Only one out of seven Cambodian refugees detained by Thai immigration police during a Paris Peace Agreements (PPA) training in Bangkok on December 29 last year has been set free. The remaining six are still being held at the immigration detention center five months after their arrest and are experiencing health issues, with urgent assistance requested.
The detainees possessed identification cards from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as well as temporary residency permits as refugees. They were arrested even after their documents were checked by the police.
A CamboJA reporter tried to contact the refugee who was released but he could not comment due to security reasons.
The remaining refugees in the detention center comprise So Meta, a Khmer Students Intelligent League Association member, and two of her relatives Eng Davan and Eng Chandy, Thorn Chantha, Ly Chhuon and Kim Thi Loi.
Srun Srorn, a Paris Peace Agreements activist, told CamboJA that he spoke with the refugees every evening to check on their condition in the detention center. He said they were allowed to speak on the phone with their family and friends for one hour everyday.
But the state of the detainees was worrying as they suffered from physical and mental health issues. According to the information he received from the detainees, they did not have enough food and were upset that their families could not visit them.
“So Meta and her two sisters are now sick because they lacked food and suffered from diarrhea, weight loss and women’s health problems,” he said, adding that because they were refugees, no family members visited or contacted them. This made them feel unmotivated. “They are [also] severely depressed.”
Srorn said one of the refugees, Thorn Chantha, is seriously ill and needs to take his medicine regularly but ran out of medication two months ago.
In April last year, Chantha was beaten up by four unidentified men when he was traveling on his motorcycle in Phnom Penh. He was once the deputy commune chief for the now-defunct Cambodia National Rescue Party in Phsar Depo II, Phnom Penh.
“All of them are ill in the detention center due to the lack of support from the Cambodian government, civil society organizations and the UN for almost a month. No one has helped to provide medicine to them,” Srorn said.
He has already informed the UNHCR about the detainees’ case four days ago. They told him that they will check on them.
Srorn said the refugees have asked to be released because of health problems and they want the UNHCR to intervene to relocate them to a third country for their safety.
Morgane Roussel-Hemery, associate external relations officer of UNHCR in Thailand, said via email that for reasons of protection and confidentiality, UNHCR is “not in a position to comment on the details or even confirm the existence of individual cases”.
Phil Robertson, director of Asia Human Rights and Labor Advocates (AHRLA), told CamboJA via email that Thai authorities must stop pursuing and persecuting political activists who have fled to Bangkok to escape repression in Cambodia.
“The Thai government is fundamentally failing to respect the rights of refugees to seek protection, and violating international human rights law with these continuous raids and arrests of refugees and their families,” he mentioned.
Robertson said the UNHCR office in Bangkok is “doing what it can” to assist and is engaging with Thai officials to ensure that the refugees are not sent back to Cambodia where they might face arrest, prosecution and prison. “We are working with them and friendly embassies in Bangkok to highlight these cases.”
However, he stressed, the “bottom line” is, Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin “must order an end to the raids”, and recognize that continuing close relations with Cambodia “should not come at the expense of vulnerable refugees who are fleeing Cambodia”.
Government spokesperson Pen Bona told CamboJA that he has “never heard about the case”. Nevertheless, the principle of the Cambodian and Thai governments is not to allow any group or individual use its territory as a base to interfere with the country’s affairs, he said, referring further questions to the Cambodian embassy in Thailand.
Neither the Cambodian embassy nor the Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh responded to requests for comment. There was also no response from the OHCHR’s Cambodia public information officer Hammad Ahmad and Ministry of Interior spokesperson Touch Sokhak.
