[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index ][Thread Index ]

Reuters-Myanmar dissident students



Reply-To: "TIN KYI" <tinkyi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Reuters-Myanmar dissident students reject Thai deadline 

Myanmar dissident students reject Thai deadline
04:40 a.m. Nov 01, 1999 Eastern
BANGKOK, Nov 1 (Reuters) - Leaders of the main group of Myanmar dissident
student exiles in Thailand said on Monday their members would not register
for resettlement in third countries, despite the risk of arrest if they
failed to do so.

Thailand's National Security Council (NSC) set a November 21 deadline for
the Myanmar activists to register with the U.N. High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) after armed dissidents took over the Myanmar embassy in
Bangkok for 25 hours last month.

Those who failed to register would be treated as illegal immigrants, the
council has said.

The All Burma Students' Democratic Front (ABSDF) rejected the deadline.

``The ABSDF will not register because we do not want resettlement in third
countries. We are fighting for democracy in our homeland,'' ABSDF chairman
Naing Aung told Reuters on the Thai-Myanmar border.

ABSDF General Secretary Aung Thu Nyein said Thailand was the best place for
dissidents to conduct their struggle against military rule in Myanmar,
formerly Burma. ``It's close to Burma and there are many Burmese immigrants
here,'' he said.

He said about 600 ABSDF members living on the border and another 100 in
Bangkok had not and would not register for resettlement. Naing Aung put the
number of ABSDF students who would not register at around 2,000.

Aung Thu Nyein said the ABSDF was worried those in Bangkok could face arrest
and surveillance if they did not register.

THAIS WANT QUICK RESETTLEMENT

NSC Secretary-General Kachadpai Burusapatana reiterated on Monday that those
who did not register by November 21 would face legal action.

``The point is we want to have these people resettled in third countries as
soon as possible,'' he told reporters, adding he expected the first batch of
students to leave by the year-end.

Thousands of Myanmar dissidents fled to Thailand after Myanmar's military
crushed a student-led pro-democracy uprising in 1988. About 2,700 have
registered as refugees with the UNHCR, of which 1,000 live in Maneeloy
holding centre west of Bangkok.

UNHCR has said a process would begin this week to encourage the remaining
1,700 registered students to enter the centre.

Some eight or nine countries, including the United States, Australia,
Canada, New Zealand and some European nations, had expressed willingness to
take some of the students, the UNHCR has said.

Thailand is anxious to patch up its relationship with Yangon, which was
soured when Bangkok granted the embassy attackers free passage to a safe
border area after all 89 hostages in the October 1-2 siege had been freed
unharmed.

In protest Yangon closed its frontier with Thailand, hitting cross border
trade and leaving some 100,000 Myanmar workers employed in Thai factories
with uncertain futures.