LLetter to the UNHCR Thailand

[uneoo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

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/* Written 6 April 6:00pm 1995 by uneoo@ on igc:reg.burma */
/* ---------------" Letter to UNHCR Bkk "---------------- */

Dr U Ne Oo
48/2 Ayliffes Road
St Marys SA 5042
Australia

April 3, 1995.

To /
Ruprecht von Arnim
Regional representative of the UNHCR in Thailand.

Dear Mr von Arnim.

As a Burmese national and a refugee in Australia, I support your
initiative for making protection for refugees from Burma.
According to reports, the refugees from Karen State continue
entering into Thailand and the existing refugee camps have been
terrorized by the break-away Buddhist Karen National Union
faction, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army. There are also
suggestions that the Burmese military complicity in such an act
of terrorizing refugees.  The existance of UNHCR would
discourage such an operation of terror by the above mentioned
parties.

Regarding with the setting up of the formal refugee camps at the
Thai Burmese border, some concerns has been raised by
non-governmental sources that present relief operation for
refugees may have been disrupted and posing a further stress on
the refugees. I would therefore support the UNHCR to consult
non-governmental organizations who currently engaging the relief
operation at Thai-Burmese border. These non-governmental
organizations , who in no doubt have good experience in running
the relief operations, nonetheless cannot give formal protection
to the refugees. My hope is that the UNHCR would be able to
provide supplementary to their relief operation whilst given the
full protection to the refugees in these camps. A joint
operation of some sort, providing a smooth and causing minimal
stress to the refugees should surely be able to formulate by
consultations. We will appreciate very much for you to keep
informing us of the developments concerning these matters.

Finally, I should like to express my sincere thanks to you and
UNHCR for helping refugees from Burma.

Yours sincerely,

U Ne Oo

cc: 1. Pierrie-Michel Fontaine, Regional representative for
Australia and New Zeland, the Office of UNHCR, Canberra.

2. Miss Alison Tate, Burma Research and Information Officer,
Austcare, Sydney.

ENDS\