Thailand Begins Repatriation of Hmong to Laos

ceda_lee

sarNie OldFart
BANGKOK -- Armed with riot shields and batons, Thai military officers began early on Monday to forcibly return 4,000 Hmong asylum seekers to Laos in a lingering echo of the Vietnam War.

A government spokesman, Panitan Wattanayagorn, said in a telephone interview that the repatriation had started and would be completed within days.

Members of a mountain tribe that aided the United States in its secret war in Laos, the asylum seekers have said they fear retribution by the Laotian government, which continues to battle a ragged insurgency of several hundred Hmong fighters.

Thailand moved ahead with the repatriation despite complaints from the United States, the United Nations, and human rights and aid groups. It was doing so although it has determined that some asylum seekers were eligible for refugee status, human rights groups said.

"This forced repatriation would place the refugees in serious danger of persecution at the hands of the Lao authorities, who to this day have not forgiven the Hmong for being dedicated allies of the United States during the Vietnam War," Joel R. Charny, acting president of Refugees International, an advocacy group in Washington, said in a statement.

Close to 5,000 troops and security officers entered the Hmong camp at 5:30 a.m. and opened the operation by rounding up "potential troublemakers," said Sunai Pasuk, the Thailand representative of Human Rights Watch. Reporters were not allowed inside, but there were no reports of resistance.

They were to be processed at a military headquarters, then bused across the Mekong River into Laos.

In advance of the eviction, the military removed residents' mobile telephones and halted medical services and food provided by aid groups, apparently "to physically and mentally break their resistance to their deportation," Mr. Sunai said.

"Such coercive, intimidating and brutal measures are clearly the opposite of the concept of 'voluntary repatriation,' " he said.

The remote Hmong encampment in Phetchabun Province, about 200 miles north of Bangkok, is a remnant of an Indochinese refugee population that once numbered 1.5 million. That included boat people from Vietnam, survivors of the brutal Khmer Rouge government in Cambodia and hundreds of thousands of Hmong who crossed the Mekong River from Laos.

Since the war ended in 1975, the United States has processed and accepted about 150,000 Hmong refugees in Thailand for resettlement in the United States. But in the past three years Thailand has not allowed foreign governments or international agencies to interview the Hmong.

Refugee experts say the camp residents are a mix of refugees who fear persecution and economic migrants who have left Laos over the past few years. They have included dozens who display what appear to be battle scars, as well as some older refugees who fought on the American side during the war.

A separate group of 158 asylum seekers has been interviewed by the United Nations, which has labeled them "people of concern" who could face persecution if returned. But the Thai government says these asylum seekers will be forcibly repatriated eventually.

The government has said that the deportations will be completed by Thursday, under an agreement with Laos.

Mr. Panitan said Laos had said that the returnees would be treated well and that the United Nations could interview them within 30 days of arrival to determine if any were eligible for resettlement elsewhere. "There is no reason to believe that they will be harmed," he said.

"We have been repatriating Laotian Hmong in the past few years," he said. "I think this is the 19th time, and they seem to be fine. Their living conditions seem to be better when they return."

Reporters have not been permitted into Hmong camps since 2007, and last May the main aid group assisting the Hmong in Phetchabun, Médecins Sans Frontières, withdrew from the camp in protest of the conditions there.

"We can no longer work in a camp where the military uses arbitrary imprisonment of influential leaders to pressure refugees into a 'voluntary' return to Laos, and forces our patients to pass through military checkpoints to access our clinic," the group said.

Speaking by telephone from Washington on Sunday, Eric P. Schwartz, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, said that he had met with officials in Thailand last week and that the United States was prepared to assist both with questions of third-country asylum and with the return to Laos of economic migrants. He said Thailand had rejected this offer.

"We recognize the challenge of irregular migration that the government of Thailand faces, but there is absolutely no need to resort to these kinds of measures," he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
 

ceda_lee

sarNie OldFart
Thai Troops Deport 4, 000 Hmong to Laos

PHETCHABUN, Thailand (AP) -- Thai troops packed more than 4,000 ethnic Hmong into military trucks for a one-way journey to Laos, all but ending the Hmong's three-decade search for asylum following their alliance with the U.S. during the Vietnam War.

