Things are really heating up in the waters off Thailand. We have been reporting about increased numbers of Burmese Muslim men—Rohingya—trying to reach Thailand by boat and being intercepted by the Thai Navy, see my post just yesterday.
Now, according to Phuket Wan, Refugees International and Amnesty International are weighing in on the case and blasting the Thai government for mistreating the Rohingya boat men.
AMNESTY International has released a report that accuses the Thai military of ”systematic” torture of suspected insurgents in the South.
The BBC says the report, citing testimony from victims, ”said troops had beaten and kicked detainees, given them electric shocks, near-suffocated them and sexually abused them.
”In one case, it said, three rubber farmers were detained. One was beaten until he died, the other two were brutally tortured by soldiers who wanted them to admit to being insurgents.”
This follows the report a day earlier from Washington-based Refugees International, calling on the Thai Government to ”instruct its Army to desist from its new and troubling policy of pushing refugees and migrants intercepted on boats back out to sea.”
For the Thai government’s side they maintain that the Rohingya are arriving to join the jihad on-going in southern Thailand. In light of the location in which all this is occuring the government of Thailand needs to come up with a better plan for handling illegal aliens. It’s kind of stupid of them to be allegedly violating human rights in plain view of New York tourists sunning at “The Luxury Destination of the Year” , or anywhere for that matter.
This human drama is being played out on the same Andaman stretch that was this week labeled ”The Luxury Destination of the Year” by the New York Times Travel Section.
My suggestion to the Thai government: Intercept the boats, have a nice detention center where the detainees are well cared for and as soon as possible deport them back to where they came from. In the long run it would be much cheaper even if you have to do it over and over again.
Unfortunately the push is now on, the “durable solution” drums are beating, to resettle Rohingya in the west and charges of such abuses will only help make Refugee International’s case that the Rohingya need to be living in your town. Most recently the UK and Canada have taken Rohingya.
See our ‘Rohingya Reports’ category here for more.