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Chutima Sidasathian & Alan Morison
Phuket Wan
December 27, 2012
PHUKET: A total of 127 Rohingya have been arrested in southern Thailand
and trucked back to the Thailand-Burma border.
Those held were in five minivans in a convoy bound for the Malaysian
border crossing at Padang Besar in Songkhla province.
On December 24 a police-Army checkpoint in Satun province pulled over
two of the vans, which each contained 22 men and boys.
The drivers of another three minivans fled after dropping off their
passengers, who totalled 83.
The youngest of those arrested was a boy aged 10. Most of the captured
Rohingya were teenagers or young men.
Hundreds are fleeing the Burmese state of Rakhine where thousands of
homes have been torched since June in a simmering racial conflict
between local residents and the Muslim Rohingya.
About 170 are reported to have been killed in the conflict, which has
left thousands of Rohingya confined in displaced persons camps.
Many prefer to take their chances by paying people smugglers and fleeing
by sea, with Malaysia as the target for most.
How the Rohingya arrested on December 24 got to Songkhla province in
southern Thailand is not known. Part of their journey was probably made
by sea.
Brokers on the Thai-Malaysia border are known to systematically transfer
Rohingya south from camps hidden in plantations in Thailand with the
connivance of officials in both countries.
The arrest of the 127 may have come because the officers at the
checkpoint are not part of the system or rival brokers have perhaps
fallen out.
The arrests were made by officers from Khuankalong police station in
Satun, where Lieutenant Sompong Meechoo said local police were not part
of any smuggling group.
''The Rohingya will be trucked straight back to Ranong,'' he said,
referring to the Thai-Burma border port hundreds of kilometres to the
north where the arrested men and boys could possibly have stopped off on
their journey.
Because the arrested Rohingya are inevitably all men and boys, some
reports speculate that they could be heading to join the insurgency in
Thailand's south.
Thailand's Internal Security Operations Command has checked out these
reports over several years but never found evidence to justify them.
Isoc tallies 2817 Rohingya arrested or ''helped on'' in Thailand in
October and November.
Other experts in the deep south conflict say there has never been an
instance where a single Rohingya has been killed or injured in
incriminating circumstances in eight years of conflict.
Chris Lewa, director of the advocacy group Arakan Project, said:
''Rohingya only transit through Thailand on their way to Malaysia,
helped on by Thai authorities.
''There has never been any evidence of Rohingya involvement in the deep
South insurgency.
''Why should countries in the region repeatedly make these kinds of
assumptions just because they are Muslims?''
The Rohingya are protective of their womenfolk, who seldom venture far
from home. However, having a boy of 10 among the latest batch of arrests
indicates some are becoming more desperate to flee Burma.
Hundreds of Rohingya are believed to be voyaging past the Andaman coast
and the holiday island of Phuket this relatively tranquil October-April
''sailing season.''
Those apprehended on land north of Phuket are usually trucked quickly
back to Ranong, often described as Burmese to reduce complications.
As stateless non-citizens, the Rohingya are not wanted back in Burma so
they are usually delivered to people smugglers.
The smugglers demand extra payments and those who cannot meet the terms
are usually put to work in fish factories or indentured to trawlers.
Earlier this month, Singapore refused to allow a Vietnamese cargo ship
to dock with 40 Rohingya who survived a sinking in which 200 are thought
to have drowned.
All of Burma's Asean neighbors continue to turn a blind eye to the tacit
ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya now underway in Burma.
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