Thailand says Karens to be returned to Myanmar on voluntary basis

Bangkok - The Thai government and military on Friday insisted that 1,700 refugees from the Karen ethnic minority would only be repatriated to neighbouring Myanmar on a voluntary basis.

The repatriation was halted at midday Friday after Thai human rights and civil society groups protested the allegedly forced deportation on the Thai-Myanmar border.

"This morning, three Karen families returned to Myanmar, or 12 people, but the military decided they would not allow any more to leave until the Karens have talked to NGOs and verified that they want to return," said Thai Foreign Ministry spokesman Thani Thongpakdi.

The refugees were among 3,000 who fled to Thailand's Tha Song Yang district on the border in June to escape fighting between separatist rebels with the Karen National Union and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, which is an ally of Myanmar's ruling junta.

Thailand's Third Army Region initially announced plans to return all 1,700 Karen refugees to Myanmar by February 15 but has now changed its tune. "We are making a list of those that have volunteered to return," Third Army Region spokesman Colonel Surachet Thanyawhet said.

"In the beginning, there were 3,000 here, and half have already returned home voluntarily," he said. "Now it is mostly women and children left behind, and we will take full consideration of their safety before they can return.

"The Karen are an ethnic minority people indigenous to eastern Myanmar. Rebels in the Karen National Union have been fighting Myanmar's central governments for an autonomous Karen State since 1949, making it one of the world's oldest insurgencies.

Thailand recently faced criticism for another repatriation. On December 28, the government forcibly sent back 4,500 ethnic Hmong who had been living in detention centres in north-eastern Thailand for more than four years to communist Laos, it neighbour to the north.

Hmong were recruited as a guerrilla force by the US military in its so-called "secret war" against communism in Laos in the 1960s and '70s. The United States lost, and the Hmong were persecuted and hunted down after Laos went communist in 1975.

About 100,000 fled to neighbouring Thailand, from which they sought resettlement in the US and other Western countries.

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