Many striking public sector workers are seeking employment abroad amid a prolonged economic crisis, but the junta is blocking them from leaving and even offering them their jobs back.
By FRONTIER
Ko Aung Linn*’s legs shook as he waited to board his flight out of Yangon. On handing over his documents, he prayed the immigration officer wouldn’t discover he had joined the Civil Disobedience Movement.
Minutes ticked by as the officer tapped on his computer and scanned the passport and national ID card presented by the 25-year-old former primary school teacher who, like hundreds of thousands of other public sector workers, went on strike to protest the 2021 military coup.
His prayers were in vain. The officer informed Aung Linn he was on the junta’s blacklist and he wouldn’t be leaving for Thailand that day. What’s more, Aung Linn had no travel permission letter from the Ministry of Education and hadn’t repaid his COVID-19 loan, issued to civil servants by the elected National League for Democracy government in 2020 before it was overthrown.
“I had nothing to show them. The officer told me I would be detained for some days and interrogated. I was terrified,” Aung Linn recalled.
From Yangon International Airport, the young man was taken to the nearby Mingaladon Air Force Base, where officers took his phone and questioned him about his background. For many, interrogation at the hands of the Myanmar military means torture, sexual abuse, a lengthy prison term or even death. But Aung Linn was luckier.
“I had cleaned all data from my phone and my social media accounts. They didn’t find anything suspicious, so I wasn’t subjected to a difficult interrogation,” he said. “They allowed me to use an officer’s phone to ask my wife to go to the township education department to repay my COVID-19 loan and I was released after four days.”
A ‘feast’ for corrupt officials
But fortunate as he was to emerge unscathed, the former teacher was just at the beginning of a bureaucratic journey filled with corruption.
To get his passport back, Aung Linn was told the Ministry of Education in the capital Nay Pyi Taw must accept his resignation and remove him from the travel blacklist. For this to happen, he would have to pay huge sums to staff within the Department of Basic Education acting as brokers, who can appeal his case to the department’s director-general.
“It’s like a feast for them,.” Aung Linn said of the brokers, claiming he knows some CDM workers who had paid them K5-10 million (US$2,400 to $4,800).
But Aung Linn doesn’t have that kind of money. He had already spent close to K10 million on courses and agents’ fees to qualify as a seaman to work for a foreign shipping line, before he was blocked from leaving Myanmar.
“Now I have lost my money and the prospect of a job, and I’m stuck in this country and have to pay back my loans,” he said, adding that he has gone to work on his parents’ farm in Ayeyarwady Region for now.
Others have paid those bribes only to come up empty-handed anyway.
Dr Thazin Htoo*, a CDM member who worked at North Okkalapa General Hospital in Yangon before the coup, asked a broker in the Ayeyarwady capital Pathein to get her a passport so she could fulfil her dream of studying abroad. The broker demanded K550,000 with no guarantee of success.
“Some of my friends who joined the CDM got passports about six months ago, so I tried too,” she said. “The Pathein passport office told us to wait two weeks. A month went by and the broker couldn’t get it. So I went back and the office told me I was refused because I’m in the CDM.”
A source in the immigration department in northern Shan State said the Union Civil Service Board is now more active in updating data on civil servants than immediately after the coup.
“The UCSB is building its database and sharing it with the immigration department and passport office,” said the source. “CDM people who are not yet on the UCSB list at the time they apply might get a passport, but then they could get unexpectedly blocked at airport immigration if they are added to the list in the meantime.”
“If you want to leave the country, just go through the border gates,” the source advised, referring to land crossings with Thailand, China and India.
Thousands of people, including many CDM workers, have passed through the Muse-Shweli border crossing with China’s Yunnan Province in Shan since it reopened on September 4 after closing in 2020 due to COVID-19.
Ko Thura*, a former worker in Mandalay Region’s social welfare department, told Frontier while waiting to cross that he had no job and heard he could earn K25,000 a day in China, well above the minimum wage in Myanmar, which was recently revised to K5,800.
“There are many CDM people like me trying to pass through the border gate to enter China. I don’t think they will find out that I joined the CDM because there are thousands of people to check,” he said.
While the regime announced on September 19 that border gates were also checking for CDM workers, the immigration source explained it was not possible to block everybody because of inadequate IT systems.
“Immigration officials just check a few people for show because thousands of people are crossing daily and they have just a few computers,” the source said.
But even if they do get through, migrants face many legal barriers to working in China. Most can only access a Temporary Border Pass, which just allows for short stays and doesn’t permit you to work.
Taking ‘dangerous’ illegal routes
With the regime tightening its grip and the economy in dire straits, CDM supporters are taking ever greater risks to leave the country. Dr Sitt Min Naing, a member of the CDM Medical Network, told Frontier that more and more people are taking illegal routes in search of work abroad.
“CDM people contact our group for help in leaving the country. Many are already working in Thailand illegally. We keep in contact and provide them with necessary help,” he said, adding that the military’s severe response demonstrates the success of the strike.
Some CDM workers are taking a longer and riskier overland journey to Malaysia, where wages are higher than in Thailand.
