Thailand's Refugee Dilemma: Another Lebanon?

Abstract

Since 1975 and the Communist capture of Saigon, about 570 000 refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Kampuchea, have moved into Thailand. Some estimates go substantially higher because unrecorded or illegal crossings have continued until this day. There are Thai fears that some of the refugees have helped the Communist Party of Thailand. Thai efforts to control the refugees' presence by according them "legal" or "illegal" status and regulate their repatriation (as in the case of most Kampuchean refugees) or transfer them to "third countries" have been only partially successful. In February, 1980 Thailand closed its border with Kampuchea, barring further entry of migrants. However, there has developed a floating mass of refugees in border camps just inside Kampuchea. These number between 180 000 and 200000, and exert steady pressure on the Thai frontier. The border camps, along with some refugee camps inside Thailand itself, have become recruiting and military staging grounds for various armed units of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK), the principal alliance of anti-Vietnamese Kampuchean groups. Also because of Thai and other ASEAN support for the CGDK, the Vietnamese army in Kampuchea and its ally, the government of the "People's Republic of Kampuchea" of President Heng Samrin, are increasingly concerned over the border refugee camps. In the first half of 1983 the Vietnamese attacked such border refugee camps as Nong Chan, Phnom Chat, and O Smach, all of which at the time also were headquarters of CGDK military units. The heightened Thai-Kampuchean border tension, and clashes between Thai and Vietnamese military, and between Vietnamese and CGDK units, have raised the spectre of another "Lebanon". Because, for their own security, Vietnamese forces in Kampuchea may have to engage in extensive anti-CGDK operations in the future which would, even more than they already have, spill over into Thailand. The increasingly politicized Thai refugee problem awaits an international diplomatic agreement over the future political status of Kampuchea.