Thailand to deport 400 Rohingya migrants
2013-01-11 12:02
Bangkok - Around 400 Rohingya migrants discovered in a raid on a camp hidden
in a remote rubber plantation in southern Thailand will be deported back to
Myanmar, Thai police said on Friday.
The group, 378 men, 11 women and 12 children, were found in a makeshift
shelter in the plantation in Songkhla province where they had languished for
three months waiting to be trafficked to a "third country", local
police said.
Acting on a tip-off officials stormed the shelter on Thursday and found the
Rohingya, a Muslim minority group not recognised as citizens in Myanmar who
have fled sectarian unrest in their thousands to Thailand and other countries.
"They are now waiting for deportation which will be done by Thailand's
immigration police," Lieutenant Colonel Katika Jitbanjong of Padang Besar
local police said.
"They told officials that they had volunteered to come [to Thailand],"
he said, adding police were seeking an arrest warrant for the Thai landowner on
charges of human trafficking and sheltering illegal migrants.
Outrage
Rights groups decry Thailand for failing to help Rohingya migrants who reach
its territory, instead pushing them back to Myanmar or on to neighbouring
countries including Malaysia, which offers sanctuary to the minority.
"Thailand is pursuing a beggar-thy neighbour approach," according
to Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch Asia.
"Thailand is using the good policy of its neighbour [Malaysia] to
escape its own international obligation to protect refugees and it is
shameful."
The UN refugee agency has called on Myanmar's neighbours to open their
borders to people fleeing a wave of communal violence in the western Myanmar
state of Rakhine.
Displacement, death
Clashes between Buddhists and Muslims have left at least 180 people dead in
Rakhine since June, and displaced more than 110 000 others, mostly Rohingya.
Myanmar views the roughly 800 000 Rohingya in Rakhine as illegal Bangladeshi
immigrants and denies them citizenship.
Although the tensions have eased since a new outbreak of killings in
October, concerns have grown about the fate of asylum-seekers setting sail in
overcrowded boats.
Last week Thailand deported 73 Rohingya boat people back to Myanmar, after
they landed on the southern island of Phuket.
- SAPA