Ko Maung*, a CDM teacher from Bago Region, arrived in Kuala Lumpur via Thailand as an undocumented worker in May, paying a people smuggler about K4.5 million.
“I had to take a boat, bus and trucks for three days. I walked for hours through forests. It was scary. Women should not take the illegal route into Malaysia with so many risks,” he said. “Even for men it’s really dangerous.”
Even after paying high smuggling fees, many end up in detention. Thai police regularly make mass arrests of Myanmar nationals being smuggled to Malaysia.
“Thirteen people, including my CDM acquaintances, were arrested in a truck going to Malaysia in August,” said Ko Maung. “All are now in jail in Thailand. I narrowly escaped arrest on my trip.”
He now earns about 1,500 ringgit ($320) a month doing manual labour, loading household goods at a shop in Kuala Lumpur.
“It’s more tiring than being a teacher. But if I was still teaching under the junta, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night out of guilt, knowing that our children were being killed by the regime that I was working for,” he said.
Scammers are also circling vulnerable CDM members like vultures.
CDM teacher Ko Kaung Myat* lost K2.6 million to a scam in Bago’s Htantabin Township. A “broker” opened what he called a training centre at his house in the township to send workers to a nursing home in Singapore. More than 200 people, including many CDM workers like Kaung Myat, signed up.
“I sold my motorbike to pay for the course and agent’s fee. He gave us certificates and we went to Yangon for passports and waited there to leave,” he said. They were waiting for the nursing home to issue them with job offers, “but months went by and there was no news”.
After six months Kaung Myat had to accept it was a lie, but given his precarious legal position as a dissident government worker on strike, he had no recourse.
“Other trainees went to court to sue him. But we CDM people didn’t dare complain. So, we lost our money. I’m not sure if other trainees got their money back, but I heard that a man went to jail,” he said.
Undeterred, Kaung Myat eventually made it to Malaysia via Thailand, where he works without documents. But he learned his lesson, and only paid the smugglers the K5 million fee after arriving.
‘Left to fight their own battles’
Facing danger and hardship both at home and abroad, some CDM workers say they feel helpless and bemoan a lack of support from other revolutionaries. CDM nurse Ma Pa Pa* now works in a factory outside Bangkok, where she said her boss subjects her to verbal sexual harassment.
“I’m not okay. My boss harasses me, so I want to move to another factory. I approached Myanmar people who are active in the revolution on social media. But no one wants to help. They just told me to hang on. People support the revolution just for show but ignore the actual CDM people who need help,” she said.
The parallel National Unity Government, appointed by elected lawmakers ousted by the coup, has pledged to financially support CDM workers, but resources are stretched by the resistance war.
Ko Naung Cho, a central executive member of the Basic Education General Strike Committee, criticised the NUG and the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw – the former’s legislative counterpart – for not doing enough to help the CDM.
“They just issue statements like the CRPH will repay the lost salaries of CDM workers in one lump sum. Statements don’t help CDM workers on the ground, so they are left to fight their own battles just to get enough to eat,” he said.
Daw Ei Ei Pyone, secretary of the CRPH’s Public Affairs Committee, admitted they were struggling to assist the CDM but explained that donations from the public were waning in favour of the armed struggle.
“When CDM people ask for help in an emergency, we feel very sad if we can’t provide it. We haven’t forgotten them and always try to fulfil CDM requests as much as we can. But the difference now is there’s less funding from members of the public because they have to meet all the country’s needs, like supporting People’s Defence Forces and helping displaced people,” she said.
But with no end in sight to Myanmar’s crisis and limited support, some CDM workers feel they have no choice but to return to government departments under the junta, which has opportunistically welcomed them back.
Daw Win Malar*, a teacher from Danubyu Township in Ayeyarwady, reapplied for her old position in May last year, when the township education department resumed hiring.
“We can’t return whenever we want; we have to wait until they call,” she said, explaining that 18 other CDM teachers also applied in her township.
They were interrogated for a day at the Maubin District education department, and while Win Malar said this was easy and painless, they then had to wait six months before starting work and were barred from promotion for two years.
“We all moved to new schools, rather than returning to our old ones. But that made me feel better, because I would have been uncomfortable going back to the school where I worked before the coup,” she said.
The health sector seems to be more welcoming.
Thazin Htoo, the CDM doctor from North Okkalapa hospital who now works at a private hospital in Yangon, said non-CDM members have been trying to persuade her to return to public hospitals or medical school.
“They offered to help me if I wanted to go back to work or resume my post-grad studies” to become a specialist surgeon, she said. “A CDM medical specialist where I work now is planning to return to her old job with the help of a professor.”
Sitt Min Naing of the CDM Medical Network said he understood that some people have no choice.
“Many returned by the end of last year but not a lot since then. If they have, it’s because they couldn’t refuse to. Some were arrested at checkpoints while going to work at private hospitals. Some were arrested because of informants and forced to re-enter,” he said.
But despite the many pressures, Thazin Htoo insists she won’t return to her government hospital until the junta is overthrown.
“I made a weighty decision and I don’t want to change it,” she said. “Although I am now held back in pursuing my dream career, I will stick with my decision until the end – even if there’s no private hospital left to hire me.”
* indicates the use of a pseudonym for security reasons
