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SCMP: An unlikely passage to freedo



Subject: SCMP: An unlikely passage to freedom

Wednesday, January 5, 2000
  
An unlikely passage to freedom
 
Stand off: guards and refugees at Maneeloy camp, Ratchaburi, near the 
Thai-Burmese border square up as tensions rise. Picture by James East 
JAMES EAST 
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Scores of Burmese exiles languishing in a Thai refugee camp have spent years 
calling for freedom and a future. Now their cries are being heard - as an 
ironic result of the Thai Government cracking down on their numbers. 
A shift towards a more hardline Thai policy now means that thousands of 
former Burmese, Mon and Karen resistance fighters are preparing to leave the 
Maneeloy camp huts in Ratchaburi, near the tense Thai-Burma border 130 
kilometres west of Bangkok, for new homes in the West. Twenty-three Burmese 
left for the United States last month, following in the footsteps of another 
similar-sized group that was removed to that country in November. These 
removals were arranged months ago, but much larger-scale movements are 
expected to clear the camps this year. 

The abrupt change is a consequence of the high-profile siege by five young 
gunmen of the Burmese embassy in Bangkok in October. The self-styled 
"Vigorous Burmese Warriors" presumably had little idea that taking more than 
30 people hostage and capturing the international spotlight for 24 hours 
would speed up the resettlement of their comrades. 

Removal to a Western country for the former rebels - so far Canada, the US, 
Australia, New Zealand and some Scandinavian countries have offered to take 
them - is second only to returning home to a Burma free of military 
dictatorship. 

Yet the crackdown has not been incident-free. Having set a deadline for 
anyone regarding themselves as refugees to enter the camp, hundreds more 
flooded in, overstretching inadequate resources. Moves by Ministry of the 
Interior officials who run the camp to tighten security measures and surround 
the inmates with razor wire led to violent flare-ups between the two groups 
and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), whose staff 
help run the centre. 

Burmese students first became activists during pro-democracy demonstrations 
against the junta in 1988. The soldiers killed thousands, while many 
survivors fled to the jungles where they joined the All Burma Students' Union 
or other forces seeking to overthrow the army. Scores have since died 
fighting junta forces in the rugged border terrain - shot, blown apart by 
mines or ambushed by heavily armed patrols. 

The universities, considered hotbeds of radicalism, were closed and have 
never reopened. The election in 1990 won by Aung San Suu Kyi's National 
League for Democracy but never recognised by the military led to further 
unrest. 

Some of these young "freedom fighters", many of them unwilling 
revolutionaries, crossed the notoriously porous border into Thailand. In 
1993, the interior ministry, worried that the newcomers might use Thailand as 
a base for cross-border attacks, decided to build a camp to monitor them. 

The number of rebels in Thailand increased in the mid-1990s when Burmese 
military advances flushed hundreds of pro-democracy fighters across the 
border. Once there, many melted into society while others approached the 
UNHCR in Bangkok to be registered as "People of Concern". They were sent to 
Maneeloy. 

Couples have married and children have been born into a life of wire fences, 
crude dormitories and the constant sight of sharp-eyed Thai soldiers 
patrolling with M16 rifles. Yet the Maneeloy authorities adopted a relaxed 
attitude to their "guests", and many rebels have come and gone from the camp, 
albeit illegally. 

That all changed with the embassy hold-up. Officials were applauded worldwide 
for their gentle handling of the kidnappers, who exited the embassy to a 
bizarre congratulatory send-off by the Westerners among the hostages before 
being helicoptered to freedom on the Thai-Burma border. Yet the episode 
brought Thai-Burma relations to their lowest point in years of tension, and 
caused outrage among Thais who accused the Burmese of abusing the kingdom's 
tolerant hospitality and of stealing jobs. 

Three of the "vigorous warriors" had come from Maneeloy, where police say the 
plot was hatched. Suddenly the camp acquired a reputation as a hotbed of 
subversion. Officials branded the student exiles a "security risk" and 
declared them no longer welcome. The UNHCR was told to find new homes for 
them and their families and a deadline was set for all rebels, many of them 
living in Bangkok, to be registered and placed in Maneeloy. 

Now housing 1,300 and expected to contain 3,000 once all registrants have 
been rounded up, the camp is a tense and unfriendly place. Police patrol 
constantly and threaten to arrest anyone who clambers over the newly laid 
barbed wire. A 6pm to 6am curfew is enforced. 

The only respite for inmates is a visit to the tea houses just outside the 
camp, where they spend the 800 baht (about HK$170) a month the UN gives them 
to make phone calls or buy cigarettes. 

Naing Aung, 28, a former fighter with the All Burma Students' Union, said he 
was grateful to Thailand for letting him stay, but that "we feel like we are 
living in a concentration camp". He said he was bored stiff and filled his 
day learning English in the camp, playing football or cashing in his food 
card for the three meals a day provided by the UN. 

Visitors can hear children rote learning in one of the three schools in the 
camp, a former police training school. At night Naing Aung sleeps in a 
barrack dormitory with 100 others while family friends are housed in bamboo 
huts in different ethnic communities scattered across the site. 

Naing Aung said the embassies were expected to start interviewing potential 
immigrants late last month. The UNHCR has moved uncharacteristically quickly 
to resettle them. 

"For the sake of public consumption, the Thais would like to see some of the 
exiles out of the country by the end of the year," said a UNHCR official. 

Yet many of the inmates may be waiting a long time. New Zealand and the US 
are expected to take the first batch, with Washington having agreed so far to 
take 1,500, but that is only half the estimated number needing removal. Some 
have infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and will have to receive 
treatment before they can fly to their new homes. 

Gary Pringle, first secretary for the Canadian embassy in Bangkok, said that 
once the UNHCR had told the embassy how many refugees wanted to live in 
Canada, immigration staff would interview candidates to see if they were 
suitable and screen them for medical problems. In previous years a steady 
flow of refugees from Maneeloy had left for Canada, he said. 

Meanwhile of 900 inmates that the UN has so far asked which countries they 
would like to live in, almost 85 per cent have opted for resettlement, with 
567 choosing the US, 263 Australia, 53 Canada and the rest other nations. 

Kachadpai Burusphat, secretary-general of the National Security Council, 
said: "The quicker the Burmese are sent abroad the less burden Thailand will 
have to shoulder." He warned hundreds of Burmese exiles who may try to avoid 
registering that they could be charged with illegal entry. That could lead to 
expulsion to Burma and once found by the junta, long prison sentences. 

Yet student exiles are the lucky Burmese in Thailand. The situation is far 
worse for the up to one million illegal Burmese migrants working in the 
country. Designated as economic migrants rather than refugees, political 
exiles or former student fighters, they have little chance of UN recognition 
as "People of Concern", and are being rounded up by police across the country 
and expelled. 

Since the embassy siege, tens of thousands of garment-factory workers, maids 
and farm labourers working in Thailand have been driven across the Moei River 
border and left to fend for themselves in the jungle. Some have reportedly 
drowned or been raped by Burmese soldiers, though the Burmese authorities 
vigorously denied this. 

The Thai government has pledged to kick out 600,000 migrants. Across the 
country illegal workers are hiding and hoping the zeal with which police are 
expelling migrants will fade. 
    
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