I am not sure if this will become a regular feature but The Nation must surely be recognised for the insensitivity of this headline:
Karen village loses popular tourist draw
A long-necked Karen woman who had long attracted tourists to her hometown, died of unknown causes early yesterday. Mada, 25, passed away peacefully in her sleep. She left behind two children, a husband and mother. As of press time, doctors had yet to determine the cause of death. According to her mother, Mada was fluent in Thai, English, French, Spanish and Japanese. She was once crowned a beauty queen at a local pageant and had also represented the long-necked Karen at various events. Recently, her family was filmed for a documentary to be aired in Spain. She was a Christian. Siri-orn Rangsiritanont, manager of Mae Hong Son TN Tour Limited Partnership, said she was saddened to hear of Mada’s death. “She was very nice and friendly,” Siri-orn said, adding that tourism in Mada’s village might suffer given that tour operators had normally arranged tours to the village through Mada. There are still a number of long-necked Karens in the northern part of the Thailand and some are paid to continue wearing brass rings around their necks to attract tourists.
The Nation
Mae Hong Son
2 responses so far ↓
1 Deathpower in Cambodia » Blog Archive » The New Mandala // Nov 11, 2006 at 2:15 am
[...] Just a brief post here to acknowledge a newish (almost 6 months) co-blog about contemporary mainland Southeast Asia, called “The New Mandala.” It looks extremely promising – in addition to more substantive postings, they also occasionally take care to skewer the nasty exoticization of folks that marks feral capitalism’s relationship to non-state peoples, such as this post, which is titled “The New Mandala Award for Insensitivity:” am not sure if this will become a regular feature but The Nation must surely be recognised for the insensitivity of this headline: Karen village loses popular tourist draw [...]
2 dmn // Nov 13, 2006 at 5:25 am
Not sure if long-necked ethnic group is Karen. I suppose they are “Padaung”. They migrated from Burma where they are largely called as “Padaung”, a related ethnic group of Karenni, known in Burma as Kayar.
Mainstream Karens (namely Pao Karens and Sagaw Karens), Karenni, Padaung, Kayan, etc are recognized as coming from one ethnic family. Most refer to all these groups as Karen. Such recognization creates problems because whenever we talk about Karen, our attention gets to mainstream Karens. That’s why we don’t see much research on other ethnic groups. We need to de-homogenize it in order to pay equal attention to all different groups whose interests are different from that of mainstream Karens.
Saddly, Thailand doesn’t want Burmese refugees, but it has prepetuated long necked tradition so that they can attract tourists and makes millions of money each year.
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