Saturday, February 6, 2010

Thailand Halts Myanmar Refugee Return After Outcry (Update1)

By Daniel Ten Kate

Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Thailand halted the repatriation of more than 3,000 ethnic Karens to Myanmar today after human rights groups and U.S. lawmakers said they were being forced to return against their will.

“Because there is some concern, we have decided to halt the process until the Karens clarify their position,” Thai Foreign Ministry spokesman Thani Thongphakdi said by telephone from Bangkok. “We want to dispel any concerns that their return would not be on a voluntary basis.”

Earlier today, 12 Karens in three families voluntarily returned to Myanmar before the process was stopped, Thani said. Embassies and civil society groups sent representatives to the Thai-Myanmar border to observe the procedure, he said.

Thai authorities have struggled with providing a haven for political asylum seekers while prosecuting illegal migrants. Per-capita spending power in Thailand, which hasn’t signed the United Nations’ 1951 refugee convention, is almost four times greater than Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar -- neighbors that share about 90 percent of its land border.

“The majority of people come here seeking better opportunities, better living and better jobs,” Thai government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn told reporters, diplomats and human rights workers at a seminar in Bangkok today. “They are not affected by fighting.”

The Karens set to return to Myanmar fled last June to escape a military offensive by the ruling junta. They are among 140,000 Myanmar refugees scattered in nine border camps in Thailand that have been in operation since the 1980s, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

‘Horrific’ Abuses

In a letter yesterday addressed to Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, 28 U.S. congressmen said the Karens face “horrific human rights abuses” such as forced labor, rape, torture, mutilation and execution if they return to Myanmar. Signatories included Congressmen Joseph Crowley, a Democrat from New York, and Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican.

The Karens were forced to tell Thai authorities they wanted to return to Myanmar, the Karen National Union, the political wing of the independence movement, said in a statement last week. The villagers were “under enormous pressure” and “in great fear of being forcibly repatriated,” the statement said.

Thailand repatriated 4,600 Lao Hmong refugees and asylum seekers late last year amid similar protests. UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-Moon said through a spokesperson at the time that he regretted the deportations, particularly amid protests from UNHCR and offers for resettlement to third countries.

Refugee Numbers

The U.S. resettled 12,852 refugees from Myanmar in 2008, second only to Iraq, according to government statistics. More than 50,000 refugees from the camps have been resettled since 2005, mostly to the U.S., and 15,000 more are expected to be processed this year, UNHCR said.

Thailand plans to send a team to visit the Hmong who were returned to Laos on Feb. 18 to inspect their living conditions, Panitan said. The government only sends people back to their original countries if they will be treated humanely, he said.

“We don’t look down on our neighbors like many other countries do,” Panitan said. “We trust them. We have no reason to believe they are lying to us.”

The ethnic minority Karen have fought for independence from Myanmar since 1947. Myanmar’s constitution, passed by a referendum last year, calls for a unitary state and says “all the armed forces in the Union shall be under the command of the Defense Services.”

Thailand doesn’t recognize any of the ethnic minorities as refugees. Some 3 million illegal workers live in Thailand, a country of 66 million people.

To contact the reporter on this story: Daniel Ten Kate in Bangkok at dtenkate@bloomberg.net

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