000 to agents who are one of their own. These agents meet them at the border, after the children walk for more than a week through thick jungles towards Mae Sot or Mae Sai. Some of the weaker ones are not able to endure the long and treacherous journey, and turn round and head back home. In former years, some would die trying to reach the Thai border. These children and their families try to come up with a down-payment of Bt10,000 to pay the job agents; the rest they pay when they start earning a meagre living in Thailand.
There are more than 135 minority groups and subgroups in Myanmar. Not only do these groups and subgroups detest the Burmans with a passion, they also generally do not like each other, and some look down on others. This is one of the major reasons why the central government and the military want to maintain a strong grip over these minorities. The most recent bloody fighting between Buddhists and Muslims illustrates the enormous degree of difficulty with which Nay Pyi Daw has to deal with as the country moves at a fast pace towards democracy and modernisation. The government will thus need to succeed with a fine and judicious balancing act if peace is to prevail and this vast land, rich in culture and resources, is to reach its full potential.
There is no magical one-size-fits-all formula for national reconciliation. In Thailand, we are still scrambling to find one that works both at the political level divided by colour-coded factiosn, and in the majority Malay-Muslim deep South. How successfully Nay Pyi Daw can make these minority groups and subgroups feel that they are all stakeholders in the development of the country, in spite of their ethnic diversity, will mean the difference between the country’s development triumph and defeat.
Meanwhile, Nu Dee is growing by the day. Soon she will have to go to school. At the hospital where she was born and where she is receiving her vaccinations and other treatments, they registered her as “Suthisa-without-a-last name”. She does not belong to any country, neither here nor there, neither fish nor fowl. What school in Thailand will take her in? What nationality will she have down the road? Where will she feel she belongs? This is a person in flesh and blood, a human being, not an inanimate object. This baby made me realise how fortunate I am to have a country I can call home, and a family whose name was my birthright from the moment I was born.
This baby reminds me every day that Suthisa-without-a-last-name, and the many thousands like her, is a not political question, but a humanitarian one.
