Last year, the northern towns of Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai attracted over 1.9 million tourists out of the record 10 million foreigners who visited Thailand. In 2000, the national tourism authority reports that 1.7 million tourists vacationed in the northern towns.
“The hill tribes are important for tourism in the north. They come second, after trekking and exploring nature, to draw visitors,” says Smithseth Chantusen of the Tourism Authority of Thailand.
These twin realities do not sit well with Chayan Vaddhanaphuti, an anthropologist at Chiang Mai University, since they reveal a glaring duplicity about the Thai government’s attitude towards the hill tribe people.
Thailand comes out in poor light, he says, since the government’s policy toward the hill tribes translates to them being acceptable to the country as a commodity but having little value as peoples.
And there is a little shift away from government policies that treat the hill tribes as “aliens,” consequently denying them the rights guaranteed to Thais, he points out. “Many of them have no legal status and can be arrested for a number of reasons, including moving out of the restricted areas for them in the north.”
At the same time, he adds, the hill tribes are increasingly being presented as an essential selling point to lure tourists to Thailand. “For over two decades, the hill tribe people have been promoted by the tourism authorities and private travel agents as a colourful and exotic aspect of Thailand,” he explains.
Activists campaigning for the rights of the hill tribe people are equally troubled at the scale of discrimination these ethnic groups are subject to. “It is exploitation, because the governments are only interested in profiting from them,” says Sombat Boongamanong, director of the Mirror Art Group, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) working with hill tribe children here.
“They should be offered the right to stay, move around freely and to work, particularly the generations born in Thailand.” he argues. “As they are, they have little freedoms and are vulnerable, with little protection.”