Laos insists to take Hmong

The repatriation of more than 7,500 Hmong being held in Phetchabun's Ban Huay Nam Khao is the main topic on the agenda of a meeting of a ThaiLaos border security joint subcommittee to be held Sunday until Tuesday.

Along with the meeting, Lao officials would have a chance for the first time to visit Hmong refugees in Ban Huay Nam Khao camp, according to Lao spokesman Yong Chanthalangsy.

"We have filmed a documentary to show them how the Lao government treated their Hmong fellows who returned from Thailand previously," Yong told The Nation via a phone interview from Vientiane.

Vientiane had also prepared new homes for those who have sold all their property and have no relatives to rely on, said Yong who is also a member of the subcommittee. The homes are in Kaxi district in Vientiane province, he added.

The Thai side was classifying the Hmong people and would hand the information to Laos to verify their place of origin. Many of them claimed they were close associates of the secret CIA fighters who fought against the communist movement before the fall of Vientiane in 1975 and fled from suppression at home. Thailand and Laos considered them as normal illegal migrants who must be deported.

A USbased group dedicated to the Hmong said Thailand had quietly deported more than 400 Hmong since November 2004 when they initially gathered in Ban Huay Nam Khao, but only 53 of them could be accounted for while the remaining 350 had gone missing in Laos.

However, Yong said his government had taken more than 300 Hmong deported from Thailand over the past years. "Even with the group of 26 Hmong deported without notification to Vientiane in December 2005, the Lao authorities managed to find them and resettled them mostly in their places of origin," he added. The Lao government needed time to verify the figure of whether any groups were deported without acknowledgement from Vientiane, he said.

Laos and Thailand would continue the repatriation of the Hmong until the end, Yong said, and noted that the meeting next week might not be able to fix a schedule for the repatriation.

"The Hmong issue is a matter left over for more than 30 years  sooner or later we must solve the problem," Yong said.

A New Yorkbased humanrights group issued a statement yesterday urging the Thai government not to forcibly repatriate thousands of Lao Hmong refugees detained in Thailand into likely persecution in Laos.

"It is shocking that Thailand is even considering the return of refugees fleeing political persecution, rights abuses and fighting in Laos," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The Thai government's threatened return of the Lao Hmong refugees shows a brazen contempt for the most basic principle of refugee law."

The Thai government should accept the offers from other countries to resettle some Hmong refugees and allow other refugees to remain in Thailand until their cases can be resolved, the statement said. Human Rights Watch also expressed concern about a group of 149 Hmongs detained at the Immigration Detention Centre in Nong Khai province.

In January, a deportation attempt was aborted after male refugees locked themselves inside a building and threatened to commit suicide. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and many embassies intervened, convincing the government to back down.

Laos spokesman Yong said the group in Nong Khai would also be discussed during the meeting next week in the same package as those in Ban Huay Nam Khao. He said Vientiane needed them to go home.

The United States, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands have offered resettlement places to the 149 Lao Hmong refugees in Nong Khai, but the Thai authorities have refused to allow them to leave, the Human Right Watch statement said.

Supalak Ganjanakhundee

The Nation