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INTERNATIONAL

Hmong refugees' scant Aussie hope

  • 20 June 2008
Chief Yong Tong Veng, head of the Hmong people at Petchabun camp, is desperate. 'We are hiding in this camp and no-one has come to help, the food is not enough. Do not send us back to Laos. Do not send us back to Laos. Please ask UNHCR [the United Nations Refugee agency] to help us. The Lao government shoot with big bullets in the jungle and children die. Do not send us back to Laos ...' Some 8000 Hmong people live in this camp, 350 kilometres north of Bangkok, towards the Lao border. They are surrounded by barbed wire and under military guard. They have insufficient food, no schooling and limited ability to access Thai hospitals. Epidemics are a constant threat. They must wear identity cards marked 'in Thailand illegally'. They could be pitched back into Laos and the terrors it holds for them at any time. Many of them fled from their villages in communist Laos, where they still fear persecution because their families sided with the USA in the Vietnam war. If not for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the only aid agency at the camp, conditions would be much worse, says Nolwenn Conan, MSF field coordinator at Petchabun. 'If MSF was not here, there would be health scares, and problems with water, sanitation and food. The Thai government will not treat them at a hospital without us. We don't have enough money for food, charcoal and other things.' The camp started in 2004 as a roadside tent village, but in mid-2007 the Thai military built a more permanent camp, where Colonel Tanu, Thai camp commander, says, 'It is easier to control things. Here they are more secure.' Conditions may not be ideal, but at least the Hmong at Petchabun are 'secure'. But only just. And only for the moment. Walk around the camp and inmates thrust sheets of paper at you, with stories and photos and pleas to UNHCR or the Australian government for help. Their fear and desperation are palpable, as they talk of disappearances, jungle fighting and cruelties in Laos. Many say they would rather die than be sent back to Laos. Overwhelmingly, they want to resettle in a third country, and the United States and Australia top the list. Chief Yong Tong Veng is quite clear: 'We want to go to a new country. We want a place to live.' The Thai government is not a party to the 1951 United nations
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