BANGKOK — Amid a reported surge in cross-border repression across Southeast Asia, rights advocates say Thailand is making promising but very slow progress rolling out an asylum program meant to protect the most vulnerable refugees.

They say many who might be eligible for the program are reluctant to apply for fear of exposing themselves to the police and that coming forward could backfire.

Thailand does not officially recognize refugees and deems anyone in the country without a valid visa or passport an illegal migrant. Last September, though, the government introduced a National Screening Mechanism to give “protected persons status” to those from other countries who can prove they are “unable or unwilling” to return home “due to a well-founded fear of persecution.”

Neither the Royal Thai Police – whose Immigration Bureau is leading the program  – nor the National Security Council or Foreign Affairs Ministry, which both participate, replied to VOA’s repeated requests for comment on the NSM, which took effect September 22 of last year.

At a meeting with aid groups last week, though, immigration officials said fewer than 10 people, including adults and their children, have been fully vetted and granted asylum under the program to date, participants from the aid groups told VOA.

They say officials said one applicant had been rejected and that about 200 were still having their claims assessed.

“In terms of implementation, it’s not proportionate yet with the overall population of asylum seekers and refugees in Thailand,” said Krittaporn Semsantad, program director for Thailand’s Peace Rights Foundation, after attending last week’s meeting.

“I’d say they’re … trying to do their best,” she said of the government. “However, there’s a lot of limitation.”

The United Nations estimates some 5,000 asylum seekers are living in Thailand, though rights groups say the true number is likely higher.

Human Rights Watch reported in May that Thailand had made itself increasingly dangerous for asylum seekers over the past decade through what rights groups claim is an arrangement with its neighbors to forcibly return each other’s dissidents, regardless of potential persecution, including arrest, torture and death.

In recent years, Thailand has arrested and forced dozens of dissidents and members of persecuted ethnic minorities back to their home countries, including China. A rights activist from Vietnam, Y Quynh Bdap, was arrested in Bangkok in June and is now on trial for possible extradition back to Vietnam, where he is wanted for fomenting a deadly riot he says he had nothing to do with.

Once accepted into Thailand’s new asylum program, refugees should be safe from a forced return home, but rights advocates say the NSM is moving far too slowly to cope with the need.

They say the screening commission is struggling to verify the biographies of applicants, has too few interpreters to bridge language barriers, and that many potential applicants still don’t know the program even exists. Those who do, they add, can be put off by having to be formally charged with an immigration offense to go through the process.

They say many also don’t trust the government to vet them fairly and fear that if their applications are rejected they could end up back in the countries they fled.

“They’re afraid that if they apply for NSM, they reveal themselves to the government, and if they [do] not meet the criteria of the NSM they will need to [be] deport[ed] back to their … home country,” said Tanyakorn Thippayapokin, policy advocacy coordinator for Asylum Access Thailand, who also attended last week’s meeting.

Advocates say as well that the eligibility rules are too narrow by barring legal migrant workers — who may also be asylum seekers who need protection — from applying, and that the power the rules give the government to reject applicants over unspecified national security risks are too broad.

By not having to explain the security risks, some worry, the government may turn worthy applicants down to either build or maintain good relations with neighboring countries.

Opposition lawmaker Kannavee Suebsang, who chairs the House of Representatives subcommittee on sustainable solutions for migrants in the country illegally, cited the case of the four dozen ethnic Uyghurs from China who Thailand has been holding in detention without charges since arresting them for illegal entry over a decade ago.

“When they [use] the justification of the national security concern, it can [mean] everything in this world,” said Kannavee, who worked for the United Nations refugee agency for over a dozen years.

“For example, the Uyghurs. If they said it is a national security concern, we cannot put the 48 cases of the Uyghur refugees who’ve been put in the immigration detention center [through] the NSM, it can be like that,” he said.

Krittaporn said she was told by immigration officials that the detained Uyghurs were eligible for the NSM, but she added that nongovernment groups have not been able to meet with them to check whether they have been given the chance to apply.

Advocates suggest the government do more to inform asylum seekers and refugees about the program, hire more interpreters, and scale back the share of security agency officials on the screening commission. Some suggest it also scrap the need for applicants to be formally charged.

As it is now, the program seems designed more for finding reasons to turn down applicants than to approve them, said Pornsuk Koetsawang, founder of Friends Without Borders, another local refugee aid group.

“The security agencies work for Thailand’s national security, not for protection of refugees, and they [refugees] worry that Thai security agencies … think that refugees are a threat,” she said. “That’s the thing that has been happening for the past few decades.”

Kannavee said transferring primary responsibility for the program from the police to the Interior Ministry would help give it a more humanitarian focus.  He says the program may yet collapse from all its faults, though, and has been working on legislation that would give Thailand an entirely new refugee program.

On the whole, though, most advocates say the NSM is at least a modest step in the right direction for Thailand and may still be able to spare some refugees from arrest and a forced return to the countries they have fled.

Once vetted and approved, said Tanyakorn, “they’re here legally at least and with the protection of the government authorities.” 
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