|
|
TSUNAMI IMPACT: Thai Compassion for Burmese Migrants Wears Thin
By Sonny Inbaraj
BANGKOK, Jan 13, 2005 (IPS) - Underpaid and exploited, Burmese migrant workers
are often the hidden face of Thailand. When a killer tsunami lashed the
western Andaman Sea coastline of Thailand on Dec. 26, it came as no
surprise to Burmese activists that none of the local authorities
bothered to account for the bodies of these workers washed up on beaches.
‘'After the waves receded, some of the migrant workers who survived made
their way to Phuket Island's Patong beach,'' said Aung Myo Min, a
Burmese exile who is director of the Human Rights Education Institute of
Burma.
‘'They identified several bodies there as that of their friends and
tried to retrieve them. But they were chased away by the local search
and rescue teams,'' he added.
When these workers went back later in a second bid to retrieve the
bodies, they had disappeared, said Aung Myo Min, who led a survey team
to Phuket, Phang Nga and Ranong - the areas hit badly by killers waves
spawned by an undersea quake in the northernmost tip of Indonesia's
Sumatra island that killed over 150,000 in South and South-east Asia.
‘'We have the names of at least 163 dead Burmese migrant workers, but we
are not in a position to do anything. There's no next-of-kin, there's no
DNA testing, there's nothing. The bodies have just disappeared,'' he
told reporters.
‘'I know we are treated as second or even third class citizens in this
country, but this is not the way to treat our dead,'' said a frustrated
Aung Myo Min.
Sensationalist Thai media reports that Burmese gangs were looting areas
of southern Thailand affected by the tsunami have also not helped the
case of the migrant workers.
According to these media reports that quoted Thai police officials,
Burmese migrant workers had looted collapsed hotels and stolen from the
wreckage of tsunami victims' homes.
‘'Compared to looting by Thais, the number of the Burmese committing
crimes is insignificant,'' a Thai journalist told ‘Irrawaddy', a
newspaper-in-exile published in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. ‘'But
the Burmese are blamed because of their nationality. Prejudice towards
them has increased.''
The National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB), the
Burmese government-in-exile, reckons that at least 800 Burmese nationals
died and 1,500 went missing when the tsunami struck, killing a total of
over 5,000 in Thailand.
The NCGUB also condemned Burma's military regime for failing to offer
help to their nationals in neighbouring Thailand.
There are now fears that the emergency relief efforts could bypass
Burmese migrant workers because of their lack of legal status in the
country.
But Thai Minister for Natural Resources and Environment Suwit Khunkitti,
who is overseeing rehabilitation efforts in Phuket, said he was unaware
that Burmese migrants were denied emergency aid in the relief centres.
''In a catastrophe like this, everyone is entitled to aid regardless of
whether they are Thai or foreigners,'' he told IPS. ''I'll definitely be
looking into this matter.''
The international relief organisation World Vision also raised concerns
about the neglect of Burmese migrants by the emergency aid efforts.
‘'There has been no publicity at all about Burmese workers. They have
been totally forgotten,'' said a World Vision aid worker.
Human rights activist Aung Myo Min said many of the Burmese tsunami
survivors were also reluctant to make their way to the relief centres
because they had been told that emergency food supplies were only for
registered Thai citizens.
‘'Many of them felt humiliated and said they would rather die than face
such shame,'' he told IPS.
According to the Law Society of Thailand, there were 127,714 Burmese
migrant workers in the five Thai provinces hit by the tsunami, but only
22,504, or less than 18 percent were registered with the Thai Labour
Ministry. There are some one million Burmese migrant workers in Thailand.
Aung Myo Min said about 3,000 Burmese workers are taking shelter at
abandoned construction sites around the Kamala beach area in Phuket and
another 600, including women and children, are hiding in a rubber
plantation on Phang Nga Island.
‘'Most of them are afraid because they either have no working documents
or have lost their labour identification cards and work permits,'' he
said. ‘'The ones that have lost their labour IDs are afraid of being
arrested because they have no other documents to prove their status.''
According to local news reports, several Burmese workers who could not
show proper identification papers to local police officers were arrested
on sight for being suspected looters.
Aung Myo Min told IPS that he came across some cases where after
sympathetic non-governmental organisations had distributed emergency
relief to the Burmese migrants, the Thai police moved in to arrest
undocumented workers and suspected looters.
‘'This is sheer discrimination. Not every Burmese migrant worker is a
criminal,'' he said.
Many Burmese migrants have been forced out of Burma due to civil war,
extreme suppression of civil and political rights and political violence
that has resulted in extreme poverty throughout the country.
The majority of these people are Mon, Karen, Shan and Burman and over
half of these Burmese in Thailand are women and young girls.
‘'People who have already suffered from losing friends, relatives,
belongings and their jobs are now being subjected to harassment and
intimidation by the Thai authorities. That's just cruel,'' said Debbie
Stothard of the Burma lobby group Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma
(ALTSEAN) (END)
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
What is RSS?
