Mission & Justice

24/6/08

About 3,000 ethnic Hmong refugees people are refusing pressure from the Thai government to return home to Laos after a mass breakout last weekend from a detention centre in northern Thailand. On Friday some 5,000 refugees marched out of the Huey Nam Khao camp in Thailand’s Petchabun province, in an effort to bring attention to their claims for asylum. About 2,000 of the refugees have now reportedly agreed to return to Laos, some of them saying they had been offered $500 per family from the Laos government - the equivalent of half a years’ wage. But the remaining 3,000 have refused to move, and are demanding urgent help from the United Nations’ refugee agency.

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Joanna Maxwell; 20/6/08

Chief Yong Tong Veng, head of the Hmong people at Petchabun camp, is desperate. ‘We are hiding in this camp and no-one has come to help, the food is not enough. Do not send us back to Laos. Do not send us back to Laos. Please ask UNHCR [the United Nations Refugee agency] to help us. The Lao government shoot with big bullets in the jungle and children die. Do not send us back to Laos …’ Some 8000 Hmong people live in this camp, 350 kilometres north of Bangkok, towards the Lao border. They are surrounded by barbed wire and under military guard. They have insufficient food, no schooling and limited ability to access Thai hospitals. Epidemics are a constant threat. They must wear identity cards marked ‘in Thailand illegally’. They could be pitched back into Laos and the terrors it holds for them at any time.

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15/6/08

Pressure is mounting on Thailand to give greater protection to illegal migrant workers from Myanmar. Human rights groups say they make up around 75 per cent of foreign workers in Thailand, and that number is expected to rise in the wake of Cyclone Nargis. The Thai government has just introduced a new anti-trafficking law that recognises labour exploitation for the first time. But campaigners fear that the new regulations may not be enough, and that more needs to be done to help give migrant workers basic rights. The workers do a range of jobs in Thailand, including manning many of the fishing trawlers that work out of Bangkok harbour.

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1/6/08

A teenage transvestite who grew up on a military base was crowned Thailand’s most beautiful transvestite late Friday, in an extravagant annual pageant which transfixed the nation. Kangsadarn Wongdusadeekul, known by her stage name “Nonk,” cried as she accepted her Miss Tiffany crown from last year’s winner. Nonk, 19, particularly impressed the panel of judges with her question round. Asked if she would be happy to join the army as a man, she told the audience: “Last year I went to register as a soldier but my figure had changed so the government did not let me.

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Selina Downe; 23/4/08

A final check on the tarmac before the crew of the King Air launches their latest mission. Their objective: to make rain. The objective is to increase the amount of water or ice particles in the air, generating rain to wash pollution particles from the skies. “The objective is to make it rain in the north because haze is coming from forest fires or from burning garbage in the community,” says Parinya Sutthikosen of the Royal Rainmaking Bureau. “We have to reduce the fires and the amount of haze.”

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Nopporn Wong-Anan; 11/4/08

Survivors of a human smuggling tragedy in Thailand, in which 54 people suffocated in a locked container truck, will be deported back to army-ruled Myanmar, a Thai court has ruled. Fifty survivors were fined up to 2,000 baht each for being in the country illegally, but most could not pay and faced a brief jail term before they are deported, court officials said. Another 14 youths were sent to an immigration centre to await immediate deportation. The driver, named by police as Suchon Boonplongin, has eluded a manhunt since he abandoned the truck late on Wednesday.

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9/4/08

At least 54 migrant workers from Myanmar - most of them women - have suffocated to death in the back of a truck in southern Thailand. They were among 121 people being smuggled inside the freezer truck used to transport seafood late on Wednesday to the Thai resort island of Phuket to work as labourers, police Colonel Kraithong Chanthongbai said. Of the dead, 37 were women and 17 were men. Police say the driver failed to turn on the air-conditioning in the back of the truck. He stopped driving when he heard people banging on the walls and fled after opening the door to the container and seeing the bodies.

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