End Collusion with Traffickers; Shelter Families
January 6, 2014
(Bangkok) - Thailand’s government should urgently send ethnic Rohingya children from Burma and their families to safe and open family shelters. New research documents abuses by Thai authorities, who should take
action against camps in southern Thailand used for trafficking Rohingya and punish officials complicit in abuse.
As weather conditions improve, increased numbers of Rohingya, a Muslim minority that is effectively denied citizenship
in Burma, have been crossing to Thailand in often-rickety boats. This has included numerous children, many of whom are
unaccompanied by parents.
“Rohingya children need safe, secure environments after fleeing violence in Burma and enduring the trauma of difficult
journeys,” said Alice Farmer, children’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Yet Thailand locks up many who reach its shores, leaving them
vulnerable to trafficking and further abuse.”
Thousands of Rohingya have passed through one of at least three “trafficking camps” in southern Thailand, where some
have been held for ransom or sold to fishing boats and farms as manual laborers, according to Reuters and other media
reports in December 2013. The reports allege that Thai immigration officials collaborated with the traffickers by
transferring Rohingya held in Thailand to the custody of the traffickers. A high-ranking police official confirmed to journalists the existence of the camps and acknowledged an informal policy called “option two,” which relies on smuggling networks
to expel Rohingya migrants, including asylum seekers, from Thailand. The United Nations has called for an investigation into the reports Thai immigration officials moved refugees from Burma into human trafficking rings.
Thailand has no refugee law and does not allow Rohingya to register asylum claims or to seek protection as refugees.
The 2,055 Rohingya migrants Thailand permitted to enter the country in 2013 were treated as “illegal migrants” and did
not receive protection as refugees under international law. The government separated families, holding adult men and some male children, including unaccompanied boys, in immigration detention centers, and detaining others, primarily women and younger
children, in closed shelters run by the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security.
New Human Rights Watch research shows that Rohingya held in the Social Development Ministry shelters and immigration
detention centers have had no legal options for regularizing their immigration status and leaving detention. This
prolonged detention with no specified maximum period violates the international legal prohibition against indefinite
detention. Meanwhile, children should never be detained because of their immigration status.
In recent months, most Rohingya have escaped from the immigration detention centers and closed shelters, and gone
further south in Thailand with the involvement of people smugglers and traffickers. Rohingya told journalists that
government officials played a role in these escapes by facilitating contact between the traffickers and the detainees.
Children, particularly older boys, were reported to be among those trafficked. Since at least October 2013, some
Rohingya were “voluntarily” deported after the government gave them authorization forms in Thai – which most detainees
could not read – without providing effective translation assistance. Some Rohingya who agreed to voluntary deportation
were not actually returned to Burma but were sold on to traffickers, according to media reports.
Dangers to children fleeing
Thailand’s immigration detention centers are squalid and in 2013 were severely overcrowded. In 2013,eight people died in detention from apparent poor health conditions exacerbated by extreme heat and lack of access to health care. Human Rights Watch
research found that Thailand has inadequate screening procedures for unaccompanied migrant children, so in a number of
cases, there were boys left in immigration detention centers with unrelated adults.
Human Rights Watch investigated conditions in some Thai immigration detention centers and shelters in mid-2013. While
conditions in the closed Social Development Ministry shelters were better than those in the immigration detention
centers, there were still numerous problems. Children were separated from male relatives, with little or no visitation
opportunities, and in some cases, no information about the location of their family members. Children in shelters had
little or no access to education.
The Thai government should urgently close down the camps in southern Thailand and prosecute government officials found
to be complicit in trafficking from them, Human Rights Watch said. The government has an obligation under international
law not to return Rohingya seeking asylum to Burma before first making a fair assessment of their claims. If the Burmese
government refuses to accept the return of stateless Rohingya migrants, the Thai government should release them as there
is no legitimate reason to detain people solely for immigration violations who cannot be repatriated.
For those individuals who are detained, the government should urgently improve its screening for unaccompanied migrant
children and ensure that those children are not held in detention with unrelated adults. It should accommodate Rohingya
asylum-seeking children and their families in open shelters with guaranteed freedom of movement, and provide children
access to education.
“Thailand is detaining Rohingya children and leaving them vulnerable to the risk of trafficking,” Farmer said. “As boat
traffic picks up, it’s vital that Thai authorities find solutions to keep Rohingya children with their families in open
centers, and provide them access to school.”
