A meeting yesterday (April 11) of a sub-committee of the Human Trafficking Protection and Suppression Centre decided that the Rohingya are not its responsibility under existing Thai Human Rights legislation, as they have not been trafficked.
The committee was meeting to discuss organising this year’s anti-human-trafficking awareness event on June 5 at The Metropole hotel in Phuket Town, and a 20-day project to combat human trafficking on the island.
But Jiranan Jiemjaroen, head of the Children and Family Residence, then brought up the question of the Rohingya youngsters currently housed at the centre.
At the moment 57 adult Rohingya who have landed on Phuket are being kept in Immigration Police cells but those under 18 – there are 23 of them – have been placed in the Residence, which in normal times is for sheltering Thai children who have been abused in some way, including being victims of human trafficking.
Of the young Rohingya housed in the Residence, four are girls, two of whom already have children themselves.
Ms Jiranan told the meeting, “It is not that we don’t want to take care of them.
“We have tried our best to help them in any way we can, but it is quite tough for us. Our duty is to take care of the Thai children and women who were violated. We need to concentrate on them.
“The budget given to us for [the Rohingya] is B55 per day per child, which is definitely not enough.”
She added that the Rohingya youngsters themselves have not been helping.
“Some of them are not familiar with the food we give them, so they fling the plates back at us, saying they can’t eat it.”
Sometimes they brawl with each other, she said. “Since we don’t have enough staff to take care of all of them, sometimes we just have to let them fight.”
Several of the children have run away from the centre, she added, climbing out of windows and over fences, and two have still not returned.
“We have tried hard to help them with humanitarian assistance but I think we need to find the solution for this problem.”
Pol Lt Col Chatchai Sakdee of the Marine Police had no solutions, either. He told the meeting, “We have tried our best to protect Thailand’s shores but we can’t do much more because the budget is inadequate.
“With some of the Rohingya, we can push them back out into international waters but we don’t have enough officers or budget to buy fuel for our boats to stop them all from coming ashore.”
The meeting decided that the Rohingya cannot be the responsibility of the Human Trafficking Protection and Suppression Center.
In the meantime, the question of what is to be done with the young Rohingya at the Residence hangs in limbo.