Thailand has no policy to detain migrant children

[webfact]

Thailand has no policy to detain migrant children
The Straits Times

BANGKOK: -- Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs revealed that as at Aug 6, 2014, there were 144 children in the main immigration detention centres of Bangkok and Songkhla, a southern province.

In response to a new report by international advocacy group, Human Rights Watch, the ministry said that women and children awaiting deportation are housed in a shelters. But some children "are not able to tell their real ages or intentionally lie about it" to stay with their fathers or male migrants and end up in detention centres.

The detention of children was the result of "the preference of their migrant parents themselves" as well as "logistical difficulties" rather than government policy, it said.

There are many reasons why they end up there: Thai law allows any foreign national who enters the country illegally to be detained pending deportation, which will be done at his or her own expense. Those who cannot pay, or face persecution in their home countries, risk an indefinite wait in a detention centre.

Alice Farmer, author of the report titled "Two Years With No Moon: Immigration Detention of Children in Thailand", said "I was surprised by the severity of the situation in Thailand."

She has looked into how countries like Indonesia, Britain, and Italy handle the same issue.

She estimates that 4,000 to 5,000 children pass through Thailand’s immigration detention centres each year, out of which about 100 to 200 end up there on a long-term basis.

Farmer added "It’s a choice between a rock and a hard place." Parents choose to take their children into detention centres with them because they would otherwise risk losing touch with their children indefinitely.

She stresses that there are more humane and financially viable options to detention. In the Philippines, for example, refugees and asylum seekers are issued documents and released on condition that they report themselves periodically and comply with the refugee determination process. This is more sustainable, and also develops self-reliance, she says.

The report detailed dozens of personal accounts from the detained children, including one from Kah, a 17-year-old Myanmar national.

He was detained by Thai authorities for one month in Chiang Mai after he was found without documents. He was kept in a filthy cell with about 50 men and one five-year-old boy.

The boy’s mother, held in a different cell, could only see him one hour every day. She spent a lot of time sitting by the cell door calling his name. There is nothing much Kah and his fellow detainees could do, except to try to make the distraught boy laugh.

HRW’s report noted that an uncertain fate awaits children of asylum seekers and illegal migrants when their parents are detained in Thailand.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Thailand-has-no-policy-to-detain-migrant-children-30242538.html


-- The Nation 2014-09-04

[FangFerang]

This way those illegal workers making sub-Thai wages can be detained indefinitely if they talk to authorities. We all know about the Cambodian women who were raped and then shuttled to the border as fast as possible ( a blatant cover-up that will always be a joke)..and then they were invited back to testify. Yeah, right. Like they would ever get a fair hearing, or maybe die in prison. Never, and they should stay away -- Thai justice is a broken rusted spoke asking to impale yourself. It is sheer mendacity to expect the rest of the world to believe this tripe. And when we don't you say "The world is not our father". That's convenient, since most Thais are only guessing their fathers really are

How can such a beautiful, kind, compassionate people have such idiots for leaders? Tourism is in a permanent fix. Get over it TAT. People are finding out about what happens here....tourists go home and talk, really talk, about what is going on. And you cannot sue them for defamation because they

I expect Thailand to remain will never come back, and no other government will send them here to be tried for telling the truth in a Thai kangaroo court.

the sex tourist hub, the druggie hub (let's go to Pipi and smoke opium in the bar), that it has always been

It's fine to offer something unique, but stop pretending it is a family value or a somtam ritual.

Visit the elephant farm and buy illegal ivory!

Who do you think you are kidding? Anyone....

[DogNo1]

How do the Philippines' refugees and asylum seekers support themselves? Could it be similar to the Syrian refugee families who have to send their children to work at hard labor in the fields because the farmers in their countries of asylum aren't willing to pay adult wages? If Thailand's refugees and asylum seekers were to be released, how would they survive? I think that there are no easy solutions for the world's displaced people although I agree that holding them in squalid detention centers is regretable.