Hmong refugees at the Huay Nam Khao refugee camp in Thailand. (Photo: Sukree Sukplang/Reuters)
December 27, 2009By SETH MYDANS
The New York Times
BANGKOK — Armed with riot shields and batons, Thai military officers began early on Monday to forcibly return 4,000 Hmong asylum seekers to Laos in a lingering echo of the Vietnam War.
A government spokesman, Panitan Wattanayagorn, said in a telephone interview that the repatriation had started and would be completed within days.
Members of a mountain tribe that aided the United States in its secret war in Laos, the asylum seekers have said they fear retribution by the Laotian government, which continues to battle a ragged insurgency of several hundred Hmong fighters.
Thailand moved ahead with the repatriation despite complaints from the United States, the United Nations, and human rights and aid groups. It was doing so although it has determined that some asylum seekers were eligible for refugee status, human rights groups said.
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