[Tlc] TL-Hmong

[justinm at ucr.edu]

FYI.
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justin

2008-0228 - RFA - Thai Soldiers Forced Lao Hmong Back to Laos

http://www.rfa.org/english/lao/2008/02/28/lao_hmong/

Radio Free Asia
English

Thai Soldiers Forced Lao Hmong Back to Laos
2008.02.28

Dec 2005: Hmong refugees appeal to the United Nations to treat
them as political asylum seekers. Photo: RFA.

HUAY NAM KHAO, Thailand—Armed Thai soldiers dragged a group of
Lao Hmong asylum-seekers from a crowded holding camp here onto
trucks to deport them and sent dogs after two who jumped from
a moving truck to avoid repatriation, witnesses said.

The military dogs mauled the two men, both in their 20s, and
they remain in a Thai hospital, according to witnesses. The
witnesses’ accounts contradict Thai and Lao government
assertions that the group had volunteered to go back to Laos.

Thai soldiers entered the Huay Nam Khao camp in Phetchabun at
1 p.m. Feb. 27, rounded up 13 Hmong, and dragged them onto
trucks, one of the witnesses said. “Some of them hung on to
bushes or small trees and had to be pulled free and thrown
onto the trucks—bushes were uprooted,” he said.

Three to four soldiers appeared to have been assigned to each
Hmong, whose belongings the soldiers collected before leaving
the camp around 3 p.m., another witness said. The soldiers
said little but indicated they would return over the coming
days, witnesses said.

“Two young men in their 20s jumped off the trucks after they
started to move. The soldiers sent dogs out to find them and
they were badly mauled, and those men are now in Khao Kao
hospital” in Phetchabun, one witness said.
Officials say they volunteered

Two young men in their 20s jumped off the trucks after they
started to move. The soldiers sent dogs out to find them and
they were badly mauled, and those men are now in Khao Kao
hospital.

Lao witness

Eleven Lao Hmong were then handed over on Feb. 28 to Lao
authorities in Vientiane in what both Thai and Lao officials
described as a wholly voluntary operation.

“The Hmong you saw being returned to Laos this morning could
be considered lucky. It was a good opportunity for them
because they are the first group who wholeheartedly
volunteered to go back to their country, without any kind of
pressure,” Department of Border Affairs Deputy Director Maj
Gen. Voravit Darunchoo said in an interview.

“Therefore the news carried by some media isn’t completely
accurate. From what we got from the military task force in
Huay Nam Khao, it seems that there are a lot more who want to
go back,” Voravit added.
UNHCR questions

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokeswoman Kitty
McKinsey said her agency never obtained access to the Huay Nam
Khao camp, but she questioned why these Hmong were returning
and whether they had volunteered to go.

In an interview, one of the returnees, Walao Saiyang, said the
repatriation was voluntary. “We all wanted to go back and we
will feel happy to be back in Laos, where we will be starting
new lives,” Walao Saiyang, from Khoune district in
Xiengkhouang province, said.

“Now we realize it was a mistake to leave Laos, and we would
like the opportunity to start over. We reaffirm that this was
voluntary,” he added.

The deportation came ahead of an official visit to Vientiane,
the Lao capital, by the new Thai Prime Minister Samak
Sundaravej. Thailand said the returning group had set “a good
example” for the 8,000 other Hmong in military-run Phetchabun.
Thailand has also pledged to clear the holding camp this year.

Some 149 Hmong held at a separate camp in Nong Khai meanwhile
threatened a hunger strike if they too are deported. That
group has been housed at an immigration center in Nong Khai,
about 500 kms (310 miles) northeast of Bangkok, since December
2006, and the UNHCR has called on the Thai government to free
them.

These Hmong, who claim to have fled persecution in neighboring
Laos, are recognized as refugees in need of protection and
should be allowed to leave Thailand to resettle elsewhere, the
UNHCR has said. Australia, Canada, the United States and the
Netherlands have offered to receive some of the refugees for
resettlement.

The Hmong say they fear political persecution in Laos. Many
Hmong fought on the side of a pro-U.S. Laotian government in
the 1960s and 70s before the communist takeover of their
country in 1975.

More than 300,000 Lao, mostly Hmong, fled to Thailand after
the takeover. Most were resettled in third countries,
particularly the United States, though several thousand were
voluntarily repatriated.

Thailand regards the Hmong as migrants rather than refugees
and says they have violated Thai law by entering the country
illegally. Thai authorities deported more than 300 of them in
2006.

Original reporting by Oratai for RFA's Lao service. Service
director: Viengsay Luangkhot. Executive producer: Susan
Lavery. Written and produced in English by Sarah Jackson-Han.

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© 2008 Radio Free Asia
Original reporting in Lao

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