Thai army threatens to push Karen refugees back to Myanmar

Feb 4, 2010, 9:08 GMT

Bangkok - Thai civil society and human rights groups on Thursday urged the government to prevent the army from forcing 1,700 refugees from the Karen ethnic minority back into neighbouring Myanmar in an area known to be strewn with landmines.

The army has threatened on Friday to start repatriating the refugees who have been living in temporary camps in the Tha Song Yang district on the Thai-Myanmar border since June after fleeing fighting in Myanmar.

The army wants all the refugees off Thai soil by February 15.

The Karen are an ethnic minority people indigenous to eastern Myanmar. Rebels in the Karen National Union have been fighting Myanmar's central governments for autonomy for Karen State since 1949, making it one of the world's oldest insurgencies.

'As representatives from civil society, academics, students, activists, NGOs, artists and the Thai public, we are very concerned about the potential impact and grave consequences of such repatriation done in haste,' said a letter written to Thai Prime Minster Abhisit Vejjajiva and signed by 35 Thai organizations.

The protest letter noted that the area where the Karen are to be forced back is known to be peppered with landmines that have killed or maimed five Karen refugees in recent months.

'These people were fleeing fighting in their country and are willing to go back as soon as it is peaceful there,' said Surpoong Kongchantuk, vice chairman of the Lawyers Council of Thailand, one of the signatories to the protest letter.

Surapong said that if the Thai prime minster did not prevent the pushback, which he said would violate international law, it would demonstrate he has no control over the Thai military.

Thailand recently faced criticism for another repatriation. On December 28, the government forcibly sent back 4,500 ethnic Hmong who had been living in detention centres in north-eastern Thailand for more than four years to communist Laos, it neighbour to the north.

Hmong hill-tribes were recruited as a guerrilla force by the US military in its so-called 'secret war' against communism in Laos in the 1960s and 1970s. The US lost, and the Hmong were persecuted and hunted down after Laos went communist in 1975.

About 100,000 fled to neighbouring Thailand, from which they sought resettlement in the US and other Western countries.