Thailand’s recent decision to withdraw its reservation to a key provision in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child appears to support its status as a “champion country” of the Global Compact for Migration. However, many rights observers say Thailand continues to detain children—as well as other at-risk migrants and refugees—in often paltry, […]
Asylum Seeker’s Death Highlights Brutal Impact of Thailand’s Detention Policies
The recent death of a Uyghur asylum seeker detained in the Bangkok Immigration Detention Centre (Suan Phlu) has prompted renewed calls for Thailand to release a group of 49 ethnic Uyghurs who have now been detained in the country for nine years. Aziz Abdullah, 49, died on 11 February after he collapsed in a cell […]
Thailand: Covid-19 and Detention
As of 30 November 2021, Thailand had registered more than two million cases of COVID-19 and more than 20,000 related deaths. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) reported that in September 2021, there were a total of 28,810 cases among migrants from Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, and Myanmar (CLM) in the country. The number […]
Thailand: Covid-19 and Detention
In March 2021, a number of immigrants became infected while detained by Thailand’s Immigration Bureau, including 77 migrant workers held at detention centres in Bangkok’s Bang Khen and Lak Si districts. Most of the detainees were Burmese, Laotian and Cambodian nationals. The Bangkok Post reported that based on data from the Centre for Covid-19 Situation […]
Thailand: Covid-19 and Detention
In mid-May, the governor of the Tak Province in Thailand issued a warning about the movement of Muslims from Myanmar and Bangladesh entering Thailand, stating that this posed a purported Covid-19-related threat. The announcement stated: “Tak is a province bordering the country of Myanmar that has movements of [migrant] workers, and also the COVID-19 pandemic […]
Thailand: Covid-19 and Detention
As of 4 May 2020, Thailand had recorded 2,987 cases of Covid-19 and 54 deaths related to the disease. Among those with the infection are immigration detainees. On 25 April, 42 detainees in the Sadoa Immigration Detention Centre tested positive. The Immigration Police Chief told the press that 73 migrant detainees (out of a total […]
Thailand: Covid-19 and Detention
A group of civil society organisations issued an open letter on 15 April to the Department of Corrections urging the release of certain categories of prisoners and immigration detainees to address overcrowding. The letter requests that prisoners over the age of 60; sick prisoners; prisoners awaiting trial; prisoners sentenced to terms of up to two […]
Thailand: Covid-19 and Detention
Despite severe overcrowding characterizing Thailand’s immigration detention facilities, the GDP has been unable to find any reports indicating that authorities have taken steps to protect, or release, immigration detainees. While the country has drafted measures which remove the need for foreign tourists, stuck in the country due to airline cancellations, to apply for visa extensions, […]
Last updated: February 2016
Thailand Immigration Detention Profile
Thailand is an important destination for migrant workers and asylum seekers from across the Greater Mekong Delta region as well other parts of Asia. Like many of its neighbours, Thailand is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention and does not have a formal asylum framework in place. Asylum seekers and refugees are generally treated as unauthorized immigrants, charged with crimes, and sent to detention centres. Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution in Myanmar are particularly vulnerable to arrest and detention as are Christian asylum seekers from Pakistan.[1]
Thailand hosts approximately four million international migrants, an estimated 1.5 million of whom are undocumented.[2] Approximately 80 percent of the migrants and asylum seekers in the country are from Myanmar while the remaining 20 percent come mainly from Laos and Cambodia. The country has undertaken various regularization and registration operations since the early 2000s within the framework of bilateral labour agreements with Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar. Nearly 1.6 million irregular migrants (including dependents) were registered during a four-month period in 2014.[3]
Despite these regularization exercises, both documented and undocumented migrant workers and asylum seekers remain at risk of arrest, detention, and deportation, as advocacy groups like the Mekong Migration Network have documented.[4] Migration policies in Thailand often lead to confusion and migrant workers live under the constant threat of deportation.[5] This is due to several factors, including dependency on a single employer, costly and complicated bureaucratic procedures, restrictions on freedom movement, as well as police corruption and collusion with traffickers.[6]
Some 110,000 Myanmar refugees have been allowed to stay in nine camps on the Thai-Myanmar border by executive discretion. There is also an unverified number of refugees and asylum seekers from dozens of other countries, who reside outside camps.[7] There are often long delays in processing asylum claims, which for those living outside official refugee camps can mean extended periods in immigration detention while awaiting resettlement.[8]
Thailand’s treatment of Rohingyas has been widely condemned. In 2013, after the Myanmar government refused to accept Rohingyas being deported from Thailand, journalists uncovered a secret Thai Royal Police policy called “option two,” which was reportedly designed “to remove Rohingya refugees from Thailand's immigration detention centres and deliver them to human traffickers waiting at sea.”[9] Reporters interviewed Rohingyas who had been sold to human traffickers by immigration officials and quoted official sources who said that of the two thousand Rohingyas held in Thai detention centres as of early October 2013 only 154 Rohingyas remained in detention some two months later.[10] Since these initial reports were published there have numerous reports by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and others documenting mass graves at camps run by migrant traffickers in Thailand.[11]
More recently, in early 2016, there were numerous reports concering the mistreatment of Christian asylum seekers from Pakistan. A January 2016 article in the Christian Post reported that a 30-year-old Pakistiani Christian woman died in Thai police custody on "Christmas Eve after she was arrested and prevented from taking much needed medications." The article cited a British Pakistani Christian Association that claimed Thai authorities had launched "a crackdown against Pakistani Christians who've overstayed their visas in Thailand." A February 2016 BBC report stated that those arrested in the raids were being charged with "illegal immigration, fined 4,000 Baht (£90), and then sent to Bangkok's Immigration Detention Centre."
