Thailand deports Hmong asylum-seekers
BANGKOK, Thailand – Thailand deported 163 ethnic Hmong asylum-seekers to Laos on Saturday who authorities said had entered the country illegally in recent years trying to reach a large refugee camp.
The deportations come after one of the most prominent Hmong exiles, former guerrilla leader Vang Pao, was charged in U.S. federal court in California last Monday with plotting to overthrow Laos’ communist government.
Vang Pao, 77, led CIA-backed Hmong forces as a general in the Royal Army of Laos in the 1960s and 1970s. After he emigrated to the U.S. around 1975, he pledged to lead his people back to a free, democratic Laos.
Tharit Charungvat, a spokesman for Thailand’s Foreign Ministry, said Saturday’s expulsions were not related to the charges against Vang Pao.
“There is no link to this case whatever. … It’s the policy to send back illegal immigrants, that’s all,” he said.
The deportees had been detained at four police stations near a large Hmong refugee settlement in Thailand’s Phetchabun province, about 185 miles north of Bangkok, Thai and Laotion officials said.
Tharit said the deportations took place without resistance. Laos Foreign Ministry spokesman Yong Chanthalansy also said the repatriation process was not forced and that the hand-over was peaceful.
However, the California-based Fact Finding Commission, a group that lobbies for the rights of the Hmong, claimed the Thai military beat some of the asylum-seekers and used tear gas and stun guns as they were rounded up to be sent home.
The claim could not be independently verified, although the group has provided reliable information in the past. Kitty McKinsey, a U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees representative in Thailand, said her office had not been informed of the deportations, and she would not comment.
About 8,000 Hmong refugees live at the Huay Nam Khao refugee camp, claiming they fled Laos to escape persecution from the government, which distrusts the tribal group because it sided with the pro-American government against the communists during the Vietnam War.