Thai authorities are continuing their crackdown on people from Myanmar entering illegally despite a worsening humanitarian situation in the war-torn nation ruled by a military dictatorship. Dozens of Myanmar nationals have already been detained this week alone in several Thai provinces as people from the neighboring state continue trying to cross the border illegally in search of employment and safety. Since a military coup last February, Myanmar has been riven by political strife and simmering ethnic insurgencies, causing hundreds of thousands of people to seek their fortune in neighboring Thailand. However, Thai authorities have stressed that all those crossing the porous borders will be detained, charged with illegal entry and deported. More than 68,000 people from Myanmar, including children, were caught between January and November last year, according to migrant rights advocates, although it is widely assumed that hundreds of thousands of people may have entered illegally. Onerous Covid-19 regulations have complicated the process of legal entry into Thailand for people from Myanmar who seek employment in Thailand. “The border has been closed for so long that there is no legal pathway for workers who want to come back to Thailand,” said Roisai Wongsuban, a migrant rights activist. At the same time, people-smuggling networks, allegedly assisted by senior officials in Thailand, have been operating along the two countries’ border to help migrants cross illegally. In just two incidents on the same day, 43 people from Myanmar were detained in the central Thai province of Kanchanaburi after crossing the border illegally on Jan. 8. The migrants said they had each paid between 17,000 baht and 23,000 baht ($500 and $680) to job brokers who had promised them employment on entering Thailand.
As a result of such arrangements, numerous migrants end up becoming victimized through a form of bonded labor, which requires them to work in grueling conditions in return for little or no payment until they pay back their debts to the brokers. Despite the prospect of being exploited in Thailand, many Myanmar nationals are willing to take their chances rather than endure privation back home where severe political repression and a stagnant economy have worsened hardships for many citizens, migrant rights advocates say. In recent interviews with rights groups and foreign news agencies, migrants from Myanmar have said that because of worsening economic conditions in their homeland they have been compelled to try and make a living in Thailand where migrant workers account for a large portion of the workforce in several labor-intensive sectors such as food processing, agriculture and fishing. “We could not stay (in our town) … we had to think about the future of our children,” a 45-year-old migrant from Myanmar told AFP news agency. “We could not stay there because of high prices — we had to leave our village. We came here just to earn money.” In the face of the continued influx of migrants from Myanmar, Thai authorities have stepped up their border control measures. However, a labor shortage in Thailand coupled with desperation by many people in Myanmar to find work in the country means that large numbers of migrants will be seeking to cross over illegally in coming weeks and months, observers say.
2022, Union of Catholic Asian News Limited.