I was bleary eyed, having got up at 4 am, when we finally made our way along the dusty track to the entrance of Mae Ra Ma refugee camp in April 2000. It was about 7.30 in the morning and there was the smell of smoke everywhere, as Karen refugees got on with cooking breakfast in a camp where most people didn’t have electricity. The scene in front of me resembled what I imagine a medieval village in North East England looking like, with smoke rising from fires, as the class I was to teach English to gathered to greet and meet me.
It was an experience like none I had ever had before and it seemed like a totally different world, high in the mountains of western Thailand, a few miles from the border with Burma, where an army patrolled who were willing to rape and shoot Karens, while burning down their homes and churches. It was then that I met Absolom. He was one of my students and in this far remote place, over the hills and far away, he soon brought me back to earth, by asking me about David Beckham. I quickly explained what I thought of David Beckham at the time and I will never forget Absolom looking at me with a certain wisdom and replying: ”Ah, I see, David Beckham is a prat”. To be fair to Beckham he has grown up a lot in the intervening years and I wouldn’t describe him in the quite the same way now…
I was thinking of that first day in a Karen refugee camp this week, when I read the news that UK Aid was to be cut from 0.5% of our GDP to 0.3%. I was particularly mindful of the camps on the Thai-Burmese border, when I heard government ministers talking about the ‘hard choices’ they had to make in government.
It is not unreasonable to suggest that we need to increase defence spending in the light of Putin’s aggressive intentions and the fact that the USA might not be the ally we always assumed them to be. I get that. But to say that cutting the Aid Budget is a hard choice is disingenuous. It is always an easy choice to take away from those who have no power and no voice.
Let us be clear. The consequence of this budget cut will not just be a fall in the prestige our country has around the world. It will also lead to unnecessary deaths.
Already we have seen the deadly consequences of Trump’s cuts to US Aid. It was reported in the Guardian on 26 February that Wah K’Ler Paw, a 30-year-old refugee from Burma had, survived for about two weeks without dialysis after the US president, Donald Trump had suspended US foreign aid.
Her husband Thaw, a refugee from the Mae La refugee camp along the Thai-Myanmar border, another camp have visited, commented that: “She never complained about what she was going through”.
It was also noted that, “despite a pledge from US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, that life-saving assistance would be exempt from the 90-day USAid freeze, for refugees like Wah K’Ler Paw, who relied on care from US-backed organisations, Trump’s decision has been deadly”. Following the decision, Thaw had done what he could to find ways to continue her dialysis, which she had been receiving twice a week at a Thai hospital until it was stopped in early February. She was eventually admitted to a nearby hospital for dialysis, but by then it was too late and Wah K’Ler Paw died on 16 February.
How many more innocent people are now going to needlessly die, simply because of a stroke of a pen, this time by a British government leader? Anna Roberts from Burma Campaign UK thinks the answer could be many. At a time when a civil war is ongoing between the brutal military regime and opposition groups and more than four million people have been forced to flee Burmese military attacks Starmer’s announcement could mean more devastating cuts in UK aid to Burma. Roberts has also noted that: ”They come on top of cuts in US aid which are already killing people .The UK should be stepping up and providing more assistance, not stepping back”.
Roberts went on to say that, “the cuts are being justified by saying they are needed for defence. It is a sad irony that cuts in international aid to fund increasing defence spending will create space for and embolden the same regimes that threaten our security.
The Burmese military have already been gloating about the cuts in US aid. Now Keir Starmer has given the Burmese military something else to celebrate. UK aid in Burma saves lives. Less aid means more deaths.”
This view was reinforced in the Guardian on 27 February by none other than former head of the British army, General Lord Dannatt. It was reported that, “Gen Lord Richard Dannatt, who is one of a number of former military chiefs and figures who have called on the government to boost its defence spending above the 2.5% GDP target, said the prime minister’s decision was “shortsighted” and “dangerously counterproductive”.
It was further noted that, “while he welcomed the overall increase in defence spending in an op-ed for the Guardian, Dannatt described the cut as a “failure of our values” which “risks making us weaker, not stronger”, and said it was a “moment for leadership” in a world where the US was “stepping back from underwriting European security” .
The real hard choices
This is a dangerous world. We have recently seen a rise in both right-wing populism and instability, not witnessed since 1945. It could be said to be prudent to raise our defence spending. But please don’t tell me that cutting aid to defenceless, vulnerable and perhaps most significantly voiceless people is a hard choice. The government has made the easy choice, the choice that would play well with the right-wing media. The choice that the powerful, those with perhaps too much of a voice would be happy with. And the consequences will be deadly.
I don’t believe that people voted Labour in July last year, for the Aid budget, already decimated in 2021 by Rishi Sunak when he was chancellor, to be cut further. People voted for change and we seem to be seeing very little of it. And Starmer must understand that pandering to the views of people like the Reform party will not make it easier to defeat them at the next election. On the contrary, he is legitimising their cruel views and ultimately will people not choose the real thing over Labour’s Tory or Reform-lite?
Yet again we see the lack of purpose and vision inherent in this government. I understand that defence spending might need to rise. But surely there are better ways of raising the funding, than causing unnecessary deaths among poor and vulnerable people.
We are still one of the wealthiest countries in the world and we should be pulling our weight in terms of providing aid, while simultaneously benefiting from the soft power that such a move would give us. The problem we have is that our wealth is concentrated in too few hands. Wouldn’t that have been the correct place to go to fund defence spending rises?
But of course, that would have seen a backlash from the rich and powerful, who own so much of our media. In other words that would have been the real hard choice.
I still have many fond memories of visiting and teaching in Karen refugee camps along the Thai-Burmese border, working with a delightful group of people, who were so kind and grateful for us being there and not forgetting them. We must not forget them now or any of the other groups around the world who need our help and support.
To email Starmer and Reeves to protest the aid cuts please go here.
CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO OUR CROWDFUNDER
HELP US BECOME STRONGER SO THAT WE CAN CONTINUE TO DELIVER POWERFUL CITIZEN JOURNALISM!
