Clandestine Research by Palaung Women in Burma: Innovations in Collecting Information

I recently returned from eight months spent on the Thai-Burma border where I was lucky enough to meet, learn from, and come to call some of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met my friends. When I recently heard how the women of one ethnic group, the Palaung, had risked their lives conducting clandestine research into the bustling opium trade the government is backing, the feminist (and geek) in me wanted to jump a plane back to Thailand to give my friends at the Palaung Women’s Organization (PWO) a high five.

Burma is a country rich with ethnic diversity. It is home to more than 130 different ethnic groups and subgroups. Diverse in their unique customs and traditions, they all have one thing in common: they are being repressed by a military controlled government.

Calling themselves the State Peace and Democracy Council (SPDC), the junta government has unilaterally controlled the country since 1989, though the Burma has been under the rule of a military regime since 1962. The SPDC regularly commits mass human rights abuses against its people including forced labor, forced displacement, rape, targeted food insecurity and even extrajudicial executions. Approximately three million people have fled their homes, many seeking refuge in neighboring countries while the rest continue to struggle in their homeland. With extremely limited access to healthcare, and oftentimes without shelter, these people in the ethnic regions of the country struggle for their lives in the harshest of conditions.

Burma also happens to be the largest producer of opiates in Southeast Asia. According to Altsean-Burma the country accounted for 21% of the world’s production in 2005. The majority of the opium grown in Burma comes from Shan State, located in the northeast of Burma and bordering China, Laos and Thailand.

Shan State is also home to the Palaung people. Palaung culture centers on their history of tea cultivation, which has served as their livelihood for hundreds of years. My favorite part of any celebration was always seeing the Palaung women dance. Their unison movements depict picking tea leaves and collecting them in invisible baskets worn around their waists. It is equal parts beautiful, mesmerizing, and unassuming.

In the tough times the Paluang women are currently facing, their peaceful nature may just be the trump card they need. The Palaung Women’s Organization recently released “Poisoned Hills: Opium cultivation surges under government control i...,” a report that outlines research they gathered from 2007 to 2009 right under the noses of the SPDC.

As it turns out, contrary to what has been reported by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), opiate growth is not solely taking place in areas controlled by rebel groups and ceasefire zones of Shan State. Rather, in the past few years production has increased fivefold in areas controlled by the SPDC.

“Between 2007-2009, PWO conducted field surveys in Namkham and Mantong townships, and found that the total area of opium cultivated increased almost fivefold over three years from 964 hectares in the 2006-7 season to 4,545 hectares in the 2008-9 season. Namkham and Mantong are both fully under the control of the SPDC.”

The PWO found that efforts the government has been expending to curb drug production have been undermined by local authorities which in turn allow the drug trade to flourish. Local authorities, under the veil of “anti-drug teams,” have extorted over $37,000 US in bribes to allow farmers to continue growing opium.

“PWO data shows that the “anti-drug teams” are leaving the majority of opium fields intact, and are filing false eradication data to the police headquarters. PWO found that only 11% of the poppy fields during the 2008-9 season had been destroyed, mostly only in easily visible places.”

Unchecked opiate production in tandem with poverty and human rights abuses is certainly not a unique; one only need look to Afghanistan to see the devastating effects this lethal combination has on a population. The PWO report that similar conditions are rising in the Northeast of Burma. In one village surveyed, they found that opium addiction in men over age 15 had increased by 49% from 2007 to 2009.

The effects have been devastating on the people, but as the PWO points out, it is often women who bear the lion share of the burden.

“Already suffering from severe gender discrimination, Palaung women face multiple hardships when their husbands become addicted. Husbands not only stop providing for their families, but sell off property and possessions, go into debt, commit theft and deal in drugs to pay for their addiction. Subjected to verbal and physical abuse from their husbands, wives must struggle to bear the entire burden of supporting and caring for up to 10 or 11 children in villages with scarce access to health and education services.”

As a part of the international community, I want to support the PWO by keeping abreast of this issue, telling others about it, and advocating for regime change in Burma.

However, maybe an even more important lesson I’m taking from this story comes from the Palaung women themselves. The odds were against them: they hold a marginalized position in society, often suffer abuse from their husbands, and face a horrible lack of access to healthcare. But they banned together, used their seemingly unassuming position as a weapon, and produced a body of findings that challenge not only their repressive government, but also the UN and the international community. I'm awestruck by their courage.

I wonder how many other ways we, as social innovators thinking on a global scale, can use opportunities oftentimes inherent in oppression to our advantage.