Forced From Home by War, They Found Solace in Soccer

It was just a regular practice, but the players were excited to get on the soccer field. They divided into teams and chose from an array of bibs that all bore the same message: “Women Win.”

Just being on the field was a revolutionary act for some of these girls and women — migrants from Myanmar, or Burma, in Thailand — because they were defying cultural norms by playing a sport. On that recent Monday evening, it was a place to forget for a little while the civil war that has ravaged their native land and the worries about life in their adopted home as refugees or undocumented migrants.

The coach blew a whistle, and the match began. Some of the women moved the ball deftly past others. Cheering their friends on from the sidelines, others screamed in Burmese, “The ball is here!”

There has long been a sizable Burmese community here in the city of Mae Sot, a trade hub in western Thailand. But since the Myanmar military seized power in a coup in February 2021, that population has swelled and transformed Mae Sot, as people fled the military dictatorship’s campaign of bombings and torture.

Nyein Pyae Sone Naing, 37, is one of them. She was an assistant manager for the soccer federation in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city, but never played because her parents forbade her to do sports. After the junta took control, she was one of many peaceful protesters charged with incitement. She fled to the jungles, where for a while she was a medic for an armed rebel group. She moved to Mae Sot in 2022 and signed up for soccer this July.