New Research and Testimony:
Mistreatment of Unaccompanied Migrant Children in Detention
Human Rights Watch conducted research in Thai immigration detention centers and shelters in June-August 2013,
interviewing some 100 detainees and witnesses, including several Rohingya. Our research found that many immigration
detention centers in Thailand are severely overcrowded, with detainees having limited access to medical services and other basic necessities. In some cases, authorities
restricted Rohingya detainees, including unaccompanied boys, in cramped conditions in small cells, with barely room to
sit. As of August 2013, some had been kept in cells for five months without any access to recreational space. Some
suffered from swollen feet and what appeared to be withered leg muscles because of lack of exercise. Eight Rohingya men
died from illness while in detention in 2013. While intervention by international agencies had improved medical care
somewhat after these deaths, detainees still face unacceptable risks to their health due to poor detention conditions.
While the Thai government made some efforts in 2013 to separate undocumented child migrants and take them out of
immigration detention centers, Human Rights Watch found that the screening was inadequate. Children, including
unaccompanied migrant children, were among the ethnic Rohingya migrants from Burma held in the immigration detention
centers.
Hakim A., a 12-year-old unaccompanied Rohingya boy, told Human Rights Watch that he was detained at the Phang Nga
Immigration Detention Center in June: “I was put in the same room with other Rohingya. But I just went by myself in the
corner of the room. I didn’t know anybody there.… It’s not a good place: the toilet’s right here, you live right here,
you eat right here. It’s all very close.”
Service providers in several Thai provinces told Human Rights Watch that unaccompanied children were among the Rohingya
sent by the authorities to multiple immigration detention centers in 2013. The government did not carry out regular age
assessment procedures and lacked adequate screening to identify children.
Even when the child or a family member told the authorities about the child’s age, some children remained in immigration
detention centers. Latifar Z., a 31-year-old Rohingya woman held in a shelter, was allowed in July to visit the
immigration detention center to see her 16-year-old nephew. “I complained. I said he’s not 18, but the people there
ignored my complaint and said he was an adult,” she said. “During the violence [against Rohingya in Burma] his mother
and three younger sisters were killed in front of his eyes. I think he is still very frightened of these things. He
should be here with his family so he can regain his confidence. But they made a wrong transcript at the beginning, and
they recorded his age as 18.”
In September 2013, Thailand revised its shelter policy in ways that made it only more likely that children would be
detained in immigration detention centers. Following the alleged sexual abuse in a shelter of a Thai girl by a Thai boy
(Rohingya children were not involved in this incident), authorities announced a policy whereby all boys over age 12
would be excluded from shelters and sent to immigration detention centers.
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, which provides authoritative interpretations of the Convention
on the Rights of the Child, has stated that children should never be detained because of their immigration status.
Unaccompanied children, who are particularly vulnerable to abuse in detention as they lack anyone to protect them,
should never be held with unrelated adults.
Indefinite Detention of Children in Shelters
All Rohingya at government shelters interviewed by Human Rights Watch said they were not permitted to leave the
facilities. Service providers, including Thai government officials, confirmed this. The Thai government, which refuses
to consider Rohingya asylum claims, made no plans to regularize detainees’ immigration status. This left the Rohyinga
essentially forcibly confined in shelters they could not leave, a form of indefinite detention. The only option left to
the Rohingya in the shelters seeking to continue their travel to Malaysia was to seek the assistance of outside
smugglers, who in some cases turned out to be human traffickers, to escape the shelters.
While some government officials contend that closed shelters help protect migrants, depriving people of liberty to
“protect” them from traffickers is not a legitimate basis for detention under international law. In practice, the closed
shelters make the people held there easy targets for people smugglers and human traffickers. Human Rights Watch research shows that Thai and Rohingya people smugglers and human traffickers gained access to some of the government shelters in
2013 and in some cases directly arranged “escapes.”
The arrangements with those who facilitate escapes are risky. For instance, in June, traffickers promised to reunite
Narunisa, a 25-year-old Rohingya in a shelter in Phang Nga province, with her husband in Malaysia for a 50,000 baht
(US$1,660) fee. Instead one of the traffickers took her to an isolated area and raped her repeatedly.
For some Rohingya faced with indefinite detention in Thailand, seeking the help of traffickers may appear like the
better of two bad choices. Hundreds did escape from the shelters over 2013.
