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ASIA Church confronts 'culture of escape'
08-11-2009
Delegates will gather in the Vatican on Nov. 9 for the Sixth World Congress on the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees, where the effects of globalization will be high on the agenda.
One participant, Augustinian Father John Murray, who works with migrants in Thailand, looks at the challenges that lie ahead for the Asian Church in this commentary:
VATICAN CITY (UCAN) -- Migration "has become a survival strategy...to escape armed conflict, human rights violations, authoritarian and corrupt governments, as well as unemployment and poverty."
Little has changed in the four years since those words were used in the October 2005 submission to the UN Committee on Migrants, least of all in Asia, a continent where scenarios of desperation are played out daily.
Globalization has turned the world of migration into one of paradox, incongruity and complexity that poses questions and challenges to the Catholic Church as it struggles to promote human dignity and integrity.
Unfortunately, there are few clear-cut solutions.
Nowhere are the incongruities more starkly presented than in the Mekong region where relatively rich Thailand has become a magnet to the millions of Cambodians, Laotians and Burmese, but in turn faces its own challenges.
Highly developed and economically successful, Thailand is a regional hub for tourism, trade, transport, industry -- but also for human trafficking and migration.
The largest number of arrivals, both legal and illegal, come from the military dictatorship of Myanmar where repression of ethnic minorities, war and a reign of terror have become a way of life.
A corrupt junta based on self-interest, enriching itself through the sale of the country's natural resources and the trade in contraband, has ensured most people live in sub-standard conditions.
There are few opportunities for the poor in a politically and socially isolated country with crumbling infrastructure and health and education systems in chaos.
Little wonder then that a "culture of escape" has developed among the people.
More than a million Burmese have escaped to live in Thailand, although it is hard to judge the exact figure which could be up to 2 million.
They live legally and illegally throughout the country -- the young, the old, men, women and children -- but often their misery does not end on arrival.
They soon discover that they, like their fellow migrants from Cambodia, Laos and beyond, are seen as little more than a source of cheap labor.
The going is hard with few opportunities and low pay. But no matter how bad conditions become, for the Burmese at least, it is better than those from which they fled.
But it is easy to forget that Thailand's relative wealth masks problems of its own, with many of the country's poor turning to Taiwan or South Korea to improve their lives and their families'.
As the Burmese seek opportunities in Thailand, so Thai migrants seek opportunities elsewhere as they end up doing the jobs no one else wants.
These are some of the questions and challenges that the Vatican-organized World Congress will have to examine in the coming days. It is a challenge the Church must rise to.
As Archbishop Antonio Maria Veglio, President of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, said, unfortunately "we have not yet succeeded in creating the human and just social order that is much longed for."
Globalization may have made the world "seem a better place but it is not necessarily a happier one."
http://www.ucanews.com/2009/11/06/church-confronts-culture-of-escape/
