Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Video on Myanmar Migrant Deportation Abuse in Mae Sot/Myawaddy

Dear Colleagues:

HRDF’s Migrant Justice Programme sends below the link for a news item filmed by an Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) crew in July 2010 and which has now been screened on Australian television. The news item is about the abuse of migrant workers deported from Thailand to Myanmar in the Mae Sot/Myawaddy area and also about the Nationality Verification process. You can view this video in Thai and English language (subtitles we arranged informally) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak48JQ5vOPI

Both the official and unofficial border crossings continue to be closed (since July 2010) at the Mae Sot (Thai)/Myawaddy(Myanmar) border area. Migrants are not able to cross the formal Friendship Bridge to complete the nationality verification process in Myawaddy and nor can they be formally deported to Myanmar at this formal crossing point either.

Our sources continue to inform us however that migrants from Myanmar arrested in Thailand continue to be deported at informal crossings in the Mae Sot/Myawaddy area to DKBA checkpoints in Myanmar. Corruption, extortion and human rights abuses by Thai and DKBA officials/others against Myanmar migrants deported from Thailand at these border points hence continues as before, as the ABC documentary reports.

HRDF’s Migrant Justice Programme