The Immigration Act, B.E. 2522 (1979), provides police officers and immigration officials broad discretionary powers to detain foreigners. The law does not set a maximum length of time that a person can remain in administrative immigration detention.
The Immigration Act also criminalizes unauthorized stay, which is punishable by up to two years imprisonment. The Ministry of Justice’s Department of Corrections is responsible for monitoring prison and detention facility conditions, however its mandate does not include administrative detainees. The Immigration Police Bureau of the Royal Thai Police administers the country’s approximately 15 dedicated immigration detention centres (IDCs), which are spread out across Thailand’s land borders and along the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Thailand.[12] The detention centres are not subject to many of the regulations that govern the regular prison system. As a result, both the procedures and conditions of immigration detention can vary greatly.[13]
The costs of deportation are to be covered by the person being deported, a policy that the Global Detention Project has found common in other countries as well (for example, in Lebanon and Egypt). In addition, as in Australia,[14] immigration detainees in Thailand have to pay for the cost of detention, leading to an increased likelihood of lengthy or indefinite detention.[15] Human rights groups have emphasized that this is a discriminatory practice that contravenes international human rights norms and standards.[16]
Although there are no official statistics on the numbers of people placed in immigration detention, human rights groups have attempted to document the prevalence of certain practices, like the detention of children. According to HRW, “approximately 100 children per year are detained on a long-term basis (that is, for a period of longer than one month). Meanwhile, at least 4,000 children are thought to move through the immigration detention system each year for shorter periods (days or weeks).”[17]
In 2012, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child reminded Thailand that children should only be deprived of liberty as a last resort and for as short a time as possible. The committee also underscored that when children are detained they must be confined separately from adults and in “a safe, child sensitive environment” that enables regular contact with their families.” The committee urged Thailand to “Promote alternative measures to detention such as diversion, probation, counselling, community service or suspended sentences, wherever possible.”[18]
According to a 2014 Amnesty International report, official regulations in Thailand allow for cell sizes in detention centres to be a minimum of 1.19 metres per person, “which does not allow detainees to lie down to sleep.”[19] HRW has also reported on the abysmal conditions in detention centres, “including severe overcrowding, putrid sanitation, and an atmosphere of violence.” Detainees have repeatedly complained of overcrowding and extremely poor hygiene. In 2013, journalists found 276 male Rohingyas detained in two small “cages” meant to hold no more than 15 people at the Phang Nga detention centre on the coast of the Strait of Malacca.[20] At the time, Thai authorities acknowledged that they were “aware of the overcrowding issue at the existing immigration facilities” and that alternative arrangements were being made. According to the journalists, the head of Thailand’s parliamentary Border Affairs Committee commented that “The conditions you have seen would even be difficult for animals.”
International agencies and organisations have been given access to immigration detention centres (IDCs), including the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which carried out “The first immunization programme for Myanmar Muslims from Rakhine State and Bangladeshis in all IDCs and Shelters” in October 2015. According to an IOM report, “Myanmar Muslims from Rakhine State in Phang-Nga IDC conducted two series of hunger strikes to express their frustration at their period of detention.”[21] Human Rights Watch has asked IOM to provide more reports immigration detention in Thailand and urged UNHCR officials to “intervene promptly to seek the immediate release of refugees and asylum seekers when they are arrested.”[22]
[1] United Nations High Commissionner for Refugees. 2015 UNHCR country operations profile – Thailand. http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e489646.html; BBC, "The Christians held in Thailand after fleeing Pakistan," 26 February 2016, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35654804.
[2] Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, United Nations, International Migration 2015 Wallchart, http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/migration/migration-wallchart-2013.shtml, United Nations, 20135.
[3] International Labour Organization (ILO). Review of the effectiveness of the MOUs in managing labour migration between Thailand and neighbouring countries. Tripartite Action to Protect the Rights of Migrant Workers within and from the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS TRIANGLE project). Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. 2015. http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangkok/documents/publication/wcms_356542.pdf
[4] Mekong Migration Network, Website, "Arrest, Detention, and Deportation," http://www.mekongmigration.org/?page_id=126.
