UNHCR urges Thailand to release Hmong refugees

Tue Jan 15, 2008 7:27am EST


GENEVA, Jan 15 (Reuters) - The United Nations refugee agency called on Thailand on Tuesday to release 149 ethnic Hmong from Laos who it said have been detained for more than a year despite offers from Western countries to take them in.

The refugees, which include 90 children, were rounded up in Bangkok for deportation in November 2006 and are being held at a detention centre on the border with communist Laos.

"There is no basis for detention of these 149 people, who have been recognised as in need of international protection," Ron Redmond, spokesman of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told a news briefing.

"They should be allowed to take up offers already made to leave Thailand for other countries," he said, noting Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and the United States have offered to resettle them.

The refugees staged a hunger strike last August, saying they would rather die in Thai cells than be sent back to Laos. The Hmong say they are persecuted in their homeland because their parents and relatives sided with America in the Vietnam War.

Five babies have been born in the detention facility, where the group is held in "substandard conditions," the UNHCR said.

The Geneva-based agency recognised some efforts by Thai authorities, who now allow the refugees out of their cells for three hours a day, but said that conditions still fall well short of international norms.

"No one should be detained for an indefinite period," Redmond said. (reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Dominic Evans)



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