June 19, 2013
BANGKOK -- Villagers of a southern Thailand province are currently
protesting against the planned construction of a temporary camp for
Rohingya migrants in their neighbourhood, China's Xinhua news agency
reported quoting police as saying.
An estimated 5,000 villagers of Cha-uad district in Nakorn Sri Thammarat
province have signed up a petition in protest of the government's plan
to build the camp for Rohingya refugees, who may have fled a sectorial
strife inside Myanmar's Rakhine state by boat sailing toward Thai waters
in the Andaman Sea.
The planned site for the camp to accommodate thousands of refugees is
inside the compound of the 427th Border Patrol Company which lies in
proximity of the local schools and villages, according to the Cha-uad
protesters.
The local villagers feared that Rohingya migrants might carry epidemics
and other diseases as well as jeopardise their safety and livelihood.
However, Deputy Interior Minister Pracha Prasopdee is scheduled to visit
the area where the planned refugee camp is located and meet with the
protesters on Friday in a bid to solve the problem.
The Muslim Rohingya "boat people", including children and elderly
persons, had earlier landed on shore in southern Thailand, exhausted and
underfed, sickly and desperately looking for a third country to settle
down. Thai authorities provided the migrants with food and temporary
shelter before finally sending them off to the sea.
While some of the Rohingyas were taken care of by Thai authorities and
southern villagers purely on humanitarian basis, others were reported to
have been robbed, assaulted and killed by suspected human traffickers.
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