In the sweltering Asian heat, a kind of odd normality exists inside the camp. Women wash clothes in pink and blue plastic buckets by the water pumps dotted around the camp's labyrinthine maze of dirt pathways. Kids yell as they jump over sandbags across streams on their way home from school. Young men sit on their hunkers in the main square watching fellow refugees play volleyball over a net-less wooden pole.

As refugee camps go this one isn't bad. But then they have had years to get it right with some refugees living in it for more than 10 years. The Thai authorities refuse to grant the refugees any rights and will not allow them to leave the camp to earn a living thus turning the place into a giant prison.

The majority of the people in the camp are from the Karenni state. The Karenni people are one of 10 main ethnic groups in Burma who have been persecuted for decades by the Burmese Military Junta. Ongoing abuse means they are still fleeing Burma today and seeking refuge inside Thailand.

'My husband. . . we found him dead' We were taken to the new arrivals area in the Karenni camp to meet some traumatised newcomers who had recently fled Burma. We were led into a stiflingly-hot bamboo shack and introduced to Nan Lun, a 42-year-old widow who fled to the camp last April with her six children and three grandchildren.

With mosquitoes milling around, this softlyspoken woman described how her husband had been shot dead by Burmese soldiers in 2002. He had been arrested by the Burmese military after they discovered that Karenni rebel soldiers had come to his village to get some rice. Nan's husband was murdered because, as head of the village, the military argued he should have told them that rebels were in the area.

"They took my husband to a place outside our village. We wanted to go but we were not allowed and later we found him dead, " Nan explained with a gentle serenity as she sat barefoot on a mat in the raised platform of her living quarters.

"My husband was shot in the head by the Burmese soldiers. And when I went there [to find his body] the soldiers were still there and I asked them why did you kill my husband? I only have rice and no-one can support us now."

Without a husband to provide for her family, Nan was forced to work all day long to cut trees and till the land. Her youngest children were one-month old twins when her husband was killed.

But life became increasingly intolerable when she was forced to work once a week from 5am to 5pm as a slave for the Burmese military. Last April she decided to flee her village with her family. A Karenni rebel soldier helped them to escape. Nan and her family spent 12 days making the perilous journey trekking through the Burmese jungle avoiding landmines and the Burmese military.

"Sometimes we had to be very quiet moving around because of the Burmese soldiers who were nearby. We had to travel at night because it wasn't safe to travel during the day. And we couldn't cook so we had to cook during the night, " Nan recalled with a sad glint in her river-brown eyes.

People survive in the sprawling Karenni refugee camp with help from humanitarian organisations.

The Irish aid agency Trocaire works with two NGOs providing food and shelter to the refugees.

Last Friday Trocaire launched its annual Global Gifts campaign. It has made the plight of the Burmese refugees a central focus of this year's campaign. Trocaire is asking people in Ireland to help pay for housing for the Burmese exiles. A global gift for a typical refugee house costs 200.

"The houses are built of eucalyptus and bamboo.

They're thatched with leaves and straw. They're quite simple and quite attractive houses, " said Meabh Cormacain, Trocaire's programme officer for Asia.

As she showed me around the houses in the Karenni camp, Meabh explained that they have to be replaced on a regular basis as the Thai authorities refuse to allow the refugees to build their homes with more solid materials like concrete or wood.

"The refugees build them themselves but they are not particularly hard wearing. They are not very durable. So whenever the rains come, as they do every year for 4 or 5 months, they get washed away."

Second poorest country in the world Burma has one of the most repressive regimes in the world. Since gaining independence from Britain in 1948, it has been plagued by instability. After several attempts at establishing a democracy, the tyrannical army commander, Ne Win took power in a coup in 1962. Burma has remained under military rule ever since.

Ne Win's odd concoction of Marxism, Buddhism and National Socialism brought Burma to its knees. By 1988 this former rice bowl of Asia had been declared the second poorest country in the world by the UN. Growing unrest in 1988 sparked a series of demonstrations by civilians. This provoked a deadly crackdown by the military with an estimated 10,000 students, Buddhist monks and civilians being killed on the streets by the army.

Despite the repression, attempts were made to re-establish democracy. In 1990 the National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won a landslide victory in general elections. But the NLD has never been allowed to govern and Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, remains under house arrest in Rangoon.

Systematic rape of women and children "On the occasions that she has been apparently allowed freedom because of world pressure she has been seriously harassed. At times we have feared for her life, " said Mary Montaut of Burma Action Ireland, adding that the military now want the prodemocracy campaigner dead.

In the rural parts, ethnic minorities like the Shan, Karen and Karenni people are being terrorised by soldiers who force them to relocate to areas under military control. Soldiers often loot the homes that have been vacated by their frightened owners. Once herded into areas controlled by the military, the villagers are often forced to work as slave labour, building army camps and roads and carrying huge loads for the soldiers.

"Forced labour is probably the most pervasive abuse in Burma, not only due to its frequency but also the number of people who have to do it, " an Australian human rights worker working with the Karen on the Thai-Burma border told me.

Systematic rape of women and children by the military is also a sickening reality especially in the ethnic regions. In 2002, the Shan Human Rights Foundation produced an extensive report documenting cases of rape in Shan state in Burma. Up until then, the report found that more than 600 women and girls had been raped by the military.

The youngest victim was 6, the oldest 62.

"Many times women were raped in front of their families, their husband and their children.

Sometimes a mother and daughter were raped at the same time, " said Charm Tong from the SHRF.

There is one glimmer of hope for these persecuted people. Burma is now on the agenda of the UN Security Council. It may yet face tough sanctions but only if its key ally China faces up to its responsibilities and supports UN measures to impose actions that could cripple the Burmese dictatorship and instigate democratic change.

Karen Coleman presents The Wide Angle on Newstalk every Saturday and Sunday morning Trocaire's Global Gifts can be purchased by calling 1850 408 408, by ordering online at www. trocaire. org/globalgift, or by dropping into any Trocaire centre or Veritas shop nationwide.

Global Gift is also available this year on Trocaire's new i-mode site with O2.