Hmong refugees: Refoulement decided
On 20 September 2007, the military government of Thailand signed an agreement with the Laotian authorities to deport over 7,700 ethnic Hmong refugees from Ban Huay Nam Khao refugee camp in Phetchabun province of Thailand to Laos before the end of 2008. Thai Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont stated on 6 August 2007 that the Hmong refugees entered Thailand "illegally" and failure to send them back to Laos would create a "never-ending problem" for Thailand.
The Hmongs had fought
alongside the United States against the Lao government during the Vietnam War
until the United States was defeated in 1975. More than 3,00,000 Laotians, mostly Hmongs, had fled to Thailand to
escape persecution by the communist regime. Most of these refugees were either
repatriated to Laos or resettled in other countries, mainly in the United
States. In 2005, the United States took 15,000 Hmong refugees from Thailand but refused to accept any more refugees.
I. Lack of
independent monitoring mission
A total of 7,785 Hmong refugees have been living at the Ban Huay Nam Khao refugee camp since late 2004. Of them, about 2,000 are
inmates of the now-closed Wat Tham Krabok camp in Saraburi,
Thailand. On 24 June 2007, the army relocated 7,653 Lao-born Hmong refugees from Ban Huay Nam Khao camp to a new camp at Tambon Kheg-Noi, four kilometres away. The journalists have no access to this camp.
On 21 September 2007, Lt. Gen. Nipat Thonglek, director of Thailand's Supreme Command
Office's Department of Border Affairs and also co-chairman of the Sub-General
Border Committee stated that the screening process of the 7,785 Hmong refugees would be completed by the end of 2007. The
screening will determine who shall be repatriated to Laos. However, as the Thai
government treats all the Hmong refugees as
"illegal immigrants", almost all of them would be forcibly deported
to Laos unless there is intervention from other countries.
There is no independent monitoring mission to
monitor screening of the refugees and their repatriation to Laos. Both Thai and
Laotian authorities have been maintaining that the Hmong problem was a bilateral issue between Thailand and Laos and rejected monitoring
by any independent observer. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) repeatedly requested to be part of the screening process to verify if
the Hmong refugees' fears of persecution are genuine.
So far, UNHCR has not been granted access to the refugees.
The absence of involvement of the UN agencies or
international human rights organisations in the
repatriation process makes the entire process illegitimate. There are greater
risks that the refugees will suffer prosecution at the hands of the Laotian
authorities once refouled.
II. Forcible refoulement continues
Although Thailand is not a signatory to the 1951 UN
Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the Thai government has
obligations under international law to protect the fundamental rights of the
refugees. But Thailand has never treated the Hmong refugees sympathetically and always branded them as "illegal
immigrants". Many asylum seekers have been illegally detained. On 20
August 2007, UNHCR called for the release of the 149 Hmong refugees including 90 children stating that they have been illegally detained
in "truly inhumane conditions" in two small and dark cells at the Nong Khai Immigration Detention
Centre run by the Thai Immigration Ministry since December 2006.
On 26 January 2007, 16 Hmongs were deported to Laos. On 30 January 2007, Thailand halted forcible
repatriation of another 153 Hmong refugees after the
United States and other Western countries assured to take them.
On 18 May 2007, Thailand and Laos signed the
Lao-Thai Committee on Border Security agreement which provided that Thailand
will deport any Lao Hmong asylum seeker upon arrival.
On the basis of the agreement, Thailand deported 31 Hmong refugees to Laos on 25 May 2007, and 163 more on 9 June 2007. Neither the UNHCR
nor any international human rights organization has been given access to these refouled refugees. Hence, their whereabouts and conditions
after refoulment are not known.
III. A new
smokescreen for refoulement
The Thai
military has secretly completed relocation of 7,653 Lao-born Hmong refugees from Ban Huay Nam Khao camp to a new camp at Tambon Kheg-Noi, four kilometres away on 24 June 2007. Of the 7,653 Lao-born Hmongs relocated, 40 per cent are children. The conditions of the refugees in the new
settlement are not known as the army has barred the media from the new
relocation site.
The
journalists have been issued "guidelines" by the army which forced
them to portray the Thai officials favourably, to
"refrain from reporting officials' bad treatment, if any, of the Hmong", to discourage further influx of Hmong refugees, to report about the negative consequences
of the influx of refugees on the local population and prohibited the media from
highlighting the legal status of the Hmong refugees
under the local or international law, among others.
Many Hmong leaders have been summoned by the military officers
for questioning after they gave interviews to local and international media
against the government's plan of forcible refoulement in order to intimidate them.
The
agreement signed on 20 September 2007 by Thailand and Laos is nothing but a
smokescreen to deport over 7,700 ethnic Hmong refugees from Ban Huay Nam. International community
must intervene with the royal government of Thailand not to forcibly repatriate
the Hmong refugees, to allow the UNHCR to monitor the
screening process and provide them protection as refugees in Thailand and
withdraw the socalled media guidelines and provide
unrestricted access to the journalists including foreign journalists and
credible humanitarian organizations to the refugee camps.
Courtesy: Asian Centre for Human Rights, New Delh