Days before Thailand launches a new protection program for foreign asylum seekers, rights groups and refugees are expressing concern that many worthy hopefuls will be turned down or feel too frightened of arrest and deportation to even apply.
Starting Friday, undocumented foreigners who fear persecution in their home country can apply to the Thai government for “protected persons” status and, if approved, be given temporary legal residence.
Thailand has never signed the United Nations’ refugee convention and, until now, made no legal distinction between asylum seekers and illegal immigrants, leaving most in constant fear of being arrested and deported.
The United Nations estimates some 5,000 asylum seekers are living in Thailand, but rights groups say the actual number is likely higher. While most avoid arrest, some are occasionally caught and forced back to countries they claim to have fled to escape persecution for their identity or their politics.
Under the new National Screening Mechanism, or NSM, a committee headed by the national police chief will vet applicants “unable or unwilling” to return home “due to a well-founded fear of persecution.”
The police order that brings the program into force says the persecution can include any credible risk to their life or freedom. It adds the threat of “torture, forced disappearance or other types of severe human rights infringement for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in certain social groups or political beliefs."
“The system is in place and the 22nd of September is the kickoff of the procedure,” Maj. Gen. Khemmarin Hassiri, commander of the police force’s foreign affairs division, told VOA.
Rights groups say that they appreciate the program’s broad definition of persecution but that the rules on who can apply are too narrow. They say the grounds on which claims can be rejected are also too vague, leaving the program open to abuse and many refugees at risk.
“If it works well ... it would give people the status to be in the country [legally], and then it would help them to access some rights,” including health care and education, said Waritsara Rungthong of Thailand’s Refugee Rights Litigation Project, a legal aid group.
“But I don’t really expect it, because at the end of the day the NSM is just a regulation of the prime minister's office and the police still have authority under the Immigration Act,” she said.
Waritsara said this could mean continued arrests and refoulement.
Too narrow, too vague
Another top concern is that the program automatically disqualifies legally recognized migrant workers from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.
Rights groups say asylum seekers often become migrant workers just to earn a living or gain legal status, since Thailand does not recognize refugees. They say that migrant workers sometimes have to travel home to renew contracts or visas, an obvious problem for those who fled for their safety.
“Even though ... they have a document showing that they are migrant workers, there needs to be some kind of process to screen or to consider whether this person should still be eligible to apply for the NSM because this person could be a refugee at the same time,” said Waritsara.
Rights groups also worry about how the program may treat those who are eligible to apply. The screening rules say the committee can reject applicants who meet all other conditions if they might pose a risk to “national security,” without elaborating.
Such cryptic language could mask rejections actually meant to keep up or curry favor with other countries that want their dissidents back, even if it puts them in danger, said Naiyana Thanawattho of Asylum Access Thailand, another refugee rights group.
“That is possible because there is no transparency,” she said. “We have no way to check ... what are the real reasons behind it. And we have seen many cases in the past, before the NSM, when the government tried to send somebody to a certain country as per [the home country’s] request. It’s based on the relationship between the governments.”
In 2015, Thailand sent more than 100 Uyghurs back to China, which the United States has accused of committing genocide against the Muslim minority. Thailand also sent four political dissidents back to Cambodia, where they were promptly arrested in 2021.
In April, Vietnamese state media reported the arrest of a political dissident whom it claims had returned from hiding in Thailand by choice, days after he went missing in Bangkok. The man’s friends say closed circuit video from just outside the house he was renting suggests he was abducted.
A trust deficit
These and other cases make for what the international group Human Rights Watch calls a long-running “swap mart” among the governments of the region seeking to retrieve and punish their dissidents.
Dang, an undocumented asylum seeker from Vietnam, said the cases have spawned a level of mistrust of the Thai government likely to discourage him and many others from applying for the new protection program.
“I don’t think I want to apply,” Dang said, adding that most of the other asylum seekers he knows feel the same.
“If we apply for that, that means they have our information in their hands and [we are] not sure whether they’re going to share it with the [other] government,” he said. “This is a big concern ... and if they share with them, I think they will find me here.”
Rights groups say asylum seekers also fear they’ll be arrested if they come forward and placed in immigration detention centers during the vetting process, which has no fixed time frame.
Khemmarin, the police commander, said applicants will be placed in “shelters” located across the country.
“It’s just a facility, not like the prison or detention center,” he said. “We [will] not restrict them, but we make sure that during the process they will be present with us at all times.”
The authorities will let some applicants stay outside the shelters in “exceptional cases,” he said.
The commander said rejected applicants will be “subject to repatriation” but acknowledged that could prove “impossible” for those who are effectively stateless.
Khemmarin also conceded that past governments may have on occasion misused the catchall power of invoking “national security” to deport asylum seekers but said the new administration, which took office earlier this month, would correct that.
“From time to time it has been abused by the action of the government service, but that doesn’t mean that we [do] not treat them properly,” he said. “With the new government, I think if we have the right track to move on, I think the problem of the refugees will be properly identified and resolved.”
Wasamon Audjarint from VOA’s Thai service contributed to this report.
