By BILL FRELICK, Op-Ed Contributor
The New York Times
WASHINGTON — A virus is sweeping Asia. The symptoms are heightened xenophobia and amnesia about fundamental refugee rights. Australia and Indonesia succumbed first, in October, when they stopped boats carrying Sri Lankans. Neither country would allow the Sri Lankans to disembark even though they came from a country experiencing massive violence and displacement. Almost three months later, one of the boats, holding more than 250 Sri Lankans, remains moored in the West Javan port of Merak.
Cambodia was next to catch the fever. A small group of Uighur men, women and children fleeing the aftermath of the worst ethnic violence in decades in China sought asylum in Cambodia. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees issued “persons of concern” letters on their behalf and moved them into a facility it managed jointly with the Cambodian government. But Cambodia forcibly returned 20 Uighurs on Dec. 19, despite the protests of the U.N. agency, the diplomatic corps and human rights groups. They have not been heard from since.
Now Thailand has gone viral. On Monday, soldiers with truncheons and shields herded more than 4,000 Hmong asylum seekers onto buses back to Laos from the Huay Nam Khao camp in Petchabun Province, where they have lived since 2005. For four years, the Thai Army detained the Hmong in the closed camp, never allowing the U.N. refugee agency to interview them or assess their claims to refugee status. The Thai Army’s own screening process, based on criteria never made public, found that hundreds of the Hmong had legitimate protection concerns, but Thailand never provided any additional protections. The Thai government maintained that the Hmong were “economic migrants” but refused any fair determination process to assess that claim.
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