The Stateless Rohingya Blog

Rohingya in Thailand suffer abuse from human traffickers By  Phuketwan July 11, 2014 PHUKET : Thailand and Burma have agreed to ''facilitate the safe return'' of 130,000 displaced persons to their homeland, General Prayuth Chan-ocha said tonight.  He also said the issue of the Rohingya boatpeople had been discussed with Myanmar's Commander in Chief of Defence Forces, General Min Aung Hlaing, in Bangkok this week.  ''The gist of the meeting is that Thailand and Myanmar (Burma) will cooperate in helping displaced persons from fighting in Myanmar,'' the general said in his weekly national telecast. He took charge of Thailand in a coup on May 22. Details are likely to emerge in the next day or two about precisely what the two countries plan for the large number of refugees from Burma now living in Thailand. ''These people have been staying in temporary shelters with certain restrictions for a long time,'...

By International Federation for Human Rights Media Release Phuketwan.com  July 5, 2014 BANGKOK : The Burmese Government must end the prosecution of Rohingya human rights defender Kyaw Hla Aung and immediately release him, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, an FIDH-OMCT joint program, and the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma (ALTSEAN-Burma) said today. Lawyer U Kyaw Hla Aung, an Activist for Peaceful Co-existence On July 7, 2014, Kyaw Hla Aung, a prominent human rights lawyer, will appear before the Sittwe District Court to face various charges, including ''rioting and being armed with deadly weapons'' (Article 148 of theCriminal Code) and ''injuring a civil servant, interfering with his official duties'' (Article 333 of the Criminal Code). ''The ongoing detention of Kyaw Hla Aung is symptomatic of the Burmese Government's relentless persecution of Rohingya and its misguided policies in Ara...

A final resting place ends long and cruel treatment for five Rohingya By Chutima Sidasathian and Alan Morison PhuketWan February 12, 2014 PHUKET: Five boatpeople, victims of Thailand's traffickers, were buried in a Songkhla village yesterday while others continue to suffer disease and cramped conditions in secret jungle ''animal pens'' or official confinement. Local Muslim authorities say that deaths from diseases and severe conditions are likely to continue until Thailand's government recognises that thousands of Rohingya, being smuggled through Thailand, should be accorded basic human rights. ''The men we buried today were aged 16 to 40,'' said Isma-Aen Mat-Adam, of the Rohingya Help Network in Thailand. ''All of them died after being 'rescued' from the secret jungle traffickers' camps. Hospitals could not save them ''These deaths show how bad the conditions are in the jungle camps a...

By Chutima Sidasathian  Phuket Wan February 6, 2014 PHUKET: A group of 24 men who could not walk without help were simply left in the jungle when Thai authorities ''rescued'' more than 700 Rohingya from traffickers' camps last month, according to activists. The men were disabled by lengthy and cramped imprisonment in Thai Immigration cells where they were unable to stretch and move, said Isma-Aen Mat-Adam, of the Rohingya Help Network in Thailand. The 24 were first ''rescued'' by officials in January 2013 from secret jungle camps, kept in Immigration cells for many months, ''deported'' from Thailand, trafficked south on boats again and last month ''rescued'' a second time from different jungle camps.  Unlike the 700 other Rohingya apprehended in the raids on the two secret camps, the 24 men were unable to walk. So, according to Khun Isma-Aen, the disabled men were simply left to fend for thems...

Korlimula Ramahatu, 26, accused of raping a Rohingya woman By Chutima Sidasathian and Alan Morison Phuketwan January 25, 2014 PHUKET: Charges against a policeman accused of assisting in the abduction of a group of Rohingya women and children north of Phuket have been dropped, according to court documents. Five witnesses identified a senior sergeant as the getaway driver of a vehicle that carried the women and children as they fled a government-run family shelter in Khao Lak. It was the first time in Thailand that a man in uniform has been accused of being involved with trafficking Rohingya boatpeople.  However, court documents now show that the officer is not named over a human trafficking case or accusations of rape connected to the incident. The senior sergeant was suspended from the force in July last year pending the outcome of the case. One man in the getaway vehicle with the officer is alleged to have raped one of the women at kni...

By Alan Morison and Premkamon Ketsara Phuket Wan December 26, 2013 PHUKET: The Burmese Navy handed over a boatload of Rohingya men, women and children to people smugglers who killed 12 and savagely beat many others, survivors revealed today. The group of 139, discovered by residents in a rubber plantation north of Phuket last night, were recovering today after a harrowing 22-day voyage south to Thailand with little food and water. Mostly young men and teenagers, some of the children ranged from two, three and four years old.  Survivors showed recent scars from savage beatings to Phuketwan journalists at a community hall in the port of Kuraburi in Phang Nga province. They were being fed by a group of sympathetic local Muslims for the first time in days.  ''We were all facing death,'' one of the men told Phuketwan. ''The smugglers charged us each 200,000 kyat to make the trip. The boat was quite large and stopped along the way to pick up more passe...

