Detained Muslim boy's death sparks call for improvement
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The Office of Sheikul Islam, Southern Branch, has demanded a better place to house a group of Muslims who are being detained pending verification of their nationality, after a young member of the group died of tuberculous meningitis on Monday.
“The current place is a bit too crowded,” the office’s director Wisut Binlaatah said yesterday.
He will today seek a meeting with the governor of Songkhla province to raise his concerns.
More than 200 Muslims were arrested in March on charges of illegal entry. Both China and Turkey have suggested that these migrants could be their citizens.
These people have been held for about nine months while the verification process drags on.
The head of a Songkhla-based Muslim doctors’ group said he was asking two United Nations agencies to step in and help take care of these people.
“The current detention place is not appropriate,” he said.
The detainees’ access to medical services was also not good enough, he said.
“It’s hard for any ailing detainee to get to a hospital because there are no officials to accompany him or her to the medical facilities,” he said.
The boy who died on Monday had reportedly been in serious condition by the time he began receiving any serious medical help.
