All Hmong must go
By Post reporters
The 7,700 Hmong refugees currently living in a make-shift camp in Phetchabun will be deported to Laos as no countries have come forward to offer them resettlement.
Supreme Commander Boonsrang Niumpradit said on Saturday the Hmong living at the Ban Huay Nam Khao camp in Khao Kho district had little chance of being offered resettlement in a third country and therefore had no choice but to return to Laos.
"None of them are allowed to live in Thailand anymore and Laos is ready to take them back," he said.
Officials said it would take them two months to get the personal records in order for all the refugees after which they would be deported to Laos.
Gen Boonsrang dismissed fears from human rights groups that the Hmong will be mistreated by the Laotian authorities if they were to return to Laos.
Third Army commander Jiradet Khotcharat said the deportation of the Hmong was not a matter of concern because they had illegally entered Thailand and therefore had to be sent back.
Many of the Lao Hmong were allies of the US and fought against the communists during the Vietnam War. After the 1975 victory of the communist Pathet Lao, about 300,000 Hmong poured into Thailand, many later resettling in the US and elsewhere.
Lt-Gen Jiradet said the recent relocation of Lao-born Hmong at Ban Huay Nam Khao refugee camp to a new shelter, about two kilometres away, went well.
Security is been heightened at the new camp, and access to the refugees is being very tightly restricted.
The authorities want to ensure no new Hmong refugees sneak into the camp, he said.
A security source said an average of about 12 Hmong babies are born in the camp every month, leading to increasing overcrowding
Bangkok Post July 22, 2007
