According to Human Rights Watch, Thailand is still dangerous for immigrants fleeing harassment.
PUBLISHED: 18 May 2024 at 15: 08
In a statement released this week, Human Rights Watch claims that Thai officials are helping neighboring governments carry out immoral activities against refugees and dissenters from overseas, making the country more dangerous for those fleeing persecution.
According to the organization, some targets of international suppression have gotten caught up in a” transfer mart” where foreign dissidents in Thailand are essentially traded for Thai government employees who reside abroad.
The review” We Thought We Were Safe: Repression and Refoulement of Immigrants in Thailand” describes a rise in repression against foreigners seeking refugee shelter there.
According to the review, foreign governments have frequently coerced and cooperated with Thai authorities by subjecting exiled dissidents and activists there to abuse, monitoring, and physical violence.
According to the report, Thai authorities frequently detained asylum seekers and refugees and sent them home without having a legal case with their home countries.
Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch ( HRW), noted that” Thai authorities have increased engaged in a” swap mart” with neighboring governments to unlawfully exchange each other’s dissidents.
Srettha Thavisin, the prime minister, should stop using this tactic and bring charges against Thai leaders who have collaborated with foreign governments on Thai soil.
HRW said it analysed 25 circumstances that took place in Thailand between 2014 and 2023 and conducted 18 discussions with patients, their family people, and testimony to crimes, along with members of local and international nongovernmental companies.
Members of Asean, China, Bahrain, and other nations are among the accountable institutions.
In one instance, it claimed a Cambodian opposition leader who had fled to Thailand in July 2022 said he began receiving letters from Thai authorities urging him to leave the country’s main opposition group.
Unexplained men attacked him in August 2023 after he had been receiving these words for decades. They simply came out and started beating me, the rebel said.” They did not say something to me.
In recent years, Thai politics proponents have been violently disappeared or killed, and a Malay LGBTI rights influence has been targeted for resettlement in Thailand. Dissenters from Vietnam have also been tracked lower and abducted.
At the government’s demand, Thai authorities detained and unjustly deported Chinese rebels and refugees. A Bahraini professional football player with American refugee status was even detained by Thai authorities, who almost brought him back.
At the same time, a number of Thai protesters have been killed or disappeared in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Later, two missing protesters ‘ bodies were discovered floating in the Mekong River, where they were mutilated.
The” Transfer shop” plans increased under the military administration that came into power following the coup in May 2014, and they continued under the post-2019 administration of Prime Minister Gen Prayut Chan- o-cha.
In addition to facilitating assaults, abductions, enforced disappearances and another abuses, HRW said, Thai authorities regularly violated the concept of non- refoulement: the ban on returning people to a position where they would face a real risk of persecution, torture or other threats to life.
Additionally, Thai authorities have detained and immediately deported exiled critics and dissidents, even those whose refugee status has been determined by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees ( UNHCR ).
” Prime Minister Srettha should take action to restore Thailand’s deserved reputation as a haven for international dissidents,” Ms. Pearson said.
He should demand that refugees and political dissidents’ arbitrary arrests, violent assaults, and forced returns be immediately investigated.