Asia Times: For refugees, only uncertainty is certain



	February 11, 1999	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

For refugees, only uncertainty is certain
By Simrin Sigh

CHIANG MAI, Thailand - Hundreds of thousands of Burmese refugees huddle in front of fires in secret hideouts across the border in Thailand or in camps overseen by Thai authorities, their future hanging in painful suspense.

Most of them are unsure if winter will be spent in relative safety on Thai soil or if they will be pushed back into Burma, to face the dry season onslaught of the Burmese army.

Abandoned by the international community and persecuted by their own government, the only hope for these refugees, most of whom belong to ethnic minority groups, are non-governmental organizations who offer some material help inside, and sometimes outside, the few refugee camps along the border.

Their plight is placing international bodies like the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) under harsh scrutiny, for their lack of response to the refugee problem along the Thai-Burma border.

Critics contrast this to the UNCHR's high-profile involvement with Cambodian refugees in the past two decades.

''I am writing to express my concern over the protracted silence of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Bangkok in the face of ongoing abuse of Burmese refugees by the Thai Government, army and police force,'' said ''an overlooked refugee from Burma'' in one of several letters criticizing the UNHCR published in a Bangkok-based English daily.

Of primary concern, the letter states, is ''the issue of a lack of recognition and protection for these refugees'' by UNHCR.

''The UNHCR's 'indifference' is a direct reflection of the lack of geopolitical interest of the international community and donors in Burma,'' says an NGO activist working with refugees.

This, he adds, is reflected in what critics describe as UNHCR's ineffectiveness, unclear mandate, diplomatic paralysis and neglect, which they say seem to have plagued its work with Burmese refugees.

But UNHCR officials in Bangkok say otherwise, saying its wider presence on the border will allow it to become more familiar with refugees from Burma. ''Whereas we have long familiarity with other groups who have crossed the borders with Laos and Cambodia, we are not so familiar with those entering Thailand from Myanmar [Burma],'' said Rob Burrows, a spokesman, in reply to written questions.

While the United States and many European nations have been very vocal in condemning the Burmese government, NGO workers say they do not consider the country as politically important as Yugoslavia or Iraq and hence have done little to help the victims of the regime's policies.

Following the toppling of the Pol Pot regime by the Vietnamese army-backed rebel forces, thousands of Cambodians crossed over into Thailand. After an initial period of confusion the UNHCR set up some of the largest refugee camps of their kind anywhere in the world catering to more than 300,000 people.

Because of its political significance at that time, as William Shawcross notes in his book ''The Quality of Mercy'', ''so keen were the Western donors to provide money for UNHCR's work in Thailand, that refugees there had more dollars per head spent on them than refugees anywhere else in the world."

For Thailand too, the refugee camps were useful both for the revenues they brought to the economy and the image-building and political purpose they served, since successive Thai governments have seen Cambodia as a buffer against ''communist threats'' from Vietnam.

In the case of Burmese refugees however, the record of both the UNHCR as well as the Thai government has been very different, critics say.

While till the mid-80s influxes of Karen, Mon, Karenni and other ethnic minority groups fleeing attacks by the Burmese army were tolerated by the Thai government, it tightened entry when more than 7,000 Burmese student activists fled across the border after a bloody suppression of the 1988 pro-democracy uprising.

The Thai government's crackdowns on Burmese refugees further intensified after closer economic ties were established between the two countries in 1992.

In the early nineties, initially some students, under the aegis of the UNHCR, were granted ''refugee'' status. But soon Thai authorities decided that using terms like ''temporarily displaced persons'' and ''illegal migrants'' suited their interests better, giving them greater flexibility vis-a-vis the fleeing Burmese.

The UNHCR showed no real interest on the Thai-Burma border, critics say. It was only in 1992 that for the first time UNHCR officials went to the border to assess situation in the camps.

''UNHCR's apparent lack of interest in the border refugees wasinterpreted by the Thai government as confirmation that the ethnic minorities were not really refugees, and the Thai classification, 'temporarily displaced,' went unchallenged,'' says ''Unwanted and Unprotected: Burmese Refugees in Thailand'', a recent report by the human rights group Human Rights Watch.

As a result, there has been little supervision of the regular ''forced'' repatriation by the Thai army of thousands of Mon, Shan, Karen and Karenni refugees and Burmese students, it said.

This has in turn reinforced UNHCR's policy of not annoying its host government, so as to maintain its offices in Bangkok, and more recently in Mae Hong Son, Tak and Kanchanaburi provinces along the Thai-Burma border.

Early this year it was allowed to open these three new offices, ostensibly to enhance the agency's role in four areas: witnessing admission, assisting Thai authorities in registration, assisting in the relocation of temporary shelters and helping Burmese displaced persons with safe return.

Burrows said UNHCR has been granted by the Thai government an ''expanded role'' at the border with Burma. ''We envisage our main tasks at present to observe the Royal Thai Government's process of admission to persons fleeing fighting or the consequences of civil war,'' he says.

But few expect any long-term solutions for the displaced Burmese, given the UNHCR's narrow definition of ''refugees'' - taken usually to mean only those with a well-founded fear of persecution owing to political beliefs - and given Thailand's refusal to ratify the 1951 United Nations Conventionrelating to the Status of Refugees.

''There is a lot of fear among refugees regarding UNHCR's new screening process on the border,'' says an activist working with refugees who did not want to be named. ''When they ask questions about where people are coming from, there is a genuine fear of being forcibly repatriated,'' she added.

Still, Burrows said that although Thailand is not a signatory to the convention on refugees, the government has granted temporary asylum to some 1.4 million refugees and displaced persons since 1975. ''For that it deserves due credit."

(Inter Press Service)

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