Thailand’s Culpability and a Flawed Policy of Deterrence

Thailand’s recent ill-treatment of the Rohingya migrants and asylum seekers is an unfortunate continuation of past policy. Steadily increasing numbers of Rohingya arriving in southern Thailand have sparked a deterrence policy that violates Thailand’s international legal obligations towards asylum seekers. In 2007, Thai authorities took into custody hundreds of Rohingya near Ranong in southern Thailand and sent them to a detention center further north in the Thai-Burma border town of Mae Sot. Soon after, over 80 detainees were forcibly returned to Burma in an area controlled by a pro-SPDC militia, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA).[30] The DKBA is notorious for its involvement in drug trafficking, illegal logging and extortion of migrant workers. Most of the rest could not afford to be smuggled home; many trickled back into Thailand and some were eventually trafficked to Malaysia.

Thailand claims the Rohingya are a threat to national security. Military officials routinely accuse Rohingya of being Muslim mercenaries masquerading as migrant workers, coming to Thailand to volunteer with southern Thai Muslim separatist militants. Royal Thai Navy Vice-Admiral Supot Prueska told reporters in 2007 that the authorities were “keeping a close watch on a group of Burmese Muslims called Rohingyas…(t)hey are not coming here to take up decent jobs, but only to help insurgents in the three provinces…(t)hese Rohingya mercenaries, aged between 20 and 40 have a violent past and were ready to take orders to do anything in exchange for money.”[31]

While some of the human and contraband smuggling networks are also involved in arms smuggling from Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh, no Rohingya has ever been implicated in violent attacks in Thailand or linked with the armed separatist groups fighting in Thailand’s deep South.[32]

In early 2008, then Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej threatened to intern the Rohingya on a “desert island.”[33] In late December, Thai security forces used remote Ko Sai Deang (Red Sand Island) as a holding center for apprehended Rohingya before towing them out to sea.

In charge of the Rohingya security operation in early 2009 was Royal Thai Army officer Col. Manas Kongpan of the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC). Five years earlier a Thai court had named Manas in an investigation of a massacre of Thai Muslims at the Krue Se mosque in April 2004. He was unapologetic about his unit’s treatment of the Rohingya, denying any harsh measures and saying Thailand’s policy was in line with international humanitarian practice. “The issue has become a scandal because of a newsman slandering the military and bad-mouthing Thailand,” he told the Bangkok Post.[34] Prime Minister Abhisit has announced an investigation, but past investigations into abuses against migrants and asylum seekers indicate there is little likelihood that responsible officers will be punished.

Malaysia is the preferred destination of Rohingya men looking for work. There is a thriving Rohingya community within the large Burmese population in Kuala Lumpur and Penang, yet all refugees, asylum seekers and migrant workers live a precarious existence, fearful of Malaysian police and the “deputized citizens corps” militia called RELA (Ikatan Relawan Rakyat Malaysia), subjecting them to arbitrary arrests, beatings, and intimidation.[35]

In Indonesia, the nearly 400 Rohingya who arrived at Pulao Wei island off the coast of Sumatra appear to have won a temporary reprieve after Indonesia initially threatened to send them back to Burma.

Conditions in the remaining Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh have marginally improved in the past two years, but living standards are still primitive and options for resettlement slim. Thousands more Rohingya eke out a desperate survival around the Bangladesh coastline and border with Burma, with few options—too fearful to return to their own country and faced with little support from Bangladeshi authorities who refuse to register them as refugees or provide them with basic services. According to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), an NGO which has long provided aid to the Rohingya in Bangladesh, “It is an impossible choice—return and face imprisonment or try to settle on otherwise unwanted patches of land in a country that gives you no recognition.”[36]

In response to the intransigence of Burmese officials at the April 2009 Bali Process meeting, Bangladeshi foreign minister Dipu Moni refuted the claims that the Rohingya were not from Burma:

The Rohingyas are living in Myanmar (Burma) for centuries and many Rohingyas even held high posts in the Government of Myanmar. Just dropping names from population list would not make them anything other than an ethnic entity of Myanmar. Previous repatriation of quite a few hundred thousand Rohingyas and acceptance of the list of further 28,000 Rohingyas proved that they are very much part of the population of Myanmar. Bangladesh with its limited resources had done more than enough for the refugees from Myanmar over the last three decades. Myanmar must now take back its own people.[37]

Not all those men in the boats are Rohingya fleeing oppression. Some are ethnic Bengalis from Chittagong in Bangladesh blending in to get a job in Malaysia. For both Rohingya and Bengalis, the trip is extremely expensive: US$300 for the journey from the Burma or Bangladesh coast to southern Thailand and later another US$500-700 in smuggling fees. The average annual wage in Burma is less than US$300, although most Rohingya would earn well below this. The willingness to spend such large sums underscores the urgency Rohingya feel to escape Burma—and is further indication why countries receiving the Rohingya should allow the UNHCR to have access to them and offer protection as it tries to determine who is an asylum seeker or refugee.