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Published on November 11, 2007

"It's depressing that a fellow human being who happens to be better off socially carefully drafted an official letter to segregate those socially maginalised Burmese from us," Onk Banjun, chairman of the Youth Mon in Bangkok Club, said in his e-mail to the media and academics.

Onk referred to the notice issued by Governor Veerayuth Ieam-ampar to the province's Employment Office, employers and factory-owners asking them not to allow foreign workers, especially from Burma, to organise any cultural events at all.

More than 70 per cent of the Burmese workers in the province are believed to be Mon.

In his letter, Veerayuth perceived migrant workers as causing a myriad problems involving their health, dependants, children without Thai citizenship, criminal activities, disregard for Thai law and cultural ceremonies that would cause security problems for the country.

Onk demanded the government, and the Samut Sakhon governor in particular, recognise that the Thai culture

venerated by Thais was not pure Thai but mixed with cultures from various ethnic groups from neighbouring countries.

Sukanya Bao-nerd, a Mon-Thai resident working as an archaeologist with the Fine Arts Department, supported Onk.

In her letter Sukanya talked about the beauty of the Mon culture long observed both by Mon migrants and Thai citizens with Mon ethnicity in the province.

"We speak the same language and celebrate the same culture, so we're not foreigners to each other," she said.

Why can't the governor see the splendour of Mon culture, which has become a strong point of the province, she wondered.