Although the United States protested against the repatriation, Washington had earlier announced it would not resettle them in the US.
On Monday December 28, 2009, the Thai government began repatriating to Laos the last batch of 4,000 Hmong from Huay Nam Khao refugee camp in Phetchabun province, despite protest from the United States. While the Thai government considers that these Hmong people are migrants who entered this country illegally, the US considers them to be refugees fleeing a communist country.
This photo released by the Royal Thai Army shows a policewoman carrying a Hmong refugee child during the forcible deportation of thousands of ethnic Hmong to Laos from the refugee camp at Huay Nam Khao in Phetchabun province on Dec 28, 2009.
The nexus between migrant and refugee has become blurred in the new millennium. The old concept was that migrants moved voluntarily in order to seek better life opportunities while refugees were those who were forced to migrate due to political reasons. During the decades between 1950 and 1980, these definitions were useful in classifying mobile people in the world.
However, in this age of globalisation when people migrate massively due to complicated and overlapping reasons, the distinction has become uncertain and malfunctional.
The case of the Hmong ethnic community at Huay Nam Khao is an example of such a challenge. We need to know the composition of the Hmong who live there. First, Huay Nam Khao is the camp of the Hmong with Thai nationality who have been living there since 1975. This group comprises indigenous Hmong who lived in Thailand, the soldiers of communist insurgency groups during the Cold War in Indochina, and the Hmong originating from Laos who are waiting for the nationality verification process.
In 2004, new waves of Hmong migrants moved into Huay Nam Khao. These newcomers comprised arrivals from Laos who came mainly from the provinces of Luang Prabang, Xiang Khwang, Xayabuli, Vientiane and Udomxai. In 2006, the Thai government decided to separate them from the old group, locating them 1.5 kilometres from the old Hmong villages, under the supervision of the Thai army. International NGOs mainly the Catholic Organisation for Emergency Relief (COEER), Medicins sans Frontieres (MSF), and International Rescue Committee (IRC) started to operate and provide humanitarian assistance to these new Hmong.
The main reason for their coming to Thailand has been to resettle in the United States. Some had been told by relatives who had left Tham Krabok Centre for the US in 2004, to join them for the chance of a better life in the US. Others were lured by human smuggling rings and told their flight to Thailand would lead to resettlement in the US, so they paid between 3,000 and 5,000 baht to be transported from their place of origin, crossing the border in Loei or Nong Khai provinces and thus arriving at Huay Nam Khao in Phetchabun.
The Asian Research Centre for Migration at the Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, is currently conducting a study of the Hmong at Huay Nam Khao. According to an interview with an informant, there are also members of the Hmong Resistance Movement against the Lao PDR who reside among the new arrivals. But this sub-group is lower in number.
The Thai army had set Dec 31, 2009 as the deadline to repatriate the new Hmong back to Laos. Earlier, the US government announced that it would not resettle the new Hmong group. Concurrently, the Laos PDR government confirmed that it would take the Hmong back without any penalties.
In August 2009, the Laotian Minister of Home Security visited Huay Nam Khao and offered a plot of six acres, free electricity and piped water for one year, clothes and cash amounting to 300,000 kip to each family that volunteered to return. Forty-eight families took the offer and a follow-up confirmed that they had indeed been given what was promised by the Lao government. These families were even allowed to return to Huay Nam Khao for 2-3 days to celebrate the Hmong traditional New Year Festival held there during Dec 18-25, 2009.
From an international perspective, the "new" Hmong at Huay Nam Khao are considered asylum-seekers. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Thailand tried to have a dialogue with the Thai government to urge the latter to accept these people as political refugees.
In its Regional Report presented at the UNHCR ExCom in Geneva in October 2008, a repatriation of the Hmong at Huay Nam Khao was an issue of concern to UNHCR. The European Union delegation in Thailand also expressed the same concern. As for the United States, the change from the Bush administration to Barack Obama's may bring about some changes in its policy towards the Hmong from Huay Nam Khao.
Although the US government recently protested against the repatriation, it had earlier announced that it would not resettle them in the United States.
If the US maintains both the policy of no repatriation and the policy of no resettlement, then the implication is for local settlement in Thailand, which is unrealistic since Thailand will not accept these people for local settlement.
Considering the situation, a detailed classification to differentiate the smuggled Hmong who want to emigrate to the US and resettle there, and the political resistance group, is needed so that appropriate and internationally accepted intervention can be made. This is a task for all parties to handle together.
Professor Dr Supang Chantavanich is Director of the Asian Research Centre for Migration at the Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University.
Dr Sittidej WongPratya is a colonel in the Royal Thai Army who wrote a doctoral dissertation on Hilltribe Minority and National Security in Thailand: A Case Study of the Ethnic Hmong. He is currently an adviser to the Hmong Association of Thailand.
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