Thailand: Human rights for refugees from Myanmar
When it knocked on her door in Yangoon shortly after the coup on February 1, 2021 in the morning, Thayet*knew what would happen. Soldiers and armed employees asked for admission and searched for the house, but without finding what they are looking for - their parents and brothers were subordinate to them, their sister, who was a "subversive activist" on a list of the military, had fled to Thailand shortly before the military coup. Thayet also felt monitored everywhere by the military and followed her sister to Thailand.
Thayet is one of around 300,000 people who have illegally crossed the more than 2,000 kilometre long border between Myanmar and Thailand since the coup - a number determined by the research team "Equality Myanmar", a project partner of Terre des Hommes , which also analyses the situation of refugees in camps along the Myanmar border region. Thousands of internally displaced people are hiding there from the regular air raids by the military junta. The refugees move in "Temporary Safe Areas", i.e. on territory that is currently safe, but where war could break out at any time and their makeshift shelters could be destroyed. Then they are in a dire situation because the military is driving them ever closer to the Salween River, the border with Thailand. The Thai authorities allow the refugees into the country but refuse to give them any help they urgently need. The government claims that it has not signed the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees; Terre des Hommes ' partner organizations counter that Thailand has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which requires the protection and legal status of refugee children in Article 22.
"Shrinking Spaces": In many parts of the world, Freihe
The situation of the refugees from Myanmar shows how a tendency to be a tendency, from which millions of people in all parts of the world suffer: it is the "Shrinking Spaces", the increasingly narrower scope for action, in which people, like in Thailand and Myanmar, can no longer live on safe terrain and act freely. Autocratic governments, surveillance states and military dictatorships worldwide make it more difficult and more dangerous for their population and the civil society opposite them to demand values such as equality, social justice or the dignified treatment of refugees. Almost 15 percent of all people around the world still have the opportunity to say their opinion largely unhindered, to gather and fight against grievances without being criminalized. Authoritarian regimes practice intimidation, prohibitions and detention of civil society groups and actors, agitation against certain population groups, massive police force as "war against drugs" and the displacement of entire population groups.
"People wants Win" - "The people will win."
Often, enemy images and scapegoats are deliberately created to distract from structural problems and to secure their own power. As everywhere, the children who grow up in a climate of intimidation and fear are particularly affected. Basic services such as nutrition, health and school education are shortened, they are often completely prohibited for girls. Educational curricula are changed, unpleasant content can be deleted or scientific knowledge is denied. Further examples are the neglect of registration of births in undesirable population groups in order to keep the number of people in the official statistics and thus also their needs for school places and health care. In addition, the threat of young activists who are attacked, locked up or murdered, because they stand up for the protection of their ecological living conditions, call and sue the environmentally destructive companies in their country. Here it is the task of the non -governmental organizations in the democratically ruled countries to demand from their governments not to enter into any economic partnerships with authoritarian regimes, not to export weapons and to specifically promote civil society cooperation.
Thayet and the employees of Equality Myanmar are good courage despite all these dangerous adversities. "People wants Win," say in a firm conviction-the coup government also has no future with military superiority, prison and torture. It belongs to the young generation, which is campaigning for their rights and does not let it go until human and children's rights in Myanmar are no longer a foreign word.
*Thayet is a name chosen for security reasons. Her real name is known Terre des Hommes .
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