Htoo Chit

By establishing a national model for migrant community development, Htoo Chit is increasing the visibility of the once-hidden Burmese community in Thailand. He is changing the attitudes of Thai communities and empowering a new generation of migrants by offering them a range of opportunities long denied by existing institutions.

Htoo bridges the gap between local citizens and Burmese migrant communities in Thailand, where migrant populations have long lacked access to the social services, human rights, and economic opportunities afforded their Thai neighbors. Rather than wait for such benefits to trickle down from above, Htoo teaches Burmese migrant communities to become more self-reliant. Along with a trained staff recruited entirely from the Burmese migrant community, Htoo and his organization, Grassroots Human Rights Education and Development committee (HREDC), builds the organizational and management capacity necessary to instill effective community leadership. The result is a system in which Burmese migrants are empowered to lead better lives while in Thailand, and are better prepared to make an impact in their home country should conditions improve to allow their return.

Htoo also works with relevant Thai authorities and institutions to gain access to schooling, health education, and decent work opportunities. He has reached out to local and provincial government leaders, independent bodies, and the media, and is working to institutionalize Grassroots HREDC within the Thai social sector. Through this process, Htoo is creating an effective legal platform to bridge the existing divide between the Thai and Burmese communities, while also pushing for greater visibility for migrants at the policy level.

Htoo focuses on provinces with high migrant populations, first strengthening their visibility and then providing individuals with social services long denied under current Thai law. As the first registered foundation in Thailand conceived by and for Burmese nationals, it has the potential to serve as an umbrella organization to link the work of other non-registered Burmese organizations throughout the country.

Thailand’s long border with the politically tumultuous, socially repressive, and economically disadvantaged Burma, and its relative prosperity among Burma’s neighbors, means that Thailand receives the majority of Burma’s migrants. However, Thai society has erected a number of barriers which migrants must face when they enter Thailand.

Few Burmese migrants are able to enter with official documentation, forcing most to form underground communities that exist with no social protection or legal legitimacy under the constant threat of forced repatriation. This lack of visibility means that demographic data is scarce; however, estimates place the number of Burmese migrants nationwide at over 2 million. The majority of these migrants are undocumented and as such, they forfeit all legal rights. However, even documented workers face discriminatory laws, varying by province, which can include curfews, bans on owning motorbikes, restrictions on movement and employment, and other controlling measures.

Migrant laborers find themselves shut out of certain industries due to control by local mafias or other forms of discrimination. Among those able to find work, often in fisheries, rubber plantations, and construction sites, are often denied basic labor rights. These least-desirable forms of work entail long hours, compromised safety, and low pay. With no protection under Thai law, workers are regularly denied pay, health benefits, and compensation for injury, and are often the victims of rape, robbery, assault, and other violent crimes. Living under the threat of deportation, workers have no bargaining power, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation.

In addition to labor rights violations, Burmese migrants—including their children born in Thailand—are excluded from basic social institutions. While Thailand’s 2006 Education Act theoretically guarantees the right to education for all—including to children of undocumented Burmese workers—language barriers, adjustment difficulties, and racial discrimination leave migrant at a comparative disadvantage to their Thai peers in the national education system. Migrants and their children are also denied access to the national health care system, leaving them vulnerable to disease and the constant threat of injury due to dangerous working conditions.

Further exacerbating these rights violations is a widespread negative perception of the Burmese migrant community by the general Thai population. The Thai media has a tendency to present coverage that is biased against the Burmese, frequently portraying migrants as thieves, rapists, murderers, and even purveyors of disease. Complicating this is a general ignorance on the part of the Thai community about the plight of the Burmese in their country; many do not understand why so many Burmese have come to the country and are not able to sympathize with their situation on a basic humanitarian level.

All of the above leads to poverty and dehumanizing living conditions for migrants; further undermining their ability to lead free and productive lives in Thailand. And, while many local and international citizen organizations (COs) have been working to address the issue of registration and citizenship, in addition to providing basic humanitarian assistance, these efforts are usually focused on Burmese refugees—those considered to be fleeing political persecution or forcibly evicted, unlike migrants, who are considered to be voluntary émigrés.

The numerous legal issues complicating the existence of migrant workers have left this hidden population with little external support. Political refugees living in camps along Thailand’s northern borders are able to draw some degree of media sympathy, while migrant workers are stigmatized. The migrant community is in great need of assistance, but to date, this assistance has not come from the outside.

With a lifetime spent fighting for the rights of the Burmese people both inside Burma and in Thailand as a political exile, Htoo has learned that if the Burmese are to succeed in their struggle for human rights, they must help themselves. Likewise, if the migrant population in Thailand is to make headway in its struggle for equity and basic rights, change must come from the grassroots level, with a network of linked communities organized to provide the needs they are being denied by existing systems and institutions.

In 2000, Htoo founded Grassroots HREDC in the Thai border province of Sangkhlaburi, with a mission to provide human rights education to the large population of Burmese migrant workers in the area. This effort began with information gathering: Documenting instances of rights abuses in the area to raise awareness and help migrants gain access to rights they already have under the system as a first step towards fighting for more.

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that devastated Thailand’s southern Andaman coast brought a new vulnerable community to light, and in the months that followed, Htoo brought Grassroots HREDC to Thailand’s southern Phang Nga province to assist Burmese survivors in the area. While the initial focus was to provide emergency relief, Htoo realized that a large migrant community in the province, estimated close to 100,000, was sorely in need of long-term development solutions that were not being provided by the community or provincial government.

