This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.
When Zin Myo Yu paid to be smuggled through Myanmar’s Mon state into Thailand for a lucrative factory job, she was painfully aware of the risks.
“People don’t really have any money, so if you get cheated, that’s it, it’s all gone, it’s only trouble from there on out,” she said.
A young woman, Zin Myo Yu paid 20,000 Thai baht (US$590) for her journey, sleeping on the road for days before arriving safely over the Thai border and settling nearby.
But as difficult and dangerous as her experience was, she knows that for others, it’s much worse.
“Before, police just used to open up all the cars’ bundles and crates,” she said of the Thai authorities at roadside checkpoints inspecting vehicles for people trying to slip in.
“If they find you, they deport you. Now, they are checking trucks by stabbing them with sharp metal rods,” she said, describing how sometimes as many as six people squeeze into barrels that are loaded onto the backs of trucks for smuggling.
“If your truck is inspected, you could be accidentally stabbed. Oh my God, I can’t even imagine it.”
Remote crossings raise risks
People from Myanmar have been seeking new lives in Thailand for generations, but a 2021 military coup, and the crackdown on pro-democracy protests and civil war that followed, has led to a new exodus despite efforts by Myanmar’s junta and Thai authorities to stop it.
No one knows how many people from military-ruled Myanmar slip over the 2,400 kilometer (1,500 miles) border into Thailand to escape war, conscription and a collapsing economy, but it is at least in the hundreds of thousands, labor and rights activists say.
Now, with the Myanmar military’s increased travel restrictions for young people going abroad, closed border checkpoints and stricter migrant labor processes, many more are opting for remote border crossings, far from the jurisdiction of both the Myanmar and Thai authorities.
Vast swathes of mountainous jungle along Myanmar’s eastern Mon and Kayin states mean people can find their way into western Thai border provinces unseen.
It has come with a heavy and often hidden price.
Accidents, whether people travel by boat, car or on foot, are all too common, as are exploitation, crime and disease, which usually go unreported and ignored by authorities, volunteers who are tracking these migrants told Radio Free Asia.
It can cost up to 30,000 Thai baht (USD$900), with some people even pawning their land or houses to pay.
But all too often it ends in disaster.
Deadly toll as smuggling rises
Kwanchai Teerasilp, a volunteer for the Kanchanaburi Rescue Foundation, a charity, works as a first responder mostly on the infamous Highway 323 that runs through the Thai province of Kanchanaburi.
The province occupies some 155 miles (250 kilometers) of the Thai-Myanmar border, boasting half a dozen national parks and hundreds of mountains – an increasingly popular terrain for migrants – with dangerous roads in between.
In his 30 years of working on the road, Kwanchai says “horrifying” accidents occur after truck drivers speed through the winding highway in order to dodge police patrols and slip past border checkpoints.
Brokers, who are paid by migrants to lead them through obscure forest paths and hide them in trucks to get into Thailand, are often at the crux of accidents.
In 2023, Kwanchai estimated at least 100 Myanmar migrants were killed in smuggling-related vehicle accidents in his district alone.
“Myanmar people usually cross into Thailand as a family. We sometimes find many killed or injured at the same time. In one case, five of them were decapitated in an accident,” he said.
“Last month, a boat sank in Khao Laem reservoir and six or seven migrants died. Their bodies surfaced one by one.”
And yet, the stream of jobseekers seems unlikely to slow.
“Human smuggling via Kanchanaburi province has doubled since the Myanmar junta staged the coup, and the conscription law announced this year fanned the flames yet again,” Kwanchai said.
Once migrants are in Thailand, it’s difficult to keep track of them, said Soe Lin Aung, an activist who works for another organization working on safe passage and tracking of migrants along the border.
Soe Lin Aung, who requested a pseudonym for safety reasons, cited two recent cases, one involving a man and the other a woman who arrived in Thailand and soon became unreachable.
“We can’t find out why they’re missing,” he said. “It’s a long way to reach their destination, and we can’t confirm how many people this happened to in the past.”
Another danger for migrants who trudge through forests for up to a month on the longest routes is resurgent mosquito-borne diseases like malaria.
Malaria in Kanchanaburi is at a decade high, health authorities say. The health ministry recorded 870 foreigners with malaria in just eight months this year, compared with 720 the year before. But those figures are believed to be just the tip of the iceberg.
The ministry did not specify the nationality of those cases, but a doctor who runs a clinic near the Three Pagodas Pass border crossing said the majority of his patients are Myanmar nationals, among whom malaria cases have risen. But he believes many people afflicted with the disease aren’t visiting doctors.
“I think it’s a big number. Maybe some treat it by just taking medicine themselves, buying some medicine from a shop,” said Dr. Sakda Netek.
Migrants surge south for safer passage
Despite the high death toll from accidents and other causes, Thai police denied that any migrant workers travel farther south than the border area.
“We don’t have any trouble. There are no migrant workers making it this far, it’s a long way from Sangkhlaburi,” said one officer in Kanchanaburi’s Sai Yok district, referring to a Thai border town.
Yet fighting this year between junta forces and insurgents in Myanmar’s Kayin state has pushed migrants away from the official crossing between the two countries south to Kanchanaburi and its network of unofficial routes, said Soe Lin Aung, the labor activist volunteer.
His group has helped organize an unofficial crossing point on a stretch of border controlled by insurgents on the Myanmar side.
“We opened this gate because of the migrant workers who have experienced different hardships,” he said. “Maybe their houses were burned down by junta troops, or their families have been broken up or destroyed.”
After documenting the people arriving, the checkpoint activists give them advice on safety.
“They are going to cross the border anyway, that’s why we’re helping them out and opening the gate.”
Once in Thailand, they must make their way more than 350 kilometers (220 miles) to hubs like Bangkok and the town of Samut Sakhon on the coast to find jobs in manufacturing, hospitality and fishing.
Soe Lin Aung said that in the past four months, nearly 60,000 people had arrived in Thailand through their single checkpoint. He and his group hope that by collecting data, they can bring a little order and safety to the chaotic flow of people.
“On the way, there are difficulties, especially for women, they can be kidnapped or raped by brokers. Brokers cheat and manipulate people,” he said. Brokers have also been known to abandon their group after car accidents for fear of legal repercussions.
He records the names, contact information and the brokers of every person who arrives. His group has been able to rescue more than 350 people from traffickers aiming to supply workers to the online scam gangs proliferating in Myanmar and Laos. He has also helped family members reconnect with their relatives in Thailand they’ve lost touch with, he said.
For Zin Myo Yu, the journey to Thailand was so fraught that at one point she was about to give up and head home. But then she thought the journey back would be just as difficult as the one forward, so she pressed on.
She’s glad she did. Her husband has a job in landscaping and construction and his boss is kind. Most importantly for Zin Myo Yu, her baby daughter, only a few weeks old, will grow up with full rights in Thailand.
“She was born here so she’s a Thai citizen. Of course, we’re not. But for her, it’s great. Here there are opportunities, there she can’t,” she said of her homeland. “She’s OK and I’m OK, so we’ll stay.”
