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According to the US Committee for Refugees, there are more than 450,000 Burmese refugees and asylum seekers in countries neighboring Burma. Driven out by the ruling military regimes unrelenting policies and practices that violate their human rights, refugees and aylum seekers have fled to Thailand, Bangladesh, India and Malaysia. The human rights abuses committed by the SPDC include forced relocations, rape, forced labor, torture, the confiscation of land and property, arbitrary arrest and lack of personal security. As the SPDC continues to try and eliminate all resistance forces, particularly in ethnic areas, they attempt to expand military control over the population through mass forced relocation programs. There are currently over 1 million internally displaced people who have the potential to become cross-border refugees in times of increased military conflict.
In Thailand, there are over 144,000 refugees, the majority of whom are from Karen, Karenni, Mon, and Shan ethnic groups. At the same time, there are more than 1 million migrant workers in Thailand who flee to Thailand for many of the same reasons as refugees. A new trend is more ethnic Burmese leaving Burma from both urban and rural areas in family groups. They usually become migrant workers and leave Burma due to forced labor, heavy taxation, corruption, inability to maintain an adequate standard of living and interference with their livelihood through the theft or confiscation of land, property and livestock.
In 1992 over 250,000 Rohingyas fled religious persecution in Arakan State to take refuge in Bangladesh. While most have been repatriated, there are still over 21,500 Rohingya refugees in the two remaining refugee camps as well as over 100,000 who are living and working among the Bangladeshi communities. Rohingyas have also fled to Malaysia while the refugee population in India consists mostly of Chin people.
The Refugee Convention states that refugee protection rests on the principle of non-refoulement, which dictates that no refugee should be returned to any country where he or she is likely to face persecution on grounds of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group. This principle has been repeatedly violated by the governments of Bangladesh, India and Thailand, who continue to forcibly repatriate refugees back to areas where their safety cannot be guaranteed...
