Songkhla: Detained Muslim boy's death sparks call for improvement

[webfact]

Detained Muslim boy's death sparks call for improvement
The Nation

BANGKOK: -- The Office of Sheikul Islam, Southern Branch, has demanded a better place to house a group of Muslims who are being detained pending verification of their nationality, after a young member of the group died of tuberculous meningitis on Monday.

"The current place is a bit too crowded," the office's director Wisut Binlaatah said yesterday.

He will today seek a meeting with the governor of Songkhla province to raise his concerns.

More than 200 Muslims were arrested in March on charges of illegal entry. Both China and Turkey have suggested that these migrants could be their citizens.

These people have been held for about nine months while the verification process drags on.

The head of a Songkhla-based Muslim doctors' group said he was asking two United Nations agencies to step in and help take care of these people.

"The current detention place is not appropriate," he said.

The detainees' access to medical services was also not good enough, he said.

"It's hard for any ailing detainee to get to a hospital because there are no officials to accompany him or her to the medical facilities," he said.

The boy who died on Monday had reportedly been in serious condition by the time he began receiving any serious medical help.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Detained-Muslim-boys-death-sparks-call-for-improve-30250543.html


-- The Nation 2014-12-24

[borisloosebrain]

Shame on you prison authorities. I have heard this story many times. No medical treatment available and no one in power gives a damn.

[chainarong]

Just goes to show that after decades of assurance that Thailand has tried to improve it's image as a responsible society in the restive south , we get a brief of this nature that shows the level of success that Thailand has achieved, none, in this day and age this sort of problem should not exist, well it does for the Muslim community.

[klauskunkel]

'Death sparks a call', the spark fizzles out in a cloud of black smoke, aw shucks - misfired again...

RIP little boy, sorry your death only sparked a call...

[noitom]

China and Turkey should send big shots to Thailand to speak out against inhumane conditions in Thai detention centers for muslims.

[FangFerang]

From what I can tell, there are millions of stateless natives in almost all ASEAN countries -- no citizenship, no rights, no protections whatsoever. If this is how they treat their own people, utter disenfranchisement, what hope do any foreigners have for a fair shake?

None and zero.

[ThaiUser]

From what I can tell, there are millions of stateless natives in almost all ASEAN countries -- no citizenship, no rights, no protections whatsoever. If this is how they treat their own people, utter disenfranchisement, what hope do any foreigners have for a fair shake?

None and zero.

Inasmuch as I agree with your view about the amount of stateless people in Asian countries it is not a problem that only applies to this part of the world. Immigration and the movement of people that try to find better living conditions has become a global problem and incidents like the one in the newsletter are also part in the so called civilised countries.

A search on immigration detention centres in a western newspaper will supply plenty of articles for this year alone covering the same ground that is here discussed. Unfortunately here it is again turned into a purely Thai problem.

Australia, UK, US, Germany, France, Netherlands, Spain, Italy etc all have similar problems and incidents like the above one mentioned have happened in detention centres there too. Deaths, over crowding, no proper medical care, the time it takes to look into individual cases all that are parts of global problems and how most countries deal with immigrants, legal and non-legal.

Edited December 24, 2014 by ThaiUser

[ThaiUser]

Just goes to show that after decades of assurance that Thailand has tried to improve it's image as a responsible society in the restive south , we get a brief of this nature that shows the level of success that Thailand has achieved, none, in this day and age this sort of problem should not exist, well it does for the Muslim community.

The UK Guadian - 24/12/2014

At least 15 migrants in and around the French port of Calais have died in the past year as an influx of young men and women from east Africa take ever greater risks to get the UK, according to an investigation by the Guardian.

Growing numbers of young families, some with children as young as three, have also arrived in the French town in the past few months and are living in makeshift camps without sanitation or running water.

The European director of the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) described the situation as shameful and warned more people will die in the refugee camps in the coming weeks as temperatures plummet.

“The conditions are totally unacceptable and are not consistent with the kind of values that a democratic society should have,” Vincent Cochetel from the UNHCR told the Guardian. “This is a shameful situation to witness in the heart of the Europe Union.”

Seems it isn't a Thai problem alone but to a larger affect a problem in most societies. But nice if Thailand can be singled out again, isn't it?