Laos

Over the past four months, the Thai military has used heightened restrictions and coercive tactics to pressure some 4,700 ethnic Lao Hmong refugees, who claim to have fled violence and persecution in Laos, to renounce their claims for protection and accept a forced return to Laos.

MSF denounces the growing pressure applied by Thailand’s army to force the 5,000 Hmong refugees living in Huai Nam Khao camp, in northern Thailand, to return to Laos. Increasingly restrictive measures have forced MSF to put a stop to its assistance activities after some four years of presence in the camp.

Bangkok/Paris, June 25, 2008 —An estimated 800 ethnic Lao Hmong refugees were forcibly returned to Laos by the Thai government on Sunday, June 22, and the Thai authorities have stated publicly that they intend to proceed over the coming days with further repatriations to Laos from among the remaining 6,700 refugees in the Huai Nam Khao camp in Thailand’s Petchabun Province. The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is calling once again on the governments of Thailand and Laos to immediately stop all forced repatriations of the Hmong refugees.