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| A Rohingya migrant looking out from the window of a police van while being transported out of jail to the Thai immigration police in the southern province of Ranong, on January 31, 2009. Rights groups decry Thailand for failing to help Rohingya migrants who reach its territory, instead pushing them back to Myanmar or on to neighbouring countries. |
Around 400 Rohingya migrants discovered in a raid on a camp hidden in a
remote rubber plantation in southern Thailand will be deported back to
Myanmar, Thai police said on Friday.
The group, 378 men, 11 women and 12 children, were found in a makeshift
shelter in the plantation in Songkhla province where they had languished
for three months waiting to be trafficked to a "third country", local
police said.
Acting on a tip-off officials stormed the shelter on Thursday and found
the Rohingya, a Muslim minority group not recognised as citizens in
Myanmar who have fled sectarian unrest in their thousands to Thailand
and other countries.
"They are now waiting for deportation which will be done by Thailand's
immigration police," Lieutenant Colonel Katika Jitbanjong of Padang
Besar local police told AFP.
"They told officials that they had volunteered to come (to Thailand),"
he said, adding police were seeking an arrest warrant for the Thai
landowner on charges of human trafficking and sheltering illegal
migrants.
Rights groups decry Thailand for failing to help Rohingya migrants who
reach its territory, instead pushing them back to Myanmar or on to
neighbouring countries including Malaysia, which offers sanctuary to the
minority.
"Thailand is pursuing a beggar-thy neighbour approach," according to
Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch Asia.
"Thailand is using the good policy of its neighbour (Malaysia) to escape
its own international obligation to protect refugees and it is
shameful."
The UN refugee agency has called on Myanmar's neighbours to open their
borders to people fleeing a wave of communal violence in the western
Myanmar state of Rakhine.
Clashes between Buddhists and Muslims have left at least 180 people dead
in Rakhine since June, and displaced more than 110,000 others, mostly
Rohingya.
Myanmar views the roughly 800,000 Rohingya in Rakhine as illegal
Bangladeshi immigrants and denies them citizenship.
Although the tensions have eased since a new outbreak of killings in
October, concerns have grown about the fate of asylum-seekers setting
sail in overcrowded boats.
Last week Thailand deported 73 Rohingya boat people back to Myanmar,
after they landed on the southern island of Phuket.
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