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Thailand wants Myanmar asylum seekers to go home - official

05 Apr 2011 14:01

Source: alertnet // AlertNet correspondent

Myanmar's ethnic Karen children look out from their school at the Mae La refugee camp near the Thailand-Myanmar border, October 2010. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

MAE SOT (AlertNet) – Thailand has no plan to give refugee status to tens of thousands of asylum seekers living in crowded camps along the border with Myanmar, a senior regional official says.

Samart Loifah, governor of Tak province which is home to the largest camp, said it was time to consider starting a programme to get people to return to Myanmar voluntarily.

And he urged international donors to reduce spending on the camps to encourage people to leave.

Loifah rejected international requests that Thailand restart an abandoned screening process to determine which people are genuine refugees from Myanmar, as opposed to economic migrants.

Since the 1980s hundreds of thousands of people have fled Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, following repeated military crackdowns on ethnic minorities and political activists.

There are around 145,000 people in nine camps on Thailand’s western border with Myanmar. But about 50,000 of them have not been screened and are not registered with the Thai authorities, according to Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), an NGO which has worked with refugees from Myanmar for 25 years.

“The province and the ministry of interior have no policy to give them refugee status. We do not think a screening process is a good idea,” Loifah told AlertNet.

“There are tens of thousands in these camps who have no refugee status but they refuse to leave so we have to continue giving them shelter and assistance.”

Aid agencies and donors have asked Thailand to restart its refugee screening and registration process at the camps which they say has been dormant since 2005.

The European Commission, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) and TBBC have also pressed the Thai government to loosen restrictions on the movement of residents and allow them to work outside the camps so they become more socially integrated.

The government says it is considering the proposal, but observers say it is unlikely that Thailand, already struggling with more than a million illegal Myanmar migrants, would agree to such a request.

Loifah said the asylum seekers destroyed natural resources in the province and made the locals feel they were better cared for than Thais.

Their presence has also strained relations with Myanmar which thinks Thailand is “giving shelter to a resistance movement”, he said.

NEW ARRIVALS

The first camps along the border were set up in 1984 after a major offensive by the Myanmar army against ethnic Karen insurgents pushed 10,000 Karen refugees across the porous border.

Since then, sporadic clashes, political and economic instability and abuse and discrimination towards indigenous ethnic groups has continued to fuel an influx of asylum seekers.

But critics say food aid, healthcare, education and skills training and possible resettlement are encouraging people to cross the border and seek shelter in the camps.

Some 65,000 refugees have been resettled in third countries in the past five years, mainly in the United States. Yet the camp population remains the same, partly due to births but also due to new arrivals.

Dave Mathieson of Human Rights Watch said while abuse of the resettlement programme was a concern it should not “obscure the fact that the replenishment of the people in the camps is because of the continuing human rights violations in eastern Burma”.

TIME FOR VOLUNTARY RETURN?

Despite the formation of a new civilian government in Myanmar last week, few believe things will change fundamentally especially in ethnic regions.

However, donors are concerned about whether everyone in the camps is a genuine refugee.

“If you talk to people from the camps, it is difficult to determine who has fled from fighting and who is there for economic and/or educational reasons,” David Verboom, head of the regional office of the European Commission’s humanitarian aid office ECHO, told AlertNet.

“As a humanitarian donor, with limited funding, our job is to target and support the refugees that are in the camps based on humanitarian needs.”

Loifah said Myanmar was no longer violent and “we should start considering asking them to return voluntarily”.

But the United Nations’ refugee agency UNHCR said voluntary returns should only happen if there was no longer any fighting and refugees could sign papers saying they wanted to go back.

“That means Myanmar would have to be welcoming them home and guaranteeing their rights when they go home. UNHCR would need to be able to monitor their safety when they go home. It’s fairly clear that none of these conditions exist right now in the areas these refugees come from,” said UNHCR spokeswoman Kitty McKinsey.

Loifah said he would be happy to work with the European Union and the UNHCR if they started reducing spending on assistance to the camps to persuade residents to leave.

“Ideally, the province would like to be able to set a deadline for closing these camps but realistically, it’s hard to do so because of international organisations. So it’s likely to drag on,” he added.

See also:  A life in limbo; Inside Thailand’s Myanmar refugee camps