Miserable life of foreign children detained in Thailand: HRW

The report titled "Two Years with No Moon, Immigration Detention of Children in Thailand" claims Thailand holds thousands of migrant children in detention each year. It details dozens of cases after HRW interviewed affected children and parents. 

It said that there are approximately 375,000 migrant children in Thailand, including children who work, children of migrant workers, and refugee and asylum-seeking children. Children constitute around 11 percent of Thailand’s total migrant population of 3.4 million people.

HRW suggested the Thai government enact legislation and policies to expeditiously end immigration detention of children consistent with the recommendations of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child; and sign and ratify the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. 

It also noted that while this report was completed prior to the coup, its findings remain relevant. The National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) has instituted no major policy changes regarding detention of migrant children.

"Thailand’s policy of detaining migrants has remained consistent across previous governments, including military governments," it said. 

The bare and brutal existence for children in detention is exacerbated by the squalid conditions. Leander P, an adult American who was detained in the Bangkok IDC, said that one of the two available toilets in his cell, occupied by around 80 people, was permanently clogged, so “someone had drilled a hole in the side – what would have gone down just drained onto the floor.” Multiple children we interviewed described cells so crowded they had to sleep sitting up. 

Even where children have room to lie down and sleep, they routinely reported sleeping on tile or wood floors, without mattresses or blankets. 

“The floor was made from wood, the wood was broken and the water came in,” said one refugee woman detained for months in the Chiang Mai IDC with a friend and the friend’s 6 and 8 year-olds. “While I was sleeping, a rat bit my face.” 

Severe overcrowding appears to be a chronic problem in many of Thailand’s immigration detention centers. The Thai government detained hundreds of ethnic Rohingya refugees, including unaccompanied children, in the Phang Nga IDC in 2013. Television footage showed nearly 300 men and boys detained in two cells resembling large cages, each designed to hold only 15 men, with barely enough room to sit. Eight Rohingya men died from illness while detained in extreme heat with lack of medical care in the immigration detention centers that year, said the report.