Grassroots HREDC began by opening learning centers designed to bridge the gap that left large numbers of migrant children out of the Thai formal education system. Offering a standardized curriculum in Burmese, instruction in both Thai and English as well as math and history, the center quickly became a model and expanded throughout the province. Today, Grassroots HREDC’s expanding portfolio of learning centers now covers three of the eight subdistricts of Phang Nga and provides education to 700 migrant schoolchildren through 7th-grade. The centers have garnered the support of provincial education offices, which recognize their benefit in helping migrants integrate into the Thai formal education system. They have also attracted the interest of other migrant groups in Rayong and Surat Thani provinces, indicating the potential to scale nationally. As the learning center model spreads, visibility of this long-hidden vulnerable community increases and fosters greater acceptance by Thai authorities and villagers.

Grassroots HREDC’s programming has expanded to include provision of legal aid, temporary housing, vocational education for women’s groups, health education and human rights training, as well as assisting to foster a safe and lawful environment for Burmese migrant workers in the province. Grassroots HREDC’s local staff liaise with a network of employers in the fisheries, rubber and construction industries, and negotiates fair wages and work hours to ensure adequate housing and other basic needs are met. Community leaders have also formed relationships with local police to help support their efforts to achieve fair treatment of workers and safe living conditions. Grassroots HREDC is able to achieve this essential buy-in from local authorities and employers as they realize the direct benefits to them—police and employers both benefit from the greater stability that Grassroots HREDC is able to provide through its efforts to negotiate disputes within the migrant worker community.

Leveraging the media has also been key to Htoo’s strategy to raise the profile of the Burmese migrant community nationwide. He has developed close relationships with foreign and domestic journalists to document his organization’s work, and uses his connections with the media, COs, and UNICEF, to affiliate his communities with two high-profile media events, INSIGHT Out! and Saphan Jai (Bridge of Hearts). These events bring together over one hundred children aged eight to fifteen, including representatives from Thailand’s ethnic minority groups, southern Muslims and Burmese migrants. They train children in photography to capture their lifestyles, and bring these disparate communities together in a highly publicized exhibition and concert designed to break down the barriers between Thai and ethnic communities and encourage understanding of different cultures.

In addition to forming relationships with media and key local and provincial authorities, Htoo also knows the importance of institutionalizing his organization to expand nationally. Leveraging his growing network of high-profile supporters, in 2007, Htoo organized a group of nationally recognized academics and social activists into a board of directors and officially registered Grassroots HREDC as a Thai foundation. As the first Thai foundation created by and for the Burmese community in Thailand, this achievement is a key first step towards scaling Htoo’s community development model. Htoo is using his experience to mentor other Burmese CO leaders to register their organizations as he has done to create a network of grassroots Burmese COs all under Grassroots HREDC.

Htoo plans to open a Bangkok office for labor rights training, and is making headway in the northern Thai province of Tak. He will train senior members of his team in Phang Nga to serve as a core group of leaders who can instruct community leaders in management and leadership skills and ensure that the project expands.

Htoo was born in 1964 in a mining community in the Kayah (Kachin) State of northern Burma. A gifted athlete, he achieved local recognition as a player on the State’s volleyball team, while also studying towards a bachelor’s degree at Mandalay University via a distance learning program.

Htoo’s good relationship with the local military and recognition as a star athlete provided him with relatively unrestricted movement under the tightly controlled military government, and positioned him to lead an underground local opposition movement. In 1988, he organized a local protest as part of a nationwide series of demonstrations for the restoration of a democratic government, known as the ‘8888 Movement’. He was later placed under a six-month house arrest. As an additional consequence of his involvement, Htoo was denied a formal university degree by the military regime despite having completed five years of study.

Months after his release, Htoo crossed into Thailand to avoid persecution and to aid in the underground resistance movement. In Thailand, he was soon arrested and imprisoned for several months for illegal entry—an opportunity which Htoo used to learn and become fluent in Thai. After his forced return to Burma on release, he regrouped with other student activists involved in the underground resistance and was promoted to a key leadership position in the national movement. Facing the increasing threat of persecution, in 1994, he applied and received refugee status from the UNHCR and relocated to Thailand, where his Thai and Burmese language skills earned him a position as a translator at the UNHCR’s processing center in Bangkok.

In 1996, following the release of the leader of his underground movement in Thailand, Htoo left the UNHCR to return to the resistance movement in the jungles of Kanchanaburi. He served as one of seven members of an executive committee, in the role of community relations. However, after witnessing acts of violence between the Burmese resistance and the Thai community, he became disillusioned and left the movement permanently. He felt that the best path for the Burmese in Thailand would be to learn to treat each other with dignity and respect. He formed Grassroots HREDC in 2000 to educate Burmese migrants living in Thailand about democratic values, human rights, and how to live in peace with their Thai neighbors.

In 2002 Htoo received international recognition when he organized victims of forced labor in a lawsuit against gas pipeline developers Unocal and Total. He was granted refugee status in France, which enabled him to stay in the country to serve as a spokesperson for the plaintiffs during the duration of the trial and helped them earn subsequent compensation. In France, he made contacts with a number of organizations and individuals interested in human rights—contacts who support his organization to this day.