The United States and rights groups have said the Hmong could be in danger if returned to the country that they fought, unsuccessfully, to keep from falling into communist hands in the 1970s.

The European Union said it was ''deeply dismayed'' by the forcible deportation and issued a statement that urged Laos to ensure the Hmongs' human rights are protected and international observers are granted ''unfettered access'' to them.

Though Thai soldiers were armed with batons and shields Monday, Col. Thana Charuwat said no weapons were used in the repatriation and the Hmong offered no resistance. The last of the group crossed the border early Tuesday.

Many Hmong, an ethnic minority from Laos' rugged mountains, fought under CIA advisers during Vietnam to back a pro-American Lao government -- Washington's so-called ''secret war'' -- before the communist victory in 1975.

Some former American soldiers and civilians who developed close bonds with the Hmong during the war believe that the United States should have done more to help its one-time allies.

Since the war, more than 300,000 Lao, mostly Hmong, are known to have fled to Thailand and for years were housed in sprawling camps aided by international agencies. Most were either repatriated to Laos or resettled in third countries, particularly the United States. Smaller numbers found refuge in France, Australia and Canada.

But now Thailand says it plans to close the camp it emptied Monday.

Among those deported were 158 Hmong who had been identified by the United Nations as refugees and were being held separately from the larger group at a detention center near the Lao border.

''This is a departure from Thailand's long-standing humanitarian practice and it sets a very grave example,'' said Ariane Rummery, a UNHCR spokeswoman in Bangkok. According to recent reports, some may be able to resettle in the United States and other countries, but that process is now complicated by their return to Laos, where the UNHCR has no presence.

The Thai government claims most of the Hmong are economic migrants who entered the country illegally and have no claims to refugee status.

New York-based Human Rights Watch on Monday called the deportation ''appalling'' and a low point for Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's government.

''As a result of what Thailand has done to the Lao Hmong today, Prime Minister Abhisit sinks Thailand's record on contempt for human rights and international law to a new low,'' said Sunai Phasuk, a Thai representative for Human Rights Watch.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said in a statement that the United Nations and Thailand in the past had deemed that many of the Hmong in this group were ''in need of protection because of the threats they might face in Laos.''

''The United States strongly urges Thai authorities to suspend this operation,'' Kelly said.

Abhisit, however, said that Thailand had received ''confirmation from the Lao government that these Hmong will have a better life.''

The Hmong were driven out of the camp in military trucks and were then to be put on 110 buses going to the Thai border town of Nong Khai. Once in Laos, they'll head to the Paksane district in the central province of Bolikhamsai, Thana said.

Thana said 5,000 soldiers, officials and civilian volunteers were involved in the eviction. He said the troops carried no firearms and that their shields and batons met international standards for dealing with situations in which people are being moved against their will.

''There was no resistance from the repatriated Hmong because we used psychological tactics to talk with them, to assure them that they will have a better life in Laos, as the Lao government has confirmed,'' he told reporters.

But one rights group said callers from inside the camp had reported violence and bloodshed.

Thana, the Thai army's coordinator for the operation, denied the allegation.

''There has been no violence, and nobody has been injured,'' Thana said, noting it was impossible for anyone in the camp to call outside because the military had jammed mobile phone signals.

Journalists and independent observers were barred from the camp and were allowed no closer than a press center about 7 miles (12 kilometers) away.

Laos Foreign Ministry spokesman Khenthong Nuanthasing rejected international concerns, saying the government has a ''humanitarian policy'' for resettling the Hmong.

He told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that the group would initially be placed in a temporary shelter and then housed in two ''development villages'' -- in Bolikhamsai province and in Vientiane province -- where each family will receive a house and a plot of land that international observers will be welcome to inspect.

------

Associated Press writers Jocelyn Gecker in Bangkok and Grant Peck in Chiang Mai, Thailand, contributed to this report.
 

mydeepscar

sarNie Egg
What should we do to help these people? Gosh, I have been a refugee myself and I know how they suffer...no food to eat for couple days...it's just break my heart that no one can stop Thai and Laos from treating our people like this..errrrr
 
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