HRW to China: Care for refugees

In its latest report, “Isolated in Yunnan: Kachin Refugees from Burma in China’s Yunnan Province”, HRW said China allowed several thousand ethnic Kachin to stay but did not provide them any basic necessities.

“China is a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol as well as other international human rights treaties that require China not only to recognise refugees but also provide protection and cooperate with the UN refugee agency in operation for that mandate,” HRW deputy director for Asia Phil Robertson told a press conference in Bangkok yesterday.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC) in Beijing has not yet received permission from Chinese authorities to access the refugee communities in Yunnan, he said.

At least 7,000-10,000 Kachin who fled from war and abuse in Myanmar were now living in desperate conditions as they have received no humanitarian assistance from the Chinese government since they arrived in Yunnan last year, he said.

HRW’s 68-page report was based on interviews with more than 100 refugees, relief workers and other parties from June 2011-May 2012.

The Kachin refugees on China’s side of the border lack adequate shelter, food, potable water, sanitation and basic healthcare. Children have no access to education. As they obtain no assistance, the refugees need to seek work from local employers to earn a living.

Some 5,000 Kachin refuges live in “jungle camps” made of bamboo and plastic tarps. At town sites, most refugees pay rent to local Chinese businessmen for a space in a variety of squalid, open-air structures that were predominantly industrial spaces or abandoned, dilapidated apartment complexes, the report said.

Many Kachin refugees in Yunnan are subjected to arbitrary drug testing, arbitrary fines and prolonged and abusive detention in “rehabilitation centres”, Robertson said.

Clashes between the Myanmar military and the Kachin Independence Army broke out near a Chinese-led hydropower dam project in Kachin State in June 2011, ending a 17-year cease-fire agreement. About 65,000-75,000 ethnic people became displaced, most of them in the country, while 10,000 took refuge in China.

Some 300 of them reportedly were forced to return home in the conflict zone in Myanmar last year. HRW quoted a 25-year-old refugee as saying, “I don’t feel secure here at all because we are still on the border and too close to the Burma [Myanmar] side. I worry as the fighting continues, if the Chinese don’t accept us, where will we go? Where can we live?”

HRW called on Beijing to provide assistance and protection to the Kachin until the situation in Myanmar allowed them to return home safely and with dignity. It asked for the UNHRC to put pressure on the Chinese government for access to the refugees.