The Royal Thai Navy oversees Rohingya on a beach in 2008. Now, in 2013, dealing with human traffickers appears to provide an easier solution Photo by Royal Thai Navy By Alan Morison and Chutima Sidasathian Phuket Wan  December 7, 2013 In December 2008 , Phuketwan asked the Royal Thai Navy for permission for its journalists to travel on a warship. looking for Rohingya boats. The navy knocked back the request but instead sent some photographs of boatpeople being apprehended and laid out on the Similans and other holiday destinations like so many fish, drying in the sun. That year, at least 5000 boatpeople arrived in Thailand and the navy was doing its duty by apprehending them. We can't say what happened to those thousands of men, or the thousands who had made the journey before them.  In January 2009 we became curious again and went looking ourselves for what we could discover about the boatpeople. What we found was a nightmare. The boatpeople were being ar...

On the run: Baby born at sea Muhamad Hamid at a shelter in February Photo by phuketwan.com/file By Chutima Sidasathian and Alan Morison  PhuketWan  September 17, 2013 PHUKET: A boy born on a boat off the coast of Thailand was among the Rohingya who fled a family refuge centre north of Phuket early today. The group of eight women and children were in the province of Surat Thani tonight, having given themselves over to human traffickers rather than endure any longer a frustrating nine-month wait in Thailand.  The Phang Nga shelter north of Phuket, which once held more than 70 women and children, is now inhabited by a dwindling 29 Rohingya. A 12-year-old boy, who fled Burma alone in December with no relatives awaiting him in Malaysia, cried while on the telephone to friends, telling them about his escape early today.  Unless he is able to find the 40,000 baht the traffickers will ask for his safe passage to Malaysia, he is likely to be sol...

Rohingya boys at a shelter in Phang Nga, the province north of PhuketPhoto by phuketwan.com/file By Alan Morison and Chutima Sidasathian PHUKET : A new rule that bars boys aged 12 years and over from Thailand's family shelters contravenes the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, a Human Rights Watch spokesman said today.  Rohingya refugees now being housed in Thailand's shelters will be among those immediately affected by what Phil Robertson describes as a ''knee-jerk policy.'' Staff of the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security were told at a conference in Bangkok this week to immediately clear boys aged 12 and above from all of Thailand's 77 family shelters. Rohingya families, held in custody from January, are among those affected, with families who will be forced to separate.  One frustrated official said: ''We have been told that the boys 12 years and over must be taken out of the shelters immediately, b...

Phuket Wan By Chutima Sidasathian and Alan Morison September 5, 2013       PHUKET: Captive Rohingya refugees are likely to suffer because of a new policy to be imposed on family shelters in Thailand following the rape of a four-year-old girl. The new policy, decided at a two-day conference in Bangkok that ended yesterday, will remove boys aged 12 and older from the shelters, Phuketwan has learned. The policy is likely to further splinter Rohingya families where men are already held in police cells and Immigration detention centres and their wives and children in family refuges. Girls and boys are also likely to be separated within family shelters. Men seem certain to be barred from entry, while officials are looking at appointing female security guards, Phuketwan has been told. The rape that has the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security radically altering its rules took place at a shelter house in Chonburi's Banglamung district, accord...

Rohingya detainees file out of Sadao Immigration this week Photo by refugee aid group By Phuketwan  August 2, 2013 PHUKET: A total of 170 Rohingya have been moved from an overcrowded Immigration centre in Thailand's south where at least five detainees have died in custody. The men were transported out in the aftermath of a protest over the lack of medical assistance for a sick young inmate, according to an aid agency spokesperson. The disruption came at Sadao Immigration centre in Songkhla province on Tuesday night, when caged Rohingya bent the bars on their second-floor enclosure, allowing 10 men to jump to the ground. News outlets in Thailand and at least one government agency reported the incident as a ''riot'' and an ''escape attempt.'' According to sources who spoke to Phuketwan this week, there was never a riot and no escape attempt. The 10 protesters objected to the lack of medical treatment for a sick young man. They wer...

Captive Rohingya women and children are escaping Thailand Photo by phuketwan.com/file January 2013 By Chutima Sidasathian and Alan Morison Phuket Wan : July 21, 2013 PHUKET: Eighteen women and children fled a government family shelter north of Phuket early today in the clearest evidence yet that Thailand's wait-and-see policy on Rohingya refugees is falling apart. Among those who chose to go over the wall was a woman and two children who had been pressing a trafficking and rape claim after a previous attempt to escape went wrong. Today's 2am exodus leaves the shelter that held 72 people in January with just 26 occupants. All the women and children in another family shelter on Phuket fled weeks ago. While the women and children are free to vote with their feet, the Rohingya men have been held captive in severe conditions, in some cases worse than conditions in Thai prisons.  Four young men were being treated at a Phuket hospital yesterday, Phuketw...