A cruel welcome in Thailand
Burmese refugees fleeing poverty and war endure brutal treatment in neighboring nation
Tuesday, July 3, 2001
Sara Lazarovich, Chronicle Foreign Service
Sanfrancisco chronicle-page A-8
Mae Sot, Thailand -- This story is one in a series on Pacific Rim issues and culture that appears every Tuesday in The Chronicle World section.
Thousands of Burmese migrants who have fled poverty, war and forced labor are subject to cruel punishment by Thai officials, who are rarely charged with any crime, human rights workers say.
"They are fair game, treated worse than animals," said Ko Thet Hmu, a member of a migrant workers' support group called the Yaung-Chi-OO Organization.
Take Ma Se, one of many young women who came to Thailand to avoid forced labor demanded by Burma's repressive military government. "We were forced to work for months on road building," recalled the 18-year- old refugee, who insisted on using a pseudonym. "My mother and father told me to escape over the border (to Thailand)."
Shortly after arriving in this bustling border town last year, Ma Se was thrown into a police car after she failed to produce identification papers. She said she was driven to a deserted field outside town and raped by a police officer before she managed to escape."No legal action will be taken, even though there were at least two witnesses to Ma Se's abduction," said Ko Thet Hmu.
In recent months, undocumented workers have also been systematically ill- treated before deportation, according to Amnesty International. When caught, they are typically placed in cage-like trucks and carted off to detention centers, where they are beaten, shackled continuously for months at a time, held in solitary confinement for extended periods or held in extremely crowded conditions. Immigration police Col. Rutchata Sibasai says the government aims to return 300,000 illegal immigrants to their countries by September.
Previously, foreign workers were tolerated because they provided low-wage labor, but after the economy took a sharp downturn in 1997, they have been regarded as a burden.
ETHNIC MINORITIES IN BURMA
The number of Burmese refugees is difficult to assess because the number rises and decreases according to military strikes by Burmese soldiers against rebel groups along the border and periodic crackdowns by Thai immigration officials. Most refugees are from the Karen, Kareeni and Shan ethnic minorities who are fighting the Rangoon government.
The lucky ones find protection in camps under the auspices of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Some estimates say there are 1 million illegal immigrants in Thailand from poorer neighboring countries such as Burma and Laos. In Mae Sot, there are an estimated 60,000 in a town of 28,000 permanent inhabitants with factories that use cheap migrant labor to churn out consumer products for the export market.
The Burmese are fleeing one of the region's most repressive regimes; Burma has an annual per capita income of about $400 and an average life span of just 55 years. Last year, the International Labor Organization voted to urge governments and international donors to impose sanctions on Burma for its policy of forced labor. In 1997, the Clinton administration banned new American investments there.
Burmese migrants -- including legitimate asylum seekers under international law -- have few legal options once they arrive in Thailand, because there is no law to determine whether a refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political beliefs or membership in a particular social group, the usual basis for establishing such status.
Human rights activists say abuses against Burmese refugees stem partly from the failure of the Thai government to ratify the 1951 U.N. Convention on the Status of Refugees, the treaty that legally protects refugees. The result is a lawless limbo that leaves many illegals prey to police and immigration authorities, employers and criminal gangs. And while Burmese men are victims of robbery and murder, women appear to be the main target.
"We must always be careful where we go," said Ma Se, who now works at a rubber-gloves factory, earning $1.50 a day for an 8-hour shift, less than half the nation's minimum wage. "I usually stay near the factory where I work because it is safer." Ko Thet Hmu says that in Mae Sot, there are an average of two reported rapes a month of Burmese women.
And in a report released last year by the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, a nongovernmental organization in New York, Dr. Cynthia Maung, a prominent physician who runs a border health clinic, told the commission that the bodies of Burmese women are often found burned and abandoned on local farms or roads. Maung said, "Rapes and murders of Burmese women occur here regularly."
In a telephone interview, an official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bangkok, who refused to give her name, said her ministry saw no need to investigate such accusations "since we have not received any evidence. We have only unclear allegations."
Human Rights Watch in New York has criticized the UNHCR for not taking a stronger stance. While acknowledging the United Nations' need to maintain cordial relations with Thai authorities, the group claims the UNHCR "has been unnecessarily weak in its efforts to challenge Thai policies that undermine refugee protection."
Moreover, the latest U.S. State Department human rights report on Thailand criticized the fact that "there is no legislation regarding the treatment of refugees." The annual report to Congress also indicated that even though the Thai government has investigated extrajudicial killings, it has prosecuted few police or military officers accused of such crimes."Most cases were eventually dismissed because regulations outlined in the Criminal Code required public prosecutors to rely exclusively on recommendations of police when determining whether to bring a case for criminal prosecution," the report said. "Police investigators routinely determined that police took no wrongful action."
Lt. Col. Sorrapol, former head of immigration in Mae Sot, reflected such thinking in discussing the widely known beating of a 15-year-old Burmese girl last year at a detention center then under his jurisdiction. "The men in my department wouldn't do such a thing. It must have been another agency," he said in a recent interview. "Bring the girl to me and then perhaps we can investigate." However, a witness to the beating who asked not to be named said he feared identifying the assailant. Activists say many witnesses return to Burma in fear for their lives.
Activists say the situation for Burmese migrants will not improve until there is a policy change in Rangoon.Human Rights Watch says that even though Burmese officials issued a decree last year abolishing forced labor, they have violated their own ban by continuing to allow local leaders to requisition village labor to "build roads, dams, maintain military bases, construct temples, guard villages and porter for military patrols."
"Villagers receive no pay, must supply their own food and have been threatened with imprisonment should they refuse to participate," said a Human Rights Watch report.