'Legal vacuum' on Rohingya

The absence of a policy to deal with Rohingya arriving in Thailand is imposing a burden both on the country and the refugees from Myanmar. 

“Thailand has no domestic laws and we are not party to the UN Convention on Refugees. Therefore, we cannot properly handle the issue,” Thai Committee for Refugees Foundation executive director Veeravit Tianchainan said during a recent meeting on the Rohingya at the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in Bangkok.

Experts are saying that had there been laws in place to deal with refugees like the Rohingya, Thailand would not be facing this problem today. Over 1,500 Rohingya have arrived in Thailand since January this year, and authorities predict more boats will arrive in the coming months. The mass arrival of the refugees in Thailand is proving costly: an estimated Bt3.37 million for food for a full month, at Bt75 per person a day for 1,500 refugees. That’s over Bt20 million, at minimum, for a period of six months, assuming there will be no more arrivals. 

A law on refugees would allow for a systematic screening, registration and status determination of refugees entering Thailand. With a law, there would be no arbitrary arrests and detention, illegal migrants will be dealt with accordingly, and asylum seekers will be treated more humanely. Veeravit said a refugee law has yet to be finalised before it could be submitted to Parliament.

For now, Thailand considers a non-Thai who illegally enters the country as an illegal migrant, to be charged under the law. “[But] arresting and detaining them is violation of human rights,” Veeravit said. 

As a signatory to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), Thailand cannot subject refugees to arbitrary arrests and detention. But since the Rohingya in Thailand do not fall under that category, they will continue to be treated as illegal.

In Thailand, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) would be in the best position to properly screen the Rohingya. But the UN agency is barred from conducting full refugee status determination for Myanmar asylum seekers in Thailand, although the government has initially granted UNHCR access to the Rohingya recently detained in the southern provinces. Under CAT, the principle of nonrefoulement also prohibits Thailand from returning refugees to a country where their “life or freedom would be threatened”.

 

On to Malaysia 

Most of the Rohingya coming to Thailand are en route to Malaysia. The Thai government in 2008 in fact came under fire for its policy of “pushing back” Rohingya boat people to sea so they can move on to Malaysia, where there are nearly 60,000 Rohingya. Others proceed to Indonesia, their next choice. 

A source told AsiaNews that that those coming from Maungdaw in the western state of Rakhine pay brokers Bt60,000 to go to Malaysia. The money will cover the boat fee and pay-offs to border guards, defence authorities, immigration officers and the police. According to the source, if the refugees could not pay up in full, they will be hauled off to so-called “smugglers’ camps”, tortured, and sold to “labour brokers”. The men, for instance, will be forced to work in fishing trawlers for months to cover their debts. Once fully paid, they will be brought back to the Thai mainland where they can get a boat and proceed to Malaysia.

 “These women [referring to the recent arrivals] want to follow their husbands to Malaysia since the men can never go back to [Myanmar],” said Chis Lewa of the The Arakan Project, a group that does research-based advocacy on the situation of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar.

“We’d rather be here than in Myanmar, where we will surely die,” 24-year-old Nguru told AsiaNews. Nguru is the mother of a now two-week-old baby born on a boat from Sittwe that arrived in Phang Nga province in January. Her husband is detained at the Phang Nga immigration detention centre while she and her children are at a shelter. “We leave it all to Allah,” she said.