FELIX SAT CROSS-LEGGED next to his wife on the floor of a rented parlour-sized room that one could mistake for a Zumba studio. The hall was situated in an upscale area of Mae Sot, a city on the western edge of Thailand, near its border with Myanmar. Felix was not there to learn to dance. He was there to help other refugees from Myanmar, who come here to learn to bake bread and pick up other survival skills. The refugees had all come to Mae Sot after fleeing air strikes and forced military conscription back home.
The space was run by Heroes Assist Migrants, or HAM, a Myanmar citizens’ initiative that works with the refugee community in Thailand. HAM’s founder, Kaori, who asked to be identified by a single name, collaborates with leaders in the refugee community, such as Felix, to help others who have come to Mae Sot.
Felix, who also asked to be identified by just his first name, was once a general surgeon in Yangon, but that changed during the military coup in Myanmar in 2021 and the anti-military protests that followed. “I was detained for writing that the cause of a protester’s death was due to bullet injury in his death certificate,” he told me. This action led to his detention for four days after the coup. After his release, he joined the People’s Defence Forces, a conglomeration of armed civilian groups and ethnic armed organisations fighting the ruling military junta. Inspired by his late father, who had served in a similar armed group during an earlier spell of military rule in Myanmar, Felix signed up with the defence unit of the Karen National Union (KNU). He showed me his KNU identity card, which had a mugshot of him in fatigues. It was the only proof of identity he carried.
Felix was badly injured in action when he was struck by a 60-millimetre rocket, and he retired from the KNU in 2022. Since then, he has been helping others in Myanmar from his base in Mae Sot. He works as a doctor helping people in the civil disobedience movement – political workers as well as combatants – with medical aid and food supplies. “We must have helped over ninety human-rights defenders,” he said.