Thais continue refugee help

Press, 25 March 1980, Page 16

Thais continue refugee help

From the “Economist,” London

To the relief of those who feared that Thailand’s recent change of leaders might bring a hardening attitude towards Kampuchean refugees, the Foreign Minister, Air ChiefMarshal Sitthi Savetsila, has said that Thailand will continue to shelter refugees from Kampuchea and that there would be no forced repatriation.

The Air Marshal has been reappointed to the post which he assumed in the last days of the Kriangsak Government in February. He had previously been his country’s chief refugee co-ordinator. The commitment to help the Kampucheans is not enthusiastically supported by

all Thais. Many Thai army officers are concerned about the possibilities for infiltration and subversion posed by the huge refugee settlements in the border region. The army also sees a danger of Vietnamese attacks on the bases in Thailand used by Kampucheans for guerrilla operations against the 200,000 - man Vietnamese force in Kampuchea. The fact that Thailand allows relief agencies to distribute large quantities of food to refugees along the border, who then transport some of it deep into Kampuchea, is also reckoned to be irritating to the Vietnamese. Some members of the

elected lower house of the Thai Parliament are urging a review of refugee policy that could lead to a tougher stance. Among them is the Democrat Party leader, Mr Thanat Khoman, who is the new Deputy Prime Minister. If there were to be an early abandonment of what the former Prime Minister, Mr Kriangsak, liked to call his humanitarian approach towards the refugees, it could come at a particularly desperate time for Kampucheans. The spring harvest in Kampuchea is now expected to yield even less than the modest predictions of several months ago. Some relief officials are hopeful that enough food can be handed

out inside Kampuchea to prevent hungry people fleeing the country just to eat. Since mid-January the Government has stepped up its efforts to distribute food: as much as 85 per cent of the grain brought to Phnom Penh and Kompong Som by international relief groups within the past two months may have been sent out to the provinces.

But there is still no certainty that the authorities in Kampuchea are acting effectively to fend off starvation. Until there is, the survival of many thousands of Kampucheans will depend on the continuing goodwill of Thailand and on the feeding programmes there.