SPECIAL REPORT
Stateless children still living in limbo, unsure of future, and in fear of security personnel
Tanpisit Lerdbamrungchai
The Sunday Nation

Students wear Karen and Mon tribal clothes to attend classes at Udom Sitthisuksa School in Kanchanaburi

BANGKOK: -- Some 1,200 students at Udom Sitthisuksa School in Kanchanaburi's Sangkhla Buri district usually wear tribal clothes to school, as the border school next to Myanmar is a melting pot of Karen, Mon, Myanmar and Thai children - about a third of whom are stateless.

A 17-year-old Sangkhla Buri-born Karen girl named Thida will graduate from Mathayom 6 in four months and she wants to become a nurse so she can treat villagers.

But her pursuit of higher education may go unfulfilled, as her parents' four applications to gain her Thai nationality have failed.

Being stateless poses financial obstacles because, although universities have a stateless quota, the students are not entitled to money from the Student Loan Fund while business operators cannot hire them.

An 18-year-old Mon girl named Tukta wants to be a teacher for underprivileged kids and is in the process of her fourth application for Thai nationality.

Tukta said her stateless status meant she lived in fear of security personnel.

"When we go to city, people without Thai ID cards get stopped. Lucky, I wear a student uniform so they didn't stop me," she said.

Photchanee Saichompoo, a teacher at the school, said: "If they [stateless children] graduated with a bachelor's degree, they could use that to apply for Thai nationality as people who can bring merit to the country. But the path to that point is very slim."

Thida said her parents would have to pay Bt20,000 in "tea money" for her to have a chance of getting Thai nationality, but there was no guarantee she would.

The National Statistical Office's population and housing census in 2010 found that there were 5,346,592 children aged up to six in the country and 136,942 of them were without Thai nationality.

Surapong Kongchantuk, a human rights lawyer for the Lawyers Council of Thailand, said stateless people applying for Thai nationality are made up of two groups - children born in Thailand to stateless or migrant parents and those who live here but were not legally certified.

The second group included minorities living on the border whose identification cards started with a six or a seven, Surapong said, adding that people whose identification card starts with 0 were not entitled to Thai nationality.

This means both Thida and Tukta can apply for Thai nationality because they were born in Thailand but they have encountered delays and corruption.

Surapong said state officials and local administrative bodies often wrongly believe it is illegal to grant Thai nationality to aliens but not giving Thai nationality to someone who qualified for it was also illegal - that was negligence in performing their duty.

Udom Sitthisuksa School director Pongsakorn Pulsombat, a member of a

committee that screens applications for nationality in that area, said this process needed to be thorough and evidence needed to be verified.

Pongsakorn said some stateless people supposedly had a private hospital certify their birth but the year of birth didn't match an applicant's year of birth.

He would push for children at his school to get nationality but it depended on the evidence. He said that after Thailand ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1992, public schools nationwide introduced a policy in 2005 to give stateless children equal entitlement to the per-head subsidy, lunch and the tuition fee.

Pongsakorn urged people should have at least one nationality so as to receive protection under the state and basic rights as a citizen. "The nation's component - besides territory, sovereignty, etc - also includes the population and the birth rate is on the decline, so that's food for thought," he added.

Pongsakorn said a stateless child who graduates from Mathayom 6 should be considered for Thai nationality and that would solve the problem.

"I personally think Mathayom 6 graduation confirms that the child is responsible, knowledgeable and thus deserves an educational opportunity. They can be good citizens for the country," he said.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Stateless-children-still-living-in-limbo-unsure-of-30248869.html

-- The Nation 2014-11-30

More talk of "tea money", this time being extracted from poor stateless families. It is about time these people developed a conscience... and the authorities had the courage to really stamp it out once and for all !!!

...a wonder why nobody can see the similar fates of adult men.....that come here and marry......

...they are basically at the mercy of their spouses............with little or no rights....even if they have children.........even after a decade.....

...a wonder why nobody can see the similar fates of adult men.....that come here and marry......

...they are basically at the mercy of their spouses............with little or no rights....even if they have children.........even after a decade.....

Because the Thai-Chinese are scared they will lose their monopoly on the assets of Thailand and westerners with their fairer style of politics and - shock, horror - mentality to educate kids for a better future society is a huge problem for these feudal, dinosaurs with ideology from the Middle Ages. That's why.

A 17-year-old Sangkhla Buri-born Karen girl named Thida will graduate from Mathayom 6 in four months and she wants to become a nurse so she can treat villagers.

But her pursuit of higher education may go unfulfilled, as her parents' four applications to gain her Thai nationality have failed.

Just reading that made me throw up. I feel very sorry for all these people who grew up here, are allowed to pay taxes, but can't have a Thai ID.

Which is pretty similar to the Thai educational system. It doesn't make sense. And if they need an Army Junta to get things changed, they're going the wrong way.

Aren't soldiers trained to kill and defend their country? But sorry to say that America's "political prisoners" are in a even worse situation.

Don't we all live in the same world? And there's only one.

Edited November 30, 201411 yr by lostinisaan

...a wonder why nobody can see the similar fates of adult men.....that come here and marry......

...they are basically at the mercy of their spouses............with little or no rights....even if they have children.........even after a decade.....

"even after a decade" - yes it is scandalous, this fate that can befall "adult men". The "fates" are only vaguely similar.

Don't hold your breath waiting for a solution. In the Karen village that I visit, there is no school available for the children, there is no medical care available for anyone, there is no electricity and no phones. Most of the people there are fourth and fifth generation born in Thailand, and yet have no citizenship and do not own the land where they live.

The Thai policy is " I've got mine and you can't have any of it "

Another slant on this - to my mind this displays one of the monumental failures of the United Nations.

Surely this is one of the things they should have sorted out 50 / 60 / 70 years ago, so that nobody in this world is stateless.

There must be a way - simple example, why can't stateless people have some form of special UN passport so that they officially exist, can travel, etc?

Inflammatory remark and response removed

Seems like everybody want's to grow up and became administrators, could be an interesting world, administrators administering administrators.....

But stateless looks like the way to go, could solve many of the world's problems...