By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Dec 28 (IPS) - In a move that places greater weight on growing regional solidarity over historical ties with a western superpower, Thailand ordered its military to forcibly return over 4,000 men, women and children from the Hmong ethnic community to Laos, the country they had fled in search of political asylum.
By Monday, the first batch of 440 Hmong—an ethnic tribe living in the mountains of northern and central Laos—from an isolated camp in the Petchabun province in north-eastern Thailand was removed under the watchful eye of over 4,500 soldiers and police, says the Thai government’s spokesperson, Panitan Wattanayagorn, adding that the operation involving military trucks began at dawn.
"We have given instructions to the military officers that this move has to be conducted ensuring the safety of the Hmong and with no violations of their rights," says Panitan. "Our agreement with the Laotian government is that all the Hmong should be sent back by the end of the year."
It means that the "time for negotiations is over" and the Thai government will "not turn back on its decision," Panitan confirms in an interview with IPS. "That would undermine the relationship we have developed with our neighbour Laos in recent years. It is a relationship built on good faith."
Bangkok’s decision to send the Hmong back to communist-ruled Laos has prompted protests from a range of international actors, notably the United States. Washington has been equally troubled by Thai authorities justifying the deportation after characterising the majority of Hmong as "economic migrants," not refugees.
"This is a deeply disappointing decision by the government of Thailand," Eric Schwartz, U.S. assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, tells IPS in a telephone interview from Washington. "You cannot make categorical statements that all people are economic migrants unless the (Thai) government has knowledge of each individual case."
The U.S. government, the United Nations and concerned human rights groups state that at least 158 of the Hmong asylum seekers had been recognised as refugees by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). And a further 80 had "bullet wounds," suggesting that they had fled violence in Laos.
What is more, Thai officials have denied the UNHCR access to screen the largest group of the Hmong, who had been living in makeshift shacks at the Huay Nam Khao village in Petchabun. Journalists and other independent observers have also been denied contact to the same group.
According to Human Rights Watch, the New York-based global rights lobby, Thai authorities have violated international refugee laws by using "intimidation" to silence the Hmong. The coercive tactics included "light deprivation," separating parents from children and cutting off "access to clean water and proper sanitation."
"Thai authorities know very well that the United States and other countries would have been prepared and are still prepared to ensure the possibility of third-country resettlement for each person deemed to need protection," says Schwartz, who ended a mission to Bangkok last week, where he made a bid to secure a policy shift from senior Thai officials.
But for the Thai administration of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, that would have meant a further delay in ending a problem that traces its roots back to the mid-1970s. At that time, Thailand opened its borders to refugees who poured in from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam following the end of the U.S. government’s war in Indo-China. At its height, Thailand hosted over 1.5 million refugees.
"We have been trying to persuade the U.S. to take these people back but the U.S. has not said they will receive all of them," says Panitan, the Thai government spokesman. "Thailand cannot shoulder this burden alone."
Thailand’s stance suggests how far regional politics has changed since the end of the Cold War era, when Bangkok was Washington’s strongest ally on mainland South-east Asia during the wars the U.S. government waged in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
The Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) "secret war" in Laos was among them, beginning in 1961 and ending in 1975, when U.S. troops left Vietnam in defeat. This clandestine war staged by Washington’s spy agency depended on tens of thousands of Hmong for manpower.
The covert military operation to fight the advancing communist guerrillas in Laos resulted in the landlocked South-east Asian country coming under relentless aerial attacks—where over two million tonnes of explosives were dropped by U.S. bombers, more than the explosives dropped on Europe during the Second World War.
Both the U.S. public and the Congress were kept in the dark while this conflict raged. The CIA’s air base in Long Chen, in central Laos, became one of the busiest airports in the region at that time. Flights from Thailand were frequent.
But the triumph of the communist forces in Laos saw the Hmong flee their homeland in the thousands, first to Thailand as refugees and later to the United States for resettlement. Some 250,000 to 300,000 Hmong – nearly a third of this ethnic group’s population in Laos – joined this exodus decades ago.
In 2005, when the United States took in 15,000 Hmong who had been languishing in Thai refugee camps since the 1970s, Washington declared that it would the last group of refugees it was aiding.
But soon after that, the current group of Hmong asylum seekers surfaced in Petchabun, hoping for a similar journey to the U.S. for supporting the CIA during its "secret war" and being persecuted by the Laotian military since the conflict ended.
Among them is Blia Pao Yang, a leader of the refugees in Petchabun, says Joe Davy, a Hmong rights advocate in an e-mailed statement. "Many in his group have war wounds and have been documented by the Thai military as having legitimate asylum claims."
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