Dangers of deportation

Dangers of deportation

The fact that women and children who have fled from sexual violence in Shan State are denied protection in Thailand means that they are liable for deportation at any time. The Thai authorities have conducted periodic widespread crackdowns on illegal migrants during the past few years, during which refugees have not only been arrested and transported back to the border, but on occasion have been handed directly over to the Burmese authorities on the other side. 

For those who have suffered sexual violence, this means being repatriated into the hands of the very military authorities who were responsible for their torture.

In one of the cases documented in this report, four young women who had fled to Thailand following forced relocation of their villages in 1996, returned back to Shan State in 1998 after crackdowns by Thai authorities on migrant workers in Chiang Mai. During the journey they were separated from relatives, and they decided to travel back to the Thai border to find them. On the journey, they were raped, mutilated and killed by SPDC troops at one of the military checkpoints:

They traveled by truck from Murng Nai, and after crossing the Salween, the soldiers ordered the women off the truck, and told the truck driver to carry on to Murng Ton and the women would be sent on there later. Two days later, one of the soldiers from the camp came to buy food at Murng Ton and revealed to someone who knew the women that they had been raped on the day they were detained, and the next day their breasts were cut off, and they were killed and their bodies buried. (case 48)

The danger of sexual violence is also not limited to the Burmese side of the border. In July 1999, eleven Shan women were sexually assaulted by a Thai military officer when they were being deported back to Burma from northern Chiang Mai province. Two of the women tried to press charges of rape, but were forced under threat to accept money instead. The Thai military officer was merely transferred to another post, and received a cut in benefits.