Burmese Migrants Find Welcome Wearing Thin In Thailand

by Sonny Inbaraj

(IPS) BANGKOK -- Underpaid and exploited, Burmese migrant workers are the hidden face of Thailand.

When the 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 migrants 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, the corpses 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 Southeast 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.

According to these 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 neighboring Thailand.

There are now fears that the emergency relief efforts could bypass Burmese 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 centers.

"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 organization World Vision also raized 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 centers 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 Labor 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 labor identification cards and work permits," he said. "The ones that have lost their labor 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 organizations 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)