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The Nation-Come home, Burma tells w



Subject: The Nation-Come home, Burma tells workers

The Nation April 23, 1999.
Local & Politics

Come home, Burma tells workers

BURMA yesterday urged its illegal workers in Thailand to return to help in
the agricultural and industrial development of their country and promised
they will not face persecution, a minister from the military government said
yesterday.

Illegal Burmese in Thailand who had voluntarily crossed the border to seek
better employment are welcome to return whenever they want regardless of
their ethnicity, Burmese Deputy Foreign Minister Khin Maung Win told
reporters yesterday.

''Whenever they want to go back they can always go back because they have
their homes and families in our country. Let me assure you, we will not take
action against them,'' he said while attending the three-day International
Symposium on Migration, in Bangkok.

Burma is in need of labour for its own development projects, he said.

Maung Win disputed the unofficial figure that almost a million Burmese have
been illegally working and living in Thailand, saying the exact number is
impossible to determine because the two countries share a long border.

''According to our information, we believe this figure is inflated,'' he
said.

Maung Win rejected criticism this week from human rights groups and
international labour unions that most of the Burmese migrants in Thailand
had fled the country because of political persecution.

He claimed that 95 per cent of the Burmese here had left Burma for economic
reasons.

The same group of critics of the Burmese labour and human rights record
yesterday handed a statement to Deputy Prime Minister Sukhumbhand Paribatra,
the host of the symposium's session yesterday.

They called on countries attending the symposium to treat and regulate
undocumented migrants and migrant workers according to international
conventions and treaties.

The group accused the military government of Burma of having one of the
worst records in treating its own citizens and workers.

According to Maung Win, apart from the economic migrants, another group of
Burmese living in Thailand were families and even members of anti-government
armed ethnic groups.

The last and most tragic group of Burmese here were the women who were
trafficked from different parts of Burma into Thailand, he said.

Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, who gave a statement at the symposium
yesterday, said there were approximately 600,000 illegal migrant workers now
living in Thailand and a balance must be struck between protecting these
migrants and enforcing national laws.

The issues of illegal migration will be brought up at the next Joint
Commission meeting in Burma between Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan and his
counterpart Win Aung.

The Burmese junta had earlier said it welcomed the return of the Burmese
living outside the country provided that they could prove their nationality.

BY RITA PATIYASEVI and

VORAPUN SRIVORANART

The Nation