Round up the usual suspects...

Shan Appeal for End to Crackdown in Chiang Mai

The Chiang Mai-based Shan Literature and Cultural Society handed in a letter at the office of the city’s governor on Wednesday, appealing for an end to a crackdown on Shan migrant workers.

The crackdown, by police and immigration officials, followed the arrest of two Shan men suspected of involvement in the rape and murder of a Thai student at Chiang Mai’s Mae Jo University earlier this month.

Nang Seng Oo, a member of the Shan Literature and Cultural Society, said the letter to the governor stressed that all Shan migrants living in Thailand condemned the murder.

The society also sent a letter of condolences to the family of the dead student.

Ill-feeling towards Shan migrants in Chiang Mai, fuelled by the murder, is still in evidence, although the official crackdown that followed the crime has slackened off, according to Khuensai Jaiyen, editor of the Shan Herald Agency for News, in Chiang Mai.

In one Chiang Mai suburb, however, village leaders broadcast loudspeaker warnings to local people not to offer refuge to illegal immigrants.

Mae Jo university students have also urged the authorities to take action against illegal Burmese migrants. Some students called for the demolition of migrant camps near the university.

An estimated 80,000 Burmese migrants, the majority of them Shan, work legally and illegally in the Chiang Mai area.

- The Irrawaddy / 2009-02-18

It's a shame that most of the replies on this thread are made up of all the idiots commenting on the nationality of the suspects. Typical really, any opportunity that allows foreigners to bash Thais, the same members crawl out like cockroaches.

Remember, you have no real information on the crime, only newspaper articles, you are in no position to state what is rubbish and who the "real" criminals are.

It's a shame really that your idiotic post didn't pause to reflect the title of this thread before lashing out at others: "BURMESE WORKERS ...". The title clearly prioritizes the ethnicity of the suspect as the main subject of the article. Furthermore, the actions of the police and all of Thai society clearly emphasize Burmese ethnicity, by their actions against the ENTIRE Burmese migrant population for the suspected actions of two Burmese construction workers, including economic embargo and threats of violence.

This mob justice is bad enough on its own as an emotional response to a despicable crime, but unfortunately is commonplace even in the best of times, with the best and most law-abiding Burmese migrants. If you need proof, then please do your homework and read up on the thousands of murdered Burmese migrants who have never received a trial, who have been fitted up for Thai crimes, and who are abused and raped in Thai prisons - oh, wait minute, that one doesn't make the newspapers does it? - before you start issuing moronic edicts about who the idiots are on this thread.

The REAL culprits should be found and jailed, regardless of their ethnicity, but we know that's a challenge in Thailand, whether they be Thai or Burmese. However, we also know that when they are Burmese, Thais reach for the lowest form of mob punishment and violence every time.

And that's a FACT.

I agree with Kat, In the case of the music teacher a certain Shan came very close to being fitted for the murder.