Amidst the online tsunami of netflix movie suggestions, quarantine memes, 473 food photos per hour and restaurants endlessly proffering free home delivery, there has been nothing short of outrage online the last 48 hours in parts of Thailand's entitled (mostly white) expat community.
Why? Because not everyone HAS a place to #staythefuckhome in.
The Thai government declared 6pm Monday 23rd March as the deadline for the closure of all non essential business, in an attempt to control the surge of new #coronavirus cases. With everything from building sites to tattoo parlours, girlie bars and ALL dine-in restaurants closing down, the migrant workers simply had to leave. With land borders on 4 sides of the country closing indefinitely - Burma to the West and North, Cambodia in the East and Malaysia to the South - the push was on starting Saturday evening. Workers who were laid off on Saturday and stood down mostly received no severance pay; their working visas expire in 7 days, by law from the date of employment severance. No welfare system here or unemployment benefits - not for Thai people and most definitely not for migrant workers. No job means no money to eat or pay room rental (no matter how cheap the room). Not leaving? The overcrowded immigration detention facilities here are the stuff of living nightmares.
It left only one logical thing to do: migrant workers needed to cross the borders before closure and head back home to small villages and cities in poor, rural Asia. Where at least there is a family home, of sorts, and rice.
Saturday and Sunday the bus stations, trains and border crossings were SWAMPED. Overwhelmed
Eighty thousand people boarded buses heading out of Bangkok on Sunday. Mostly migrant workers rushed to bordering provinces aiming to go home to neighbouring countries before the Thai borders close. Source
The scene at the Mae Sot border with Burma, was "just a bit" more crowded than when we were there just 10 days ago.
As I sipped my coffee tying to grasp the physical ramifications of soooo many poorly nourished, desperate, largely unprotected people crammed together for hours in bus stations, immigration queues and buses, I found myself STUNNED at the entitled, mostly white, anger and judgement expressed:
"Smartness is not for sale evidently."
"...so instead, travel all over and cause death and pestilence everywhere."
"Because IQ is causally linked with income and living in a city is more expensive, people living in bigger cities tend to be smarter than those living far outside urban areas (other than farmers, who are the exception) So, yes, all the people who have lower than the average IQ of Bangkok who live there probably don't have a motorbike, car, can't rent one, and thus would use a bus and would not think of the risk of the crowded conditions associated with doing so."
"Keep your disease to yourself."
"Focus on the rich life and let the dying for the poor..."
Make no mistake - these migrant workers KNOW the risk. Some of them have been given masks by their employers, but they're hard to come by, and increasingly expensive. Overstay of the visa means black-listing (unable to return for up to 5 years) and horrendous immigration detention in heavily over-crowded facilities. Not to mention big fines and eventual deportation.
And so they did the only thing left to do. They headed for the borders, en masse.
Most definitely not socially distanced.
There is NO DOUBT in my mind that the heaviest burden of corona virus covid 19 will be borne in places like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Haiti, Venezuela, Brazil, The Philippines, Cambodia, Burma and Laos - where hospitals are so basic they are unlikely to have more than 1 ventilator, if they have one at all. Where ONE doctor might service an area covering 5 hours dive over rugged mountains. Where regular transport is virtually non existent. Where running water and adequate sanitation facilities are NOT the norm, and considered a luxury.
Yesterday I was fearful of what might occur along Thailand's borders in the coming weeks and months. This evening I saw it has already begun.
As you read this article over your coffee or as you laze in boredom on your sofa from your place of comfortable, quarantined privilege, I would ask you to pause. To consider the fast-fashion garments you wear and the human cost of them. To consider the plush toys in your children's bedrooms, your Asian made electronics, your shoes, your canned tuna and frozen prawns, your cheap Ikea homewares and a thousand other things - items that are made or processed by migrant workers and which carry a much heavier price than simply what you paid for it at the store.
It is profoundly painful to watch the dehumanization begin when privilege is threatened. Ironically, these same outraged people will be bleating many months from now when the shortage of construction labourers means their building renovations can't be completed, when there is a shortage of cleaners and factory workers and farm workers.
I can only invite you to consider more carefully what you buy, and to think about Fair Trade. I can only invite you to support businesses trying to beak this evil paradigm of stepping on the backs of migrant workers to create middle class comfort.
I'm left haunted by the lines from Joan Baez, carved into my memory from decades ago....
And the farmer on his tractor, and beside his plow
Will stand there in confusion as we wet his brow
With the tears of all the businessmen
Who see what they have done to him
And the weary farmers of the earth shall rest
And the aching workers of the world again shall sing
These words in mighty choruses to all will bring
"We shall no longer be the poor
For no one owns us anymore"
And the workers of the world again shall sing.
I pray Thailand's migrant workers return home safely, and that I'm horribly wrong about what their future holds.
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