BANGKOK – The Thai government does not appear to be investigating how a group of fleeing Rohingya refugees from Myanmar were found dead and injured on Thai soil on October 17. He underlines this with a note released by Human Rights Watch. It was the monks of a monastery, in a remote area in southern Thailand, who found the group of refugees in difficulty. At least 10 were in critical condition, many completely unconscious and two were dead. The survivors were taken to hospitals in Lang Suan district, Chumphon province, about 500 kilometers south of Bangkok.
Crammed into refrigerated trucks. “The Thai government should launch credible investigations to reconstruct the events that led to the deaths of those people and bring those responsible to justice,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director of Human Rights Watch. According to initial reports from survivors, a group of around 70 Rohingya from Rakhine State in Myanmar arrived in Thailand on October 16, near Mae Sot district in Tak province. Once in Thailand, the Rohingya were packed into refrigerated trucks for a 1,500 kilometer journey to the Malaysian border.
People crushed to death by trucks. About 1,000 kilometers into that journey, in Lang Suan, the drivers of one of the trucks stopped to remove Rohingya who had been crushed to death, were unconscious or were otherwise too weak to continue the journey. For years, human rights organizations and the media have reported on Thailand’s extensive human trafficking networks. Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar have often used Thailand as a transit country to reach Malaysia, where a significant number of Rohingya refugees live.
The branched network of human traffickers. In July 2017, the Bangkok Criminal Court sentenced 62 people, including an influential army general, to long prison terms for their roles in smuggling or trafficking Rohingya from Myanmar. Lang Suan’s case indicates that Rohingya trafficking appears to continue, Human Rights Watch said. Rohingya fleeing persecution and violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State and abuse in Bangladeshi refugee camps have received little protection from Thai authorities , he said Human Rights Watch.
The system of apartheid in Myanmar. In recent months, the Myanmar military and the ethnic Arakan Army have committed mass killings, arson and illegal recruitment against Rohingya in Rakhine State. About 630,000 Rohingya remain in Myanmar under a system of apartheid which makes them particularly vulnerable to new combats. The conflict has displaced more than 320,000 people in Rakhine State and southern Chin State since hostilities resumed in November 2023.
Bangladesh is home to one million Rohingya. In Bangladesh, around one million Rohingya refugees are facing increasingly dire conditions in camps in Cox’s Bazar, due to increased violence from armed groups and criminal gangs. Since January 2023, more than 8,000 Rohingya have attempted dangerous boat journeys from Myanmar and Bangladesh, around 600 of whom have died or are missing. Rohingya have increasingly sought to flee to third countries by land across the Thailand-Myanmar border, given the risks of maritime transit due to boat rejections and anti-migrant violence.
The Thai government blocks the work of UNHCR. The Thai government has a long-standing policy of refusing to allow theUnited Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to conduct checks to determine the refugee status of Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar. Thailand is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, has not incorporated the international definition of refugee into national law, and does not have an adequate and accessible mechanism for determining asylum claims.
People locked up in squalid prisons across the country. Thai authorities summarily treat Rohingya found in Thailand without legal documents as illegal immigrants, despite threats of persecution and mistreatment in Myanmar. Thai immigration officials detain Rohingya men in squalid prisons across the country. These detention cells are severely overcrowded with inadequate ventilation, food and medical care. In some cases, detainees barely have room to sit, much less sleep.
Several died in custody. Thai authorities have sent Rohingya women and children to shelters run by the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security. The Thai government’s use of prolonged detention of asylum seekers and migrants violates international human rights law’s prohibitions against arbitrary detention. Thailand is also bound by customary international law’s ban on refoulement not to forcibly return anyone to a place where they would face a threat to their life or a real risk of persecution, torture or other ill-treatment.
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