Govt must come clean on Rohingya incident, The Nation

EDITORIAL
There is no excuse for the alleged abandonment of boat people on the high seas by the Thai Navy At this time, Thailand cannot afford to suffer any incidents that portray the country as lacking in compassion, especially on issues related to asylum-seekers. As the new government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva tries to save the country from the economic crisis and boost its international image and credibility, the tale of Rohingya refugees allegedly towed out to sea and abandoned by the Thai Navy is not welcome at all. The government must investigate this episode and provide a full explanation as soon as possible.

For the past few years, especially during the months of calm seas, stateless Rohingya asylum-seekers from Burma have arrived on the eastern coast of Thailand. In the past, the thousands of Rohingya refugees were not pushed back out into the open Andaman Sea. They were detained temporarily and later sent to border camps either in Kanchanaburi or Tak.

Essentially, these asylum-seekers are the victims of organised human trafficking rings, which have been active in the Bay of Bengal. Some of the refugees have time and again returned to Thailand, and have been sent overland back to Burma.

Some of these displaced Burmese Muslims are now living in refugee camps inside Bangladesh. They have been forced out of Burma’s Arakan region and they have nowhere else to go. No country seems willing to take them in. They face great uncertainties without much help from the international community.
Whenever they have the opportunity to come to Thailand, even if they have to pay exorbitant fees to traffickers, they jump at the chance.

Thailand has long been a haven for refugees and displaced persons of all sorts, from the 1960s through to the 1980s and up to the present time.
Depending on the point of arrival, the treatment meted out by the Thai authorities varies. The most notorious time was during the early period of the Cambodian conflict, with millions of Cambodian refugees settling in camps along the Thai-Cambodian border; stories of intimidation, looting and violence against the refugees were aplenty. In the late 1970s thousands of Hmong people from the highlands of Laos crossed the border into Thailand.
Their suffering is well documented.

At present, over three million Burmese migrant workers and several hundred illegal asylum-seekers are living in various corners of Thailand and are often victimised by local Thai authorities. Only North Korean asylum-seekers,who arrive in northern Thai provinces bordering Laos or Burma, still receive humane treatment from immigration and security officials. Once they arrive – never to be turned back – they are detained and interviewed by the Thai and, later, South Korean authorities, who then arrange for them to travel on to South Korea within three months. This kind of logistic support, with the full cooperation of the Thai and South Korean governments, has helped to save lives and put the country in very good standing.

Thailand needs to get serious about the prospect of more asylum-seekers arriving here in the weeks and months to come. With the global financial crisis and economic recession affecting both Thailand and its neighbours, there will be lot of people migrating, legally and illegally. The government must not allow this Rohingya incident to be repeated. Prime Minister Abhisit has to ensure that all concerned authorities avoid inflicting harm on asylum-seekers. Pushing defenceless boat people back onto the open seas is inhuman and unacceptable.

It is unfortunate that after all these years, some conservative old hacks in the Interior Ministry and in the security agencies still think that Thailand should not accede to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention because it would encourage an influx of asylum-seekers, especially from among the Burmese minorities.

This view is seriously flawed. But it has been this way for the past four decades, during which Thailand’s main concern has been to stop minorities, especially the Karen from across the Burmese border, from permanently settling inside Thailand. Just look around to see that this policy has been an utter failure.

Over the course of these decades, the country has continued to receive millions of asylum-seekers either on political or economic grounds. It would wise for Thailand to immediately sign the convention and make its refugee policy accountable and transparent. It is an important step to prevent the international community and non-governmental organisations from targeting Thailand’s refugee policies.

When Thailand’s past good deeds are concerned, nobody seems to know or remember. The Abhisit government has nothing to fear and should go ahead with signing the treaty (just as the Surayud Chulanont government signed the UN treaty against torture). Thailand has been stripped to the bone by the political turmoil of the past few years. If we continue to pretend that we are better than others, especially our neighbours – as Thai bureaucrats often think – it will be preposterous.

This is a good time to formulate comprehensive guidelines that treat all asylum-seekers humanely. Fragmented and inconsistent policies have given rise to violations of human rights time and again, and have rendered ineffective all proclaimed policies of the rule of law and respect for human rights.