Thailand early Monday morning began to deport 4,000 ethnic Hmong refugees to Laos despite international appeals to the government to reconsider the mass involuntary repatriation to an uncertain future, dpa reported.
"We started putting them on buses at 5:30 am," Thai Army Colonel Thana Jarutwat said. "No undue force will be used."
Officials from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), other human rights workers and journalists were held several kilometres away from the Huay Nam Khao camp in Phetchabun province, about 280 kilometres north-east of Bangkok.
Several thousand soldiers and police, backed by squads from the Interior Ministry, were determined that no outsiders should be seen by the refugees to prevent spontaneous protest or resistance.
"If the Hmong see journalists they will do themselves harm to make a scene and we don't want that," Thana said.
About 100 buses will take the Hmong to Nong Khai, and from there across the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge that spans the Mekong River in to Laos.
"This is unfortunate and indefensible and we're very concerned about it," said Eric Schwartz, the US assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, in a telephone interview with the German Press Agency dpa.
Thailand and Laos agreed months ago that the Hmong at Huay Nam Khao camp must be deported by year-end. The Lao government announced on state TV Sunday night that the returning Hmong will be treated humanely.
"The government of Laos has a great opportunity now to demonstrate a policy of humanitarian treatment for those who have returned," Schwartz said.
Preparation for the mass deportation began last week when the Thai army, which controls Huay Ban Khao, confiscated all sharp objects and mobile phones from the 4,000 Hmong residents, some of whom have lived in the camp since 2004 hoping to be resettled in third countries.
The US government, the UNHCR and the European Union all urged the Thai government to reconsider its deportation plans but to no avail.
"This is the end of a long issue for us," said a Thai Foreign Ministry source who asked to remain anonymous. "The Lao-Hmong problem has been with us for decades."
The Hmong, an ethnic minority which has inhabited the mountainous northern region of Laos for centuries, were recruited as guerrilla fighters by the US military in its "secret war" against communist forces in Laos.
The communists prevailed in 1975, and the Hmong were left behind. Unknown thousands fled to neighbouring Thailand since 1975 and sought resettlement abroad.
In 2003, the US agreed to take 14,000 Hmong who had lived for years at Tham Krabok temple in north-east Thailand. Since then, some 8,000 more Hmong sought refuge in Thailand, claiming persecution at home. They were grouped in Huay Nam Khao.
About 3,000 refugees returned to Laos in 2008-09. Under a bilateral agreement with Laos, the remaining 4,000 must be repatriated by the end of this year.
Thailand has been criticized for not allowing UNHCR to determine the Hmong's eligibility for refugee status. At least 158 former Huay Nam Khao residents, now in a detention centre in Nong Khai, have been classified as "people of concern" by the UN agency.
Thailand conducted its own screening of the camp population and determined that the majority were economic immigrants. Despite claims of concern, no foreign country has expressed interest in accepting the Huay Nam Khao community.
"No one has come forward to take the whole batch," Thai Foreign Ministry deputy spokesman Thani Thongpakdi said.
To date, the Lao government has not invited the UNHCR to work in the country, nor to monitor the Hmong repatriation process, although foreign embassy staff in Vientiane have been brought to resettlement camps where some of the 3,000 Hmong who returned have ended up.
UN Human Rights Commissioner Antonio Guterres last week reminded Thailand that it has the "international obligation to ensure that any return of recognized refugees or other persons in need of international protection to their country of origin is undertaken on a strictly voluntary basis." a