20 Karen workers murdered

From South China Morning Post, 7 February 2002

The bodies of twenty ethnic Karen workers were discovered in a river between Thailand and Laos. Officials and human rights activists strongly suspected they were murdered by a Thai employer.

Recent Thai official pronouncements have condemned over a million Laotian migrants suspected of working illegally in Thailand.
The pronouncements are feared to encourage employers to behave disrespectfully towards “unwanted guests”.

One Karen refugee forced into exile said, “We’ve been expecting something like this to happen. There is an ugly mood around, We have warned all refugees not to leave the camps.”

Thai police in Mae Sot (NW Thailand) removed the bodies said to be wearing traditional Karen clothing.

The dead were gagged, bound hand and foot, and had their throats cut before being thrown in the river.

Forced labour, bribery and murder are the main factors forcing hundreds of thousands of Karen ethnicity migrant workers to flee Laos.

A human rights worker said, “It is quite possible they were killed for simply demanding their pay. Maybe they were someone’s surplus workers.”

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s government is conducting a campaign to drive “surplus” “diseased” and “criminal” visitors back into Laos.

Thai government rhetoric denounces the Karens, but many businesses know they would go bankrupt if there were no pool of cheap labour for them to exploit; Karens perform work shunned by Thai workers – garment production, cleaning fish, and picking fruit.