Thailand intends to force the Hmong refugees to "return voluntarily”

Alarming news reached the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) on Monday from Thailand: There refugees from Laos are to be forced to "return voluntarily” to their home country, although they are threatened there with torture and death. GfbV sources state that the Laotian-Thai Border Commission placed eight leading representatives of the Hmong under considerable pressure last Sunday (02.09.2007) in the Thai Hmong refugee camp Ban Huay Nam Khao to sign documents to this effect. However the refugees held out steadfastly. So they have been told to come back next Monday. Thailand does not recognize the Hmong as refugees. The United Nations refugee organisation UNHCR is refused access to the approximately 8,000 Hmong from Laos in the refugee camp.

"The Hmong are desperate. Many of them would rather die than have ever to return to Laos”, reported the GfbV Asia correspondent, Ulrich Delius. "There they remained for many years in hiding from the merciless persecution from the army and finally they crossed the border to the safety of Thailand, but nevertheless at the risk of their lives. To hand them over now to their persecutors would be a fatal violation of human rights and of humanity. The Society for Threatened Peoples appealed therefore urgently to the administration of the Kingdom to grant refuge to this minority, which is threatened with extermination.”

The Thai-Laotian Border Commission continues its discussions until Tuesday. In the past both countries had always agreed at such meetings that all Laotian Hmong refugees would be deported to Laos. More than 300 Hmong were forcibly deported last year – mostly with the use of tear-gas, batons and electroshocks.

"The loud international protest against the forcible deportations which have taken place have evidently made Thailand want to give the impression that the refugees had returned voluntarily”, assumes Delius.

Thailand is not interested in the solution of the humanitarian emergency, but only in its good relations with the neighbouring country. Although several third countries have signalised their preparedness to take the Hmong, Thailand strictly refuses to allow them to go to any country other than Laos.

In the jungle regions of Laos there are still some 10,000 Hmong – mostly descendents of the former resistance fighters, who however have long since given up any struggle, among them being many women and children.

Hidden from the eyes of the general public they are being chased by the Laotian and Vietnamese armies, tortured, mishandled and murdered.

Thousands of eye-witness reports and photo and video material prove these crimes, but the Laotian government denies all this.