Rohingya refugees heading toward a camp at Teknaf, Bangladesh, September 13, 2017. © 2017 Md. Mehedi Hasan/Pacific Press/Sipa USA via AP Photo

(Bangkok) – The Thai government should conduct effective investigations into how a group of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar were found dead and injured on Thai soil on October 17, 2024, Human Rights Watch said today. The Thai authorities should urgently provide protection to survivors and prosecute those responsible for abuses.

Monks outside a monastery in a remote area in southern Thailand found the group of Rohingya refugees in distress on October 17 and alerted police. At least 10 were in critical condition, many unconscious. Two were dead. Survivors were taken to hospitals in Lang Suan district in Chumphon province, about 500 kilometers south of Bangkok. One is reported to have since died.

“The Thai government should undertake a credible investigation to determine the facts behind these gruesome deaths and bring to justice those responsible,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Thai authorities should hold those responsible to account, no matter who they are, and provide survivors with medical care, asylum screening, and assistance.”

According to preliminary accounts from the survivors, a group of about 70 Rohingya from Myanmar’s Rakhine State arrived in Thailand from Myanmar on October 16, near Mae Sot district in Tak province. Once in Thailand, the Rohingya were apparently pressed into refrigerated cargo trucks, with dozens assigned to each truck, for a 1,500-kilometer trip to the Malaysian border. Around 1,000 kilometers into that trip, in Lang Suan, drivers in one of the trucks stopped to remove Rohingya who had been crushed to death, were unconscious, or were otherwise too weak to continue the journey.

For years, human rights organizations and the media have reported on extensive human trafficking networks in Thailand. Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar have often used Thailand as a transit country to reach Malaysia, where significant numbers of Rohingya refugees live.

In July 2017, the Bangkok Criminal Court sentenced 62 people, including an influential army general, to lengthy prison terms for their roles in smuggling or trafficking Rohingya from Myanmar. The case in Lang Suan indicates that trafficking of Rohingya is apparently continuing, Human Rights Watch said.

Rohingya who flee from persecution and violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State and from abuses in Bangladesh’s refugee camps have received little protection from Thai authorities, Human Rights Watch said.

In recent months, the Myanmar military and ethnic Arakan Army have committedmass killings, arson, and unlawful recruitment against Rohingya in Rakhine State. About 630,000 Rohingya remain in Myanmar under a system of apartheid that leaves them especially vulnerable to renewed fighting. The conflict has displaced more than 320,000 people in Rakhine State and southern Chin State since hostilities resumed in November 2023. In Bangladesh, about one million Rohingya refugees are facing increasingly dire conditions in the Cox’s Bazar camps amid surging violence by armed groups and criminal gangs.

Since January 2023, more than 8,000 Rohingya have attempted dangerous boat journeys from Myanmar and Bangladesh, an estimated 600 of whom have died or gone missing. Rohingya have increasingly sought to flee to third countries overland via the Thai-Myanmar border, given the risks of maritime transits due to boat pushbacks and anti-migrant violence.

The Thai government has a longstanding policy of refusing to allow the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to conduct refugee status determination screenings of Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar. Thailand is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, has not incorporated the international refugee definition into domestic law, and does not have a proper and accessible mechanism for determining refugee claims.

Thai authorities summarily treat Rohingya found in Thailand without legal documents as illegal immigrants, despite the threats of persecution and ill-treatment in Myanmar. Thai immigration officials detain Rohingya men in squalid lockups across the country. These detention cells are severely overcrowded with inadequate ventilation, food, and medical care. In some cases, detainees barely have room to sit, much less sleep. Several have died in custody. Thai authorities have sent Rohingya women and children to shelters operated by the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security.

The current administration of Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra should reverse its polices on refusing to allow UNHCR screening and release asylum seekers and migrants from detention.

The Thai government’s use of prolonged immigration detention for asylum seekers and migrants violates international human rights law prohibitions against arbitrary detention. Thailand is also bound by customary international law’s prohibition on refoulement not to forcibly return anyone to a place where they would face a threat to life or a real risk of persecution, torture, or other ill-treatment.

“The Thai government should help people fleeing oppression, not worsen their suffering,” Pearson said.

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