Agency concerned over why it was denied access to 16 before ‘de facto extradition’

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) yesterday expressed concern over Thailand’s deportation of 16 Lao rebels despite an earlier court ruling rejecting Vientiane’s extradition request.
“We want to express our concern and will ask the Thai government why we have been denied access to those 16 rebels after they applied for refugee status,” Bangkokbased UNHCR official Bharaja Panday said.
Panday said the men had applied for refugee status at the start of the year but the UN agency had not been allowed to see them to review their cases, adding it would now pursue the case with Vientiane.
Lao Foreign Ministry spokesman Yong Chanthalangsy on Tuesday said the Thai and Lao governments reached the “de facto” extradition deal when Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra met his Lao counterpart Boungnang Vorachit in March during a joint cabinet meeting in Ubon Ratchathani.
The Thai court ruled against a request from Vientiane for extradition of the 16 dissidents as the Kingdom’s 1929 extradition law prohibits sending people to face punishment for political crimes in foreign countries.
The Sunday handover also drew fire from a USbased thinktank, the Centre for Public Policy Analysis, which said the move could threaten members of the Lao and Hmong opposition, as well as religious and political leaders who have sought refuge and political asylum in Thailand.
The 16 dissidents joined a group of over 30 armed men – 11 of whom had Thai citizenship – in raiding a Lao border checkpoint on July 3, 2000 to publicise their dissatisfaction with the communist government in Vientiane.
Relatives of the 16, most of whom reside in Ubon Ratchathani province, will lodge a petition with the Administrative Court on the grounds that the deportation was against the court’s ruling, their lawyer Phuthisit Bounthon said yesterday.
The 11 Thai nationals have been freed from prison, but the Lao dissidents, who also completed their prison terms, were returned to Laos last Sunday under an immigrationlaw requirement that “illegal entrants” be deported.
Saythong Homnuan, the wife of dissident Thonglee Homnuan, said she was deeply saddened by the Thai government’s decision.
“If the government wanted to do this why didn’t they do it in the early days [after the initial arrest]? Why hold him in a Thai prison for four years before throwing him into another brutal jail?” she said from Ubon Ratchathani.“I’m speechless. I told my children their father has already been sent off to die, and we should prepare for his funeral,” a tearful Saythong said.
Supalak Ganjanakhundee
The Nation, AFP