Now You’re Speaking My Language: Ethnic Radio in Thailand

December 30, 2003—One day in late 2002, a Shan man in his mid-twenties picked up the phone and called a radio broadcaster. He told the broadcaster of his life in southern Shan State, Burma, an area dotted with numerous drug factories. He said easy access to methamphetamine pills led him and many of his friends to get hooked on the drugs. Thanks to your program, he told the radio host, he quit using drugs and moved to Thailand. Zai Awn, himself a Shan immigrant, took that phone call at his studio in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand. In 1999, Zai Awn began recording a Shan language radio program at the office of Images Asia, an NGO that produces documentary materials. Three days a week, Shan in Burma and Thailand can listen to Zai Awn’s broadcast about drug and environment issues in their native tongue. Migrant workers can also tune into a Shan language program dedicated to their specific health needs, produced by the staff at the Migrant Assistance Program (MAP), an NGO also based in Chiang Mai. The MAP office is also home to a Karen language program which provides information to people living inside refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border. The three shows appear as part of the ethnic language service on Radio Thailand, the country’s national broadcaster. The programs are aimed at ethnic minorities exiled from their homeland, many of whom are illiterate and struggle to speak Thai and Burmese. The broadcasts offer Shan and Karen an opportunity to receive information tailored to their needs, in their own language when it is needed most. For migrants with serious health or legal problems, such timeliness is vital. Plus, access to Shan and Karen language programs helps migrants and refugees overcome feelings of isolation and improves self-esteem, said Jackie Pollock, a MAP advisor. "The biggest impact is morale," she said. "People feel very supported to have programs in their native language." The Shan language program at MAP began in 1996. Its ten minute spots can be heard on Radio Thailand five days a week. Taped broadcasts are relayed by a Thai army station in Chiang Rai, and three community stations near the Burmese border in the towns of Pai, Mae Hong Son and Fang. The ethnic Karen team at MAP, which started its show in 1998, is granted ten to 15 minutes a day for their spots. Zai Awn’s program is available on Radio Thailand three days a week, for five to ten minutes. The audience for the ethnic language programs stretches from China’s Yunnan Province to the southernmost reaches of Thailand. Radio Thailand’s mission is to reach out to ethnic people in Thailand, but the shows produced by the Chiang Mai NGOs target Burmese as well. "My main target is Shan people and other ethnic minority groups inside Burma who can understand Shan language," said Zai Awn. The MAP office receives letters from people living in Shan State as well as Shan listeners in Thai prisons, said Nang Hseng Oo, one of the broadcasters. How many people listen to the shows is difficult to say, since the primary audience is comprised of itinerant migrant workers and refugees, as well as ethnic residents of northern Thailand and Shan State. Refugee organizations estimate that at least 150,000 Shan live in Thailand. Saengmuang Maungkorn, a Thai Shan descended from Burmese parents, left his job as a construction consultant to join MAP’s foray into radio. Travelling around work sites in Thailand’s north, he had regularly met Shan migrants who couldn’t get legal and health information because they didn’t understand Thai. Today, he still travels to construction projects near the MAP office, surveying listeners about past programs and fielding requests for future spots. Before writing a script, members of the Karen language radio staff frequently visit border camps to ask refugees for ideas of what to include on their show. For instance, after identifying a need for HIV/AIDS programming on a recent trip, the staff decided to use drama to tackle the topic. They returned to the camp with a completed script to get further comment and ensure that their audience would be well served. Their efforts resulted in "Love Never Dies," a 21-chapter radio play. One scene in "Love Never Dies" finds two Karen men talking about how one of them contracted HIV. The infected man tells his friend he had sex with two other women before he got married. "I thought they didn’t have HIV/AIDS because they are very young and look very innocent," he says. "We can’t know who has HIV/AIDS by looking," the friend replies. "Only through blood testing can we know who is infected or not." After the show aired, requests for tapes of the play appeared in MAP’s mailbox. Many newly arrived refugees who heard, or heard about, the play were eager to send copies to friends and family inside Burma.