MSF to withdraw from Hmong camp in Thailand

By Thin Lei Win

BANGKOK, May 20 (Reuters) - Medical charity MSF will pull out
of a Hmong refugee camp in northern Thailand, the group's country
representative said on Wednesday, blaming tighter restrictions
imposed by the Thai military.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the only aid agency allowed
to work at the Huai Nam Khao camp, said it was looking for an NGO
to take over aid work for 4,700 Hmong from neighbouring Laos.

Gilles Isard, MSF Head of Mission in Thailand, said ties with
the Thai military had worsened in the past six months as MSF came
under pressure to help persuade the refugees to return home.

"On several occasions they have asked MSF not to distribute
food to the refugees in order to add extra pressure on the
population," Isard told a news conference in Bangkok.

He said MSF always refused such requests out of principle.

"We can no longer work in a camp where the military uses
arbitrary imprisonment of influential leaders to pressure
refugees into a 'voluntary' return to Laos, and forces our
patients to pass through military checkpoints to access our
medical clinic," Isard said.

A spokesman for the Thai military was not immediately
available for comment. Bangkok has always maintained that the
Hmong are not refugees but economic migrants.

The Thai military was also forcibly repatriating Rohingya
migrants, an oppressed Muslim minority from mainly Buddhist and
army-ruled Myanmar, in southern Thailand around the time MSF said
it was coming under pressure over the Hmong.

The Thai military has admitted towing hundreds out to sea and
cutting them adrift, but has insisted they had adequate food and
water and denied reports the boats' engines were sabotaged.

FORGOTTEN ALLIES

Known as America's "forgotten allies", the Hmong were
recruited by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to fight
alongside U.S. forces during the Vietnam War.

When the Pathet Lao communists took power in 1975, the Hmong
exodus began. Human rights groups say some of the Hmong could
face persecution back home due to possible links to the
anti-communist resistance.

MSF began providing medical and relief aid to the refugees in
Huai Nam Khao in 2005. The Thai and Lao governments agreed in
2007 to start repatriating the 7,800 Hmong living in the camp.

MSF said the recent Thai pressure tactics had reduced the
number of Hmong men seeking medical assistance by half.

The charity's staff had also been questioned regularly, and
the army locked the gates of the camp clinic and warehouse in
April without warning, MSF said.

"They feel we are encouraging the Hmong to stay here," MSF
field coordinator Angela Makata said.

MSF said the coercive measures "have heightened the anxiety,
pyschological distress and fear among the already traumatised
camp population".

It urged Thailand and Laos to suspend forced repatriations
and allow an independent third party to review their refugee
status. It said the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, has
made repeated requests to gain access to the camp.

(Editing by Darren Schuettler and Bill Tarrant)