RIGHTS-BURMA: Refugees’ Return Won’t be Easy or Quick

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Mar 17 2004 (IPS) - When the U.N. refugee agency takes its first tentative steps into military-ruled Burma this year, the workshops and seminars it holds there will form the foundation of plans to prepare for the return – if and when this happens – of thousands of refugees.

In other words, U.N. refugee officials say, permission by Rangoon for the U. N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to visit the country does not mean that refugees are going to be back into the country any time soon.

The U.N. agency will be holding workshops and seminars in three areas of Burma – the Karen and Mon states and the Tenasserim Division, all of which are along Burma’s south-eastern border near Thailand – to get an idea of conditions there.

”The workshops will help us assess the ground situation,” Hasim Utkan, head of the UNHCR regional office in Bangkok, told IPS. ”There are some minimum conditions that need to be fulfilled before people are offered the opportunity to go home.”

However, he said that UNHCR – which on Mar. 11 said it had finally been given permission to visit Burma’s border area – will not be assigning a ”full-fledged team” from its staff for this initial operation in the three areas.

The workshop themes during the Geneva-based humanitarian agency’s preliminary efforts in Burma will cover health, education, community services, infrastructure development and landmine clearance.

UNHCR hopes that these efforts will pave the way for these basic services and safety to be restored in villages and communities ahead of the day when refugees return.

”What is significant is that the SPDC has recognised that UNHCR should be there as a first step towards people returning,” Utkan said in reference to the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as Rangoon’s junta is officially known.

Currently, there are close to 120,000 refugees in nine camps along the Thai-Burma border. Over 90,000 of them are from the Karen ethnic community, while over 20,000 are Karennis. In Karen state, reports say, some 200,000 internally displaced persons are living in the jungle.

The steps being taken by UNHCR to help these refugees return are no different from the measures it pursued earlier when helping refugees from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, who left in the sixties and seventies, head home from Thailand.

Since 1975, over 1.3 million people from neighbouring countries have sought refuge in Thailand from wars and conflicts. The 1980s witnessed the highest presence of refugees in this South-east Asian nation – over 300,000 being assisted in UNHCR camps.

But while the U.N. agency considers the moment opportune for it to finally enter Burma – after a decade of appealing to the military regime for access to the areas where the refugee population come from – there are some who question this move.

Some Burmese exiles in Thailand argue that UNHCR’s efforts will be undermined if the junta refuses to proceed with its plans to push ahead this year with its much-bandied political reform process.

That includes the reconvening of a national convention to draft a new constitution for a country that has been suppressed by a military dictatorship for over 40 years. Rangoon has still not announced a date to initiate this reform process, but the expectation is that it will start sometime around mid-year.

Rangoon also continues to hold under house arrest the opposition leader Aung San Suu Syi, who was taken in after an attack by thugs, believed to be linked to the junta, in May 2003.

”I was not surprised by the SPDC’s decision to let UNHCR in, but I think the decision to start work is premature,” said Soe Aung, external affairs director of the Network for Democracy and Development, a group made up of Burmese exiles in Thailand.

”It is better if UNHCR waits till the political dialogue begins before going into Burma,” he added during an interview. ”Because if not, this U.N. effort may suffer due to the unexpected political developments in Burma.”

Such concerns are in keeping with the view held by many Burmese exiles here that Rangoon cannot be trusted and that it has to do more to improve its human rights record. Rangoon has been accused of pressuring people into forced labour camps, ordering members of the country’s ethnic minorities to be porters for the army to imprisoning the SPDC’s political opponents.

But the junta’s current willingness to talk peace with the Karen National Union (KNU), a movement of ethnic Karens that have been fighting the Burmese military for the last 55 years, has helped Rangoon deflect some criticism.

Already, three rounds of peace talks have been held between KNU leaders and the SPDC’s strongmen to lay the groundwork to ending Burma’s longest running ethnic conflict.

”The talks have been frank and held in a good atmosphere,” David Taw, head of foreign affairs for the KNU, told IPS. ”We will be having another round of talks at the end of March or early April to discuss our current military positions.”

He expects the outcome of that round of talks to minimise the potential of attacks taking place, since the KNU is expected to reveal its military positions to the SPDC. ”Then clear demarcations can be made of each other’s military strength to avoid confrontations,” he explained.

The significance of these talks have not been lost on UNHCR, since the bulk of refugees it will have to help relocate are Karens who have fled their state over the years due to fighting and abuses by the Burmese military.

”The peace talks involving the KNU added a sense of urgency for us to get ready to help returnees,” said UNHCR’s Utkan.

At the same time, though, he admits that there are political minefields ahead as UNHCR pursues this new assignment. Added Utkan: ”This will be a high-visibility operation, and we will be watched by many in the donor community who are sceptical about this process.”