January 12, 2008
BANGKOK - The UN refugee agency on Friday urged Thailand to free 149 ethnic Hmong refugees who have been held for more than a year in a detention facility on the border with Laos.
The refugees were detained in Bangkok in November 2006 and transferred the following month to the Nong Khai immigration centre, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement.
"As of today, the group -- including many children -- have now spent 400 nights in detention when they have not committed any crime," said UNHCR's assistant high commissioner Erika Feller.
"There is no basis for the detention of these 149 people," she said.
"They have been recognised as in need of international protection, and they should be allowed to take up the offer already made to them to leave Thailand and start to live productive lives and have a future in other countries."
Thailand halted efforts to repatriate the Hmong to Laos after some threatened to commit suicide in January last year to avoid a return to the country, according to AFP.
Since then, Australia, Canada, the United States and the Netherlands have offered to accept them but the Thai government has put a hold on their resettlement.
The UNHCR said that Thailand had improved conditions at the detention centre, allowing people to leave their cells for three hours a day.
But the refugees were still being held in poor conditions.
"We are particularly concerned that 90 children, including five born in detention, are being held in these sub-standard conditions," Feller said. "They should not be locked up and should be getting a proper education."
Hmong in the 1960s and 70s fought alongside US forces when the Vietnam War spilled into Laos. After the war ended in 1975, hundreds of thousands fled to Thailand due to fear of persecution, and many resettled in the United States.
Thousands of Hmong have lived for years in and around informal refugee camps in Thailand, many hoping to eventually settle in the United States.