“Some of my family has already escaped,” said Latifah Z., the Rohingya woman held in a shelter. “Should we follow like
the others, or should we stay here? We don’t know about the traffickers, is it safe?”
Indefinite detention solely on grounds of immigration status is never justified against children, according to the
Committee on the Rights of the Child. Thailand should guarantee freedom of movement to those in shelters, and ensure
that traffickers are not preying on those residing there.
Family Separation and Little Access to Education
Thailand’s approach to Rohingya migrants unnecessarily separates families. Men are detained in immigration detention
centers in many different parts of the country, often far away from related women and younger children held in shelters.
Some Rohingya detainees told Human Rights Watch that they were able to visit family members only once over a period of
six months, while others never were able to visit. Others said that they still did not know in which immigration
detention center their male relatives were being held.
International law protects the right of children to family unity. Best practices suggest that families should not be
separated during immigration proceedings. Thailand should explore the use of shelters for families including fathers and
older boys as well as for women and younger children, and should allow shelter residents freedom of movement in and out
of the shelters.
Human Rights Watch also found that children had little or no access to education while held in Thailand’s immigration
shelters. Niza, a Rohingya boy held in a shelter, said “There’s no school here.… Even in Burma, we went to the mosque.
But here, we don’t do anything all day.”
The lack of access to education violates Thai and international law. Under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to
which Thailand is party, all children are entitled to education regardless of migration status. The Thai government has
said that migrant children with or without legal status in the country are entitled to enroll in schools, yet these Rohingya children have been prevented from doing so by virtue of their detention.
Thai ‘helping on’ policy is not helping Rohingya
For years, thousands of ethnic Rohingya from Burma’s Arakan State have set sail to flee persecution by the Burmese
government. The situation significantly worsened following sectarian violence in Arakan State in June 2012 between Muslim Rohingya and Buddhist Arakanese, which displaced tens of thousands of
Rohingya from their homes. In October 2012, Arakanese political and religious leaders and state security forces
committed crimes against humanity in a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against the Rohingya. Hundreds of thousands of
Rohingya remain at risk in camps for internally displaced people within Burma. In one camp they were being guarded by security forces allegedly responsible for the killing of protesters.
During the so-called “sailing season” between October 2012 and March 2013, more than 35,000 Rohingya are believed to
have fled the country. International pressure on Thailand to provide temporary protection to Rohingya arriving on its
shores resulted in the detention policy used in 2013. Between January and August 2013, the Thai government provided
2,055 Rohingya with “temporary protection” and sent them to immigration detention centers and government shelters. Since
October 2013, almost all of the 2055 Rohingya in detention who were covered by the Thai government’s “temporary
protection” policy have either fled the shelters, or escaped or been deported from the immigration detention centers.
Throughout this period, many thousands more Rohingya have fled Burma by boat and have been intercepted at sea by Thai officials and either redirected to Malaysia or handed over to people smugglers and human traffickers who demand payment to release them and send them onwards.
Thailand’s misnamed “help on” policy towards small boats carrying Rohingya has failed to provide Rohingya migrants and
asylum seekers with the protections required under international law, and in some cases significantly increased their
risk. Under this policy, initiated approximately two years ago, the Thai navy intercepts Rohingya boats that come close
to the Thai coast and supposedly provides them with fuel, food, water, and other supplies on the condition that the
boats continue onward to Malaysia or Indonesia. Instead of helping or providing protection, the “help on” policy either
pushes ill-equipped boats of asylum seekers onwards at sea, or sees them handed over to people smugglers who promise to
send the Rohingya onwards for a high price, and hand over those unable to pay to human traffickers.
Under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everyone has the right to seek asylum from persecution. While Thailand
is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, under customary international law the Thai government has an obligation
of “non-refoulement” – not to return anyone to places where their life or freedom would be at risk. In its “Guidelines
on Applicable Criteria and Standards Relating to the Detention of Asylum Seekers,” the Office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reaffirmed the basic human right to seek asylum and stated that “[a]s a general rule,
asylum seekers should not be detained.” The UNHCR guidelines also state that detention should not be used as a punitive
or disciplinary measure, or as a means of discouraging refugees from applying for asylum.
Human Rights Watch urges the Thai government to work closely with UNHCR, which has the technical expertise to screen for
refugee status and the mandate to protect refugees and stateless people. Effective UNHCR screening of all Rohingya boat
arrivals would help the Thai government determine who is entitled to refugee status.
ENDS