THAI TALES PART 2:THE SAGA OF THE KAREN LONG NECKS

Above: One of the 'long neck' women we saw near Chiang Mai.


We recently went back to Thailand with a friend, visiting Chiang Mai. There, we did a day trip to the Golden Triangle, a point where Thailand, Myanmar and Laos met, formerly notorious as the world’s leading supplier of heroin. Apart from seeing this area, the ‘highlight’ of the day trip was the visit to an ethnic village. The people here are refugees from Myanmar and are commonly known as the Karen ‘long necks’. If you think this may be a bit insensitive, you’re right. The story of these people is sad, with the conditions that they experience and live in little more than a zoo. Most of this tribe arrived from Myanmar (the Karen have long been fighting the Myanmar government) but the Thai government has left them in limbo. They are not free to become Thai citizens, nor  until recently eligible for resettlement in other countries. The Thai government allows them to stay in Thailand in camps which they rent from the Thai government. In order to pay this rent, the women have maintained the long neck tradition, which according to some sources, had been dying out. Foreign tourists like myself go to their village, paying a US $10 fee to visit the village, thus allowing the tribe to make a living. However, they are unable to leave as the Thai government recognizes the economic value of the ‘long necks’ appeal to tourists and the amount of revenue it provides. So the ‘long-neck’ people are caught in a cycle of wanting to leave but being unable to, of wanting to stop their body modifications but having to maintain it in order to survive. The Thai government has at least acknowledged that this cycle is damaging to the tribe and have allowed some of the ‘longnecks’ to emigrate to other countries, in particular New Zealand. However, many others are still trapped in this bizarre existence, slaves to the mighty dollar.  Hopefully, one day, these people will be able to live their life, with or without wearing the rings, without having to worry about the economic consequences of removing the rings. Its ironic that Thai means free as these people have been effectively been deprived of the freedom to choose how they live for several decades now.