Maigan

Ka Lajang Ai: Du Re

Mungkan hta masha marai hkum shagu gaw galu kaba mayu ai hkrai rai nga ai. Dai majaw shani shagu madu a asak hkrung lam hta shakut sha ja let hkawm sa ai ni hkrai rai nga ga ai. Dai ni na ten, Malaysia Mungdan de n’tsa lam , lawu lam hku du sa wa ai anhte Jinghpaw Wunpawng myu sha ni, lani hte lani ram ram law wa nga sai.

N’tsa lam hku na du sa wa ai ni gaw nau wa yak hkak jam jau ai lam n-nga ai. Rai ti mung n’pu lam hku sa wa ai ni gaw ram ram wa jam jau hkrum n-htawm, du wa ai rai nga ai. Num sha Ma ni gaw lawu lam hku sa wa na matu shim lam n-nga ai. Law malawng gaw hkrun lam hkan (agent) ni e, roi kau hkrum ai ni she law nga ai. Kahpu kanau ni hte mi rau rai ti mung Agent ni hpe hkrit ra ai hte hkrun lam hta hkrit ra ai hte rai madu a kajan kasha langai ngai hpe roi kau ai rai ti mung hpa matai htang n-mai rai nga ai.

Mabyin langai hta: “Ngai hkrai sha sa wa ai. Myen mung kaw mung galaw sha yak la ai majaw Malaysia de manang ni tsun yang grai galaw sha mai ai nga na, hkrun lam mung nchye ai sha Agent ni hte matut la nna, lawu lam hku na sa wa n-ngai. Thai hte Malaysia ga jarit kaw Agent ni gaw ngai hpe manam jarawp hta yup shangun ai. Ngai mung hkrun la hta grai pu ba mat na, yup gawk chying-hka zaw la na malap kau ai. Jahpawt daw kaw Myen ga shaga ai la mali ngai hpe n’gup pat na roi kau ma ai. Dai kaw na ngai Malaysia kaw du mat ai.”


N-dai zawn Ru yak jam jau hkam, Ja gumhpraw law law ma hkam hkra re du wa ai anhte Jinghpaw Wunpawng myusha ni wa, gara hku asak hkrung nga ga ai kun?

Ya dai ni na ten Malaysia Mungdan gaw anhte Jinghpaw wunpawng myu sha ni a (recruit) training sharin ai shara langai rai nga ai. Du wa ai ni kadai mung Myen mung hpaji kade chye ai wa, grai lu su ai wa mi rai rai bungli galaw sha ra ai gaw maren sha rai nga ai. Maigan de' du mat wa ai anhte Jinghpaw wunpawng myusha ni wa kade daram myu tsaw myit rawng nga sai kun?

Myu shayi sha ni hpe yu ga, Maigan la hpe she htang kaba Myit num she shang mat sai. Yawng hpe gaw n’tsun mayu ai. Maigan la nga ti mung (Foreigner) Shan hpraw la hpe tsun mayu ai nre. Hpa n-re ai Myen myu bawsang ni hpe tsun mayu ai. Myen hpe nju ai nga na Myen mung kaw na pru wa sai nga, ya gaw Myen la hte she bai sum tsaw tsaw, shara shagu kaw bai yup hkawm, Ma hkum ni byin, Ma bai shaprai rai, myu a n’li kaja gaw gara kaw na pru sa na ta?

“Moi gaw ngai hpe la na nga na ya gaw shi mung Myen mung de bai wa mat sai. Bai sa wa na nga gaw tsun ai rai ti mung ya du hkra ndu wa ai. Ya Ma shangai ten gaw du wa, shangai na gumhpraw mung n-lu ai”. N-dai zawn n-pawt n-dung n-nga ai myu sha ni hte sumtsaw tsaw hkrup ai.

Myen la hte anhte Jinghpaw la sha ni shai ai lam gaw Malaysia du ai na sai, n-na ai rai nga ai. Myen la ni gaw Malaysia du na Malay ga hpe mung grai chye shaga rai, Jinghpaw num sha ni hpe bungli ni tam ya masu, Nga shara ni tam ya, bungli offday lu yang woi wam, rai amyu myu garum masu na hpang jahtum gaw Ma kumhpa bai jaw da rai jam jau ai myu shayi sha ni mung law law nga ai. Nang Myen la hte sum tsaw tsaw ai ngu tsun yang Jinghpaw la kaja gara kaw nga sa ta nga chye tsun ai. Jinhpaw la ni gaw Tsa , Kani, Chyaru chyu lu bungli mung n’kam galaw nga bai tsun , Jinghpaw la kasha ni hpe bungli galaw shakut mayu wa hkra lakawn na n’gun jaw na gaw shayi sha ni a lit mung rai nga ai.

Bai la kasha ni hpe bai yu ga! nga yang mung, bungli lu yak ai hta bungli bai lata chyai taw. Bungli lu sai nga yang mung shata shabrai n-law ai bai nga, madu gaw grai ram sai kun ngu yang, grai ram ai gaw bai n-rai rai nga ai. Ja gumhpraw tam ai lam hta mung, num sha ni gaw la kasha ni hta grau shakut, La kasha law malawng gaw shara htawt ai langai sha rai nga ai.

Moi myen mung kaw nga ai shaloi na hte maren, Maigan du sai nga na gawng mat, shakut na myit gaw n-rawng, shata htum shata shabrai lu yang manang ni hte Tsa seng kaw dung na shata mi ting n-lu n-sha tam da ai gumhpraw lana mi hte sha Tsa mari lu kau rai nga ai. N-kau kanu kawa ni madu a kasha hpe Maigan de dat dat yang shi a arawn alai mi galai mat kun? Nga grai myit mada let dat dat, ndai kaw grau Myen mung hta na, nang hpam malu masha gaw hkum ai hte kanu kawa hte tsan sai majaw kam ai hku wanglu wang lang Kani, Tsa chyaru hpe lu sha nga sai.

Jinghpaw la kasha ni hpe num kasha ni tsaw ra wa na matu gaw anhte la kasha ni ram ram wa tsaw ra myit chye madun ra nga ai. Laga Maigan la kasha ni hte anhte jinghpaw la kasha ni shai ai lam gaw tsaw ra myit n-chye madun ai lam re. Ga shadawn, Myen la langai gaw Jinghpaw num kasha hpe ra sai nga yang shawng ningnan bungli shawng tam ya, dai hpang off day hkan shopping ni woi hkawm, shana hkan bungli na wa yang sa tau, sa sa rai aten ahkying grai jaw let hkwi hkalem la nga ai. Dai tsaw ra myit gaw jahkring sha rai nga ai. Hpang gaw num sha wa she bai bau ra ai mung grai law nga ai.

Dai majaw dai ni na ten Malaysia Mungdan hta du nga sai myu sha ni yawng myu tsaw myit rawng wa na matu gaw nang ngai yawng a lit rai nga mali ai.

What A Terrible Event ?

Source: http://fiftyrefugees.wordpress.com/

Awng Seng’s (not his real name) story is not something that is easy to listen to. Running away from the military in Myanmar when he was only 21, he was sold to a fishing boat in Thailand, where for 2 years he was a slave, watching others like him being murdered in cold blood.

I have heard stories of men being sold to fishing boats before, but I have never heard anything in detail, and this story left me numb.

“The agent told us that work in Malaysia was difficult, so he offered me work on a Thai fishing boat, telling me that it was only going to be for around 2-3 months, and that they would pay me 3,000 Bhat a month. Trusting him, I accepted“.

Being a farmer, he had never worked on a boat before, so it was difficult for him to adapt to the sea. He didn’t speak the language as well, so that made it even more difficult.

“They beat me every time I made a mistake. They beat me with their hands and feet. They beat me with metal bars, about this size and this size…” showing that it was the length of his hand, and then his arm. “They would throw pieces of chain at me”, he said. Sometimes there would be blood all over”.

“There were 5 of us slaves - two others from Thailand and another three from Cambodia.They killed 3 of us. They killed the first person about a month after we set out to sea. This guy had bought some whiskey at the port, and when he ran out of alcohol, he couldn’t work as hard. They were really angry. So they took him to the front of the boat and beat him every day. He was very afraid. One day, after beating him up, they threw him overboard.But he could swim a bit, so he swam back to the ship. They called to him. “Come, come” they said. So he swam back, but when he tried to board the ship, they beat him with spades, so he fell down into the water. Again he swam and he tried to climb up, but this time they beat him with hooks. There was blood all over. He fell back into the sea and was unconscious for about 15 minutes, just floating. The third time, he swam back but dare not climb up, so he was just clinging to the fishing net by the side of the boat. This was when one of them climbed down and stabbed him in the throat with a small knife“.

“They killed his friend too. He was a bit older than us and I think he couldn’t work as hard as they wanted him too. They called him, and when he went, they told him that this would happen to him if he didn’t work hard. When he looked over the edge of the boat to see what happend to his friend, they struck the back of his head with an axe. He fell into the sea, dead“.
“I was so afraid. I thought I would be killed like them. I thought I would die“.

Awng Seng would work hauling up the fish, and then seperating them into different baskets. The work was non-stop, 24 hours. “We would work for about 4 hours each time the net came up, and then we would be able to rest for 2-3 hours until the net came up again, and it would be like that over and over and over. Twice a month, a supply ship would come by and we would unload the fish and load up supplies and ice. When ice came, we would work all night to break it up into small pieces”.

“They killed the 3rd person when we were sorting fish one day, about 2 to 3 months later.They called this person and told him to jump into the sea and swim. This guy couldn’t swim, so they told him that they would tie a string around his waist and pull him up if he sank. We all smiled. We thought it was a joke. We thought they were teasing him. But later, we found his dead body tied to a rope by the side of the boat. Every time a wave came his body would lift out of the water and then it would come crashing down again. I think he died like this“.

What was the worst thing that happened during this time, I asked, fully expecting him to tell further stories of torture and abuse. But he didn’t. “The worst thing was that they did not value us as humans. Our lives meant nothing to them. We could fight, and they would let us kill each other, but if we dropped a fish during the fight, they would beat us for that“. In other words, their lives were valued less than the fish.

To Awng Seng, then, there was no hope. No future. “There would be only ocean as far as the eye can see during the day, and only stars at night“. They would be no escape. At 21, he was, in his own words, just “waiting for death to come“. “We never came back to land.Even if there was a problem with the boat, the supply ship would come to fix it. We never saw land. In the supply boat, there were others like me, and they have been slaves for 6, 8 years. All I could do was pray to God for help”.

It seems, one day, God answered his prayers. Almost 2 years later, the engine broke down so completely that the supply ship couldn’t fix it, so they towed the boat back to port. “I could speak a little bit of Thai by then, so they gave me some money and asked me to buy them some cigarettes. I didn’t. I went to a phone booth and I called my friend in Kuala Lumpur. I remembered his number. I never forgot it. It was in my head all the time. I told him everything that happened to me. I asked him to help me. My friend then called an agent at the port. After about an hour, he came to pick me up and took me to his house. The next day, he put me in the boot of a car and crossed over into Malaysia where the agent put me on a bus to Kuala Lumpur. My friend was waiting for me at the bus stop and found me work at the coffee shop he was working at“.

Awng Seng is one of the lucky ones. He still works at this coffee shop serving rice and stays with his friend in a small room rented by the shop owner. He gets two days off a month, and works from 6 in the morning to 2.30 in the afternoon. Every day, after work, he goes straight back to his room. After getting into a few run-ins with the police, he dare not go anywhere else. Awng Seng hopes one day to be registered with the UNHCR, but worries that they won’t believe him, as his scars are slowly fading. I asked him what his plans are for the future. He told me that he wanted to study English and computer. “I only went to school until standard 6 (12 years old) but I stopped because we didn’t have enough money back then. I had to work in my field planting corn and hill rice.But I never once failed in my exams“.

Why English and computers, I asked? “Computers because it seems everything is computerised now, and English because all the books are in English, so I want to learn English because I want to study all the books“.

“I want to be successful one day“, Awng Seng says. What does success mean to you, I ask? Awng Seng stays silent for a while, thinking. “There are two aspects to being successful”, he says. “One is education, and the other one is finance. With money, I can help others get education, so they too can be successful“.

Asked if he missed anything in Myanmar, he told me that he misses his mother very much. “Especially when I get sick, because then there is nobody to take care of me“. It struck me then, that even through he went through hell and survived, Awng Seng is still alone, still young, and still some mother’s little boy.