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Army destroys huts as refugees stay



South China Morning Post
Saturday  February 14  1998

Thailand 

Army destroys huts as refugees stay put 


AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE in Bangkok 
A bid to shift more than 10,000 Burmese refugees to a new camp ran into
trouble when the first batch refused to leave, witnesses said yesterday.

More than 100 residents of the Mae Yae Hta camp in the country's
northwest protested on Thursday and yesterday as the Thai military and
provincial authorities attempted to load them and their possessions into
lorries.

Refugees chanted and waved placards at the camp in Mae Hong Song
province, witnesses said, while other refugees refused to board the 40
trucks sent in by the Army.

However, men in ski masks working with authorities started demolishing
some of the refugees' grass huts in a bid to move the residents after
last-ditch negotiations failed.

"Four houses were destroyed and one man was beaten after he refused to
move," a spokesman for the All-Burma Students' Democratic Front said. The
group is strongly opposed to Burma's ruling military junta.

"They initially agreed to move further into Thailand, but their leaders
decided at a meeting on Wednesday that the conditions at the new camp
were not right," a Burmese student representative said.

The refugees said their new camp - which will hold 1,800 people - would
be overcrowded. They also did not want to leave their home of more than
two years as the terrain at the new area is too mountainous to live on,
he added.



Saturday  January 24  1998 
Danish reports says refugees were tortured 
About 66 per cent of refugees from Burma now living in Thailand have been
tortured, according to a report by the organisation Danish Doctors for
Human Rights.

Four Danish doctors questioned and examined about 200 refugees in a Thai
camp near the border.

The resulting 30-page report details forced labour, deportation,
pillaging, destruction of villages, and various forms of torture and rape
endured by refugees of various ethnic groupings in Burma.


Monday  December 1  1997
Burma 
Thai army purge of refugees feared 
WILLIAM BARNES in Bangkok 
Hopes that Thailand's new Democrat Party-led Government will be soft on
thousands of Burmese refugees may be dashed by the largely independent
Thai military's border-control plans.

Thailand is clearly getting nervous about the number of foreigners
seeking refuge within its borders or working illegally during the biggest
economic downturn since World War II.

Last week, a parliamentary committee recommended kicking out all illegal
immigrants - perhaps as many as a million, most of them Burmese.

Yet there are doubts over whether such an ostentatiously
human-rights-minded administration would be so brutal with "guests" who
provided cheap labour during the economic boom and may have justified
fears for their safety in Burma.

Every Burmese exile remembers how new Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai
allowed a group of Nobel Peace Prize winners - including the Dalai Lama -
to visit the Thai-Burma border and protest about the lack of democracy in
Burma, during his last term of office in 1993.

Mr Chuan clearly thought that a democratic country should allow the trip,
even at the cost of annoying a neighbour and deeply irritating China by
providing a platform for the exiled Tibetan leader.

International human rights groups were relatively unconcerned that the
last Democrat-led coalition, from 1992 to 1995, would make any moves
against some 120,000 "legal" Burmese refugees and the many thousands more
living off the underground economy.

A very different atmosphere prevailed when less-principled governments
were in charge. Recently ousted premier General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh had
a history of seeking business deals with Burma's junta for Thai firms.

Yet no matter how well-meaning the current Thai Government might be, it
remains in only dubious control of its borders - long the preserve of the
military for "security reasons".

The Burmese regime has been canny enough to try to exploit this crack
between policy and practice by pandering to Thai military chiefs.

Soon after Thailand hosted the Nobel Prize winners, the junta feted the
then Thai army chief in Rangoon, while giving the then foreign minister a
decidedly cool reception and revoking a number of business contracts.

"The Thai military have given up a lot but they are not ready to give up
their special rights over the border areas - and the junta knows it,"
said one diplomat.

The junta has repeatedly called on Thailand to send its citizens home -
the better to control its enemies, claim opponents.



Thursday  December 11  1997
Burma 
UN starts fresh bid to avert refugee crisis 
WILLIAM BARNES in Bangkok 
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has restarted talks
with the military regime in Rangoon aimed at heading off an explosive
refugee problem in Thailand.

The commission recognises that as fighting, forced labour and poverty in
Burma continue to drive people across the border, pressures are building
up in Thailand to eject the estimated one million Burmese who "steal"
Thai jobs.

Previous attempts by the UNHCR to talk to the generals in Rangoon have
got nowhere. But its regional representative, Amelia Bonafacio, said that
after last month's reshuffle the junta appeared more receptive.

Commission officials say the Burmese Government urgently needs to
recognise the refugees' fears because it is increasingly clear the Thais
are determined to reduce their numbers.

Burma's Foreign Minister, Ohn Gyaw, promised his Thai counterpart, Surin
Pitsuwan, on Tuesday that Burma would accept returnees. The regime has
previously denied the people in question are Burmese.

Mr Surin said there had been "some positive developments; a better
atmosphere" in Burma.

But human rights workers say many of the Burmese in Thailand still have
justified fears for not wanting to return.

In the past decade, many thousands of villagers crossed into Thailand
dreading the increasingly powerful Army that now rules most of the border
territory for the first time in Burmese history.

About 120,000 Burmese in official refugee camps are classified as
"displaced persons". Many more slip into the underground economy, where
entrepreneurs value their cheap labour and vulnerability.

When Thailand was enjoying an economic boom, few people worried that
Burmese were doing the dirty work in sweat shops, on building sites or in
brothels.

But with the boom's collapse, even the relatively sympathetic new
Government of Chuan Leekpai feels obliged to act.

Thai police and soldiers have recently arrested opponents of the Rangoon
junta and forced terrified new arrivals back across the border.

"The regime's policy is to crush its opponents - anyone it suspects of
being a rebel is potentially under threat," one veteran aid worker said.

Ms Bonafacio said the solution ultimately depended on talks between the
junta and its opposition "easing tension in the country".



Wednesday  December 17  1997
The Mekong Region 
Army 'forcing deported refugees to build roads' 
BURMA by William Barnes in Bangkok 
Many of the refugees being sent back into Burma by Thailand are being
forced to build roads by the Burmese Army, according to exiled opposition
sources.

The Thai authorities have recently been arresting and deporting reputedly
large numbers of Burmese every day - some are handed directly over to the
Army.

Many have become captive labour on a big highway being built between the
Thai border town of Mae Sot, northwest of Bangkok, and Pa-an, halfway to
Rangoon, the sources claim.

There are reports the Army is building a huge reception centre capable of
holding 20,000 returnees not far from Mae Sot to provide a ready source
of labour.

A Thai construction company has the key contract to build the road which
the Bangkok authorities hope will help open up Burma for cross-border
investment.

There have been similar reports filtering out of Tenassarim, Burma's
southern panhandle, where returned Burmese are said to be offered a
choice of paying a fine or working on a road which starts opposite the
Thai seaside town of Bang Saphan.

The main contractor building this road is also Thai.

The reports, which appear credible to diplomatic observers, are likely to
undermine Thai contentions that nearly all the Burmese living in Thailand
are economic migrants simply seeking better pay.

"The Government in Rangoon does not hide the fact that forced labour is
an important ingredient in its development plan. I am not all surprised
by these reports," one Bangkok-based envoy said.

Most Burmese in Thailand are members of ethnic minorities - the Karen,
Shan and Mon - who have borne the brunt of the human rights abuses
incurred by a brutal regime with an inveterate suspicion of potential
rebels.