[5] International Labour Organization (ILO). Review of the effectiveness of the MOUs in managing labour migration between Thailand and neighbouring countries. Tripartite Action to Protect the Rights of Migrant Workers within and from the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS TRIANGLE project). Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. 2015. http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangkok/documents/publication/wcms_356542.pdf
[6] International Labour Organization (ILO). Review of the effectiveness of the MOUs in managing labour migration between Thailand and neighbouring countries. Tripartite Action to Protect the Rights of Migrant Workers within and from the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS TRIANGLE project). Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. 2015. http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangkok/documents/publication/wcms_356542.pdf
[7] United Nations High Commissionner for Refugees. UNHCR's new biometrics system helps verify 110,000 Myanmar refugees in Thailand. 30 June 2015. http://www.unhcr.org/55926d646.html
[8] United Nations High Commissionner for Refugees. 2015 UNHCR country operations profile – Thailand. http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e489646.html
[9] Jason Szep and Andrew R.C. Marshall. Special Report - Thailand secretly dumps Myanmar refugees into trafficking rings. Reuters. 5 December 2013. http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/12/05/uk-thailand-rohingya-special-report-idUKBRE9B400920131205
[10] Jason Szep and Andrew R.C. Marshall. Special Report - Thailand secretly dumps Myanmar refugees into trafficking rings. Reuters. 5 December 2013. http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/12/05/uk-thailand-rohingya-special-report-idUKBRE9B400920131205
[11] Human Rights Watch, “Thailand: Mass Graves of Rohingya Found in Trafficking Camp,” 1 May 2015, https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/05/01/thailand-mass-graves-rohingya-found-trafficking-camp.
[12] Mekong Migration Network. Arrest, Detention and Deportation. Map of IDCs. 2012. http://mekongmigration.org/add/?page_id=33
[13] United States Department of State. Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2014. http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/#wrapper
[14] Beyderwellen & Company. Removal from Australia. http://www.beyderwellen.com/immigration-practice-areas/unlawful.htm
[15] Immigration Act, B.E. 2522 (enacted on 24 February 1979, amended in 1992) Sections 54 and 55. Thailand Law Forum. http://www.thailawforum.com/database1/immigration-law-mejesty.html
[16] Human Rights Watch. Two Years With No Moon Immigration Detention of Children in Thailand. 1 September 2014. https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/09/01/two-years-no-moon/immigration-detention-children-thailand
[17] Human Rights Watch. Two Years With No Moon Immigration Detention of Children in Thailand. 1 September 2014. https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/09/01/two-years-no-moon/immigration-detention-children-thailand
[18] Committee on the Rights of the Child. Consideration of reports submitted by States parties under article 44 of the Convention. Concluding observations: Thailand. CRC/C/THA/CO/3-4. 17 February 2012. http://uhri.ohchr.org/document/index/976dcd33-b7f5-4d94-b473-cb4c07d99275
[19] Amnesty International, “Thailand: submission to the United Nations Committee against Torture,” 52nd Session, 28 April – 23 may 2014, ASA 39/003/2014.
[20] Sparks, John. The plight of Burma's Rohingya Muslims in a Thai Camp. World News Blog. Channel 4. 31 May 2013. http://blogs.channel4.com/world-news-blog/the-plight-of-burmas-rohingya-muslims-in-a-thai-camp/24226
[21] International Organisation for Migration, “Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea Crisis - Situation Report October 2015.”
[22] Human Rights Watch. Two Years With No Moon Immigration Detention of Children in Thailand. 1 September 2014. https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/09/01/two-years-no-moon/immigration-detention-children-thailand
DETAINEE DATA
DETENTION CAPACITY
ALTERNATIVES TO DETENTION
ADDITIONAL ENFORCEMENT DATA
PRISON DATA
POPULATION DATA
SOCIO-ECONOMIC DATA & POLLS
LEGAL & REGULATORY FRAMEWORK
Do Migration Detainees Have Constitutional Guarantees?
Regulations, Standards, Guidelines
GROUNDS FOR DETENTION
LENGTH OF DETENTION
DETENTION INSTITUTIONS
Custodial Authorities
Detention Facility Management
PROCEDURAL STANDARDS & SAFEGUARDS
COSTS & OUTSOURCING
COVID-19 DATA
TRANSPARENCY
MONITORING
NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS MONITORING BODIES
NATIONAL PREVENTIVE MECHANISMS (OPTIONAL PROTOCOL TO UN CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE)
NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS (NGOs)
NGO Immigration Detention Monitoring Reports
GOVERNMENTAL MONITORING BODIES
INTERNATIONAL DