) IOM Resettles over 74,000 Refugees From Thailand Since 2004

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Thailand - IOM resettled over 17,000 refugees from Thailand in 2009, bringing the total number of refugees moved from the country's refugee camps to new homes abroad to over 74,000 since 2004.

The majority of the refugees – over 57,000 or nearly 80% – came from Myanmar , and belonged to the Karen and Karenni ethnic groups. A further 15,000 were ethnic Hmong from the Lao PDR.

Over 80% of the 74,000 were resettled in the USA, with the remainder accepted by Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

In 2009 6,800 or nearly 40% of the refugees resettled by IOM Thailand came from Ban Mae Nai Soi – a jungle camp located in the remote north west of the country in Mae Hong Son province. A further 3,400 came from Mae La camp, 300kms to the south in Tak province.

The remainder were resettled from seven other remote border camps located close to Thailand 's mountainous jungle border with Myanmar . All but about 300 of the 17,074 refugees moved by IOM Thailand in 2009 came from Myanmar.

IOM provides pre-departure health screening for refugees at the request of resettlement countries, including chest x-rays to check for tuberculosis and other contagious diseases. If a refugee is found to be suffering from a contagious disease, IOM provides treatment until they are fit to travel.

When the refugees are cleared to depart, IOM transports them by bus from the camps to Bangkok 's Suvarnabhumi airport and arranges their onward travel on commercial flights to their final destinations in resettlement countries.

IOM's 35-year history of refugee resettlement from Thailand began in 1975 in the aftermath of the Vietnam war, when it helped nearly half a million Indochinese refugees from Vietnam , Laos and Cambodia to leave the country and start new lives abroad. It works closely with the Royal Thai government, UNHCR and the governments of resettlement countries.

Rohingya 'Won't Be Deported'

Monday, August 24, 2009

The following article is written by Achara Ashayagachat (21/08/2009) in the Bangkok Post and can be found here http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/22407/rohingya-won-t-be-deported

The Immigration Bureau has allowed visitors rare access to Rohingya immigrants transferred from Ranong.The department also assured the immigrants they would not be thrown out of Thailand.

Immigration Bureau commissioner Chatchawal Suksomjit yesterday said the Rohingya would not be deported from Thailand, although the solution to the problem of illegal immigration rested with the governments of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Pol Lt Gen Chatchawal said a committee had been set up to investigate the deaths of two Rohingya during their detention in Ranong.

Doctors previously said they had died of natural causes. More than 30 Rohingya people stood flabbergasted on the concrete grounds at the detention centre at Suan Phlu yesterday while photographers took their pictures and senior immigration police officers and media tried to talk to them.

Another group of Rohingya sat wearily in a nearby room waiting for a nurse to take care of them.

Chalida Thacharoensak, of the People's Empowerment group, and activists and Rohingya representatives from the Burmese Rohingya Association in Thailand were also given a chance to meet them after they were moved from the southern province on Tuesday.

Vachareeya Thanya-ananphol, a Jesuit Refugee Service nurse who tended to all the immigrants at the centre, said about 10 Rohingya needed food and medicine.

"They feel very tired. Their legs are powerless and they feel itchy," Ms Vachareeya said.

Deputy Immigration Bureau chief Phitak Jarusombuti said the bureau would not reveal how long the Rohingya would be detained. He said they would get good care. "The NGOs and the Rohingya from outside will also provide some humanitarian support," Pol Maj Gen Phitak said.

Seventy-eight Rohingya landed off Thailand's shores in January. The centre now has 93 Rohingya, including nine who were arrested in February in Bangkok.

Migrants Toil as ASEAN Ministers Talk Rights

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Agence France-Presse, 07/22/2009
http://globalnation.inquirer.net/news/breakingnews/view/20090722-216677/Migrants-toil-as-Asean-ministers-talk-rights

PHUKET, Thailand—As Southeast Asian ministers endorsed a new human rights body at a luxury Phuket hotel, victims of the region's abuses were hard at work nearby at the island's fishing port.

Hundreds of migrant fishermen unloaded their overnight catch from brightly-colored boats, while workers in rubber boots sorted the seafood into baskets for others to pile into trucks bound for various Thai provinces.

Most laborers here came to seek a better life away from military-ruled Myanmar, which has been considered the problem child of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) since it joined in 1997.

While the bloc's new human rights body will require members to provide reports on their internal rights situations, critics say it will lack powers to punish Myanmar's junta for rights abuses that have driven many citizens away.

"It is a bit hard to live there. Than Shwe (the junta leader) has a black heart. He makes problems for people, he makes them poor," said An Ny Ny Thew, a worker at the port who left Myanmar 13 years ago with her fisherman husband.

Taking a break from her job packing fish into baskets with ice, the 30-year-old told AFP that she left a construction job in Myanmar to find better-paid work in Thailand.
She said she now earns 5,000 to 6,000 baht (147 to 176 dollars) per month—a big improvement on the 1,000 baht she was paid in Myanmar. But she has had to send her two children, aged seven and five, back home to live with her mother.

"I have no permit to send my children to school in Thailand. If the children stay here I can't work. I miss them but I have no money to go back to visit," she said.
Kyaw Win, a fisherman from Myanmar, said he would not go back to his homeland now even if he could afford it.

"I came here to make money. I like working here—they have democracy. If Burma does not get democracy I will not go back," he said, referring to Myanmar by its former name.The former policeman explained that he escaped the country after taking part in the pro-democracy uprisings of 1988, which saw thousands of protesters killed in a bloody crackdown by the army.

Myanmar migrants such as Kyaw Win make up about 80 percent of more than 500 workers at the port, according to Boonlert Sritularak, a Thai wholesaler there.
"Thais don't like to do this job because it's smelly and dirty," he said, describing it as "one of the hardest jobs in Phuket."

"In my opinion we have to treat them well and take care of them because we need the labor," he said, adding that many from Myanmar move to "more comfortable" jobs as cleaners or food vendors after a few months.

He said he thought only about half of migrants at the port were legal, and when officers came to make checks on the status of the workers, the migrants would dip into their meager wages to "give the police money to keep quiet."
The large numbers of illegal workers make figures hard to calculate, but Human Rights Watch estimates that more than two million Myanmar migrants are working in Thailand.

Even for those with work permits the situation seems precarious, and an Asean declaration on migrant worker rights, approved in 2007, appears to hold little sway.
"The Thai government is not helping workers. If someone is injured they send them back to Myanmar," claimed An Ny Ny Thew, adding she did not know what she would do next year when her work permit runs out.

Rights groups have called on Thailand to improve protection for migrants—especially after accusations of mistreatment caused international outrage earlier this year.
Nearly 650 Rohingya—a stateless ethnic group facing persecution from Myanmar's junta—were rescued off India and Indonesia, some claiming to have been beaten by Thai soldiers before being set adrift on the high seas to die

Soon afterwards, the Thai government "categorically denied" reports that it had mistreated any migrants. Premier Abhisit Vejjajiva, speaking in Phuket this week ahead of Asia's biggest security forum, appeared confident about the human rights situation in this "very open country."

But many are still concerned.
David Mathieson of Human Rights Watch said the region had a "climate of impunity over rights abuses," which Asean needed to tackle, because the issue of migrant workers "touches every single Asean member."