Bloody Myanmar refugee camp protest draws flak
Bloody Myanmar refugee camp protest draws flak
BANGKOK (Agencies): Thai and international aid authorities on Thursday criticized a bloody demonstration staged at a refugee camp in Thailand in which half a dozen Myanmar children slashed themselves to protest Yangon's roadblock against opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
The gruesome demonstration, held on Wednesday at Maneeloy camp in Ratchburi, 100 kilometers southwest of Bangkok, was meant to highlight the Myanmar refugees support for Suu Kyi, who has been staging a roadside stand-off with Myanmar's junta since Aug. 24 for blocking her from traveling upcountry.
Instead it has drawn flak for including six five-to-seven-year-old children and a man suffering from full- blown AIDS, who slashed themselves with knives and then wrote "Free Suu Kyi" with their blood. "They forced the children to do it," said Ratchburi deputy governor Preecha Luengchan.
One international aid worker at Maneeloy saw the protest leaders chase down a seven-year-old boy to make sure he participated in the protest. "It was pretty despicable," said an aid worker, who asked to remain anonymous.
Thai authorities rounded up four of the protest leaders and detained them in a Bangkok Police Academy on charges of breaking camp regulations.
The full-blown AIDS slasher was also detained. "These people are just trying to tell the world that they are still stuck in Maneeloy," said Preecha in a telephone interview with Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA).
Maneeloy is a refugee camp set up near the Thai-Myanmar border a decade ago to house Myanmar political dissidents, many of them former students, who fled their country after the brutal military crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in September, 1988.
Former residents of the camp were reportedly involved in the armed seizure of Myanmar's embassy to Bangkok in October, 1999, and thereafter the holding hostage of Ratchburi Hospital in January this year.
About 1,400 Myanmar refugees remain in the camp, many of whom have been rejected for resettlement in third countries. "No one wants these people. They have been rejected by seven to eight countries already," said Preecha.
Suu Kyi entered the second week of a punishing roadside protest on Thursday with her supporters pledging she would not back down from her confrontation with Yangon's ruling generals.
Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), which won national elections by a landslide in 1990 but has never been allowed to govern, demanded that the 55-year-old Nobel laureate be allowed to travel south of Yangon to meet party members.
"It is hereby declared again that General-Secretary Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will not turn back until and unless she has fully completed her intended organizational tasks," the NLD said.
In a statement, it said the site south of Yangon where Suu Kyi, her driver and 14 NLD members have been camped since Thursday was infested by mosquitoes and gnats. It said the authorities would be responsible if any harm came to Suu Kyi.
Photographs released by the government during the stand-off show the group's two vehicles -- a saloon car and a pickup truck -- parked by a dirt track and surrounded by umbrellas and tarpaulins to shade them from the sun.
Suu Kyi was halted by police on Aug. 24 as she headed out of Yangon to meet NLD members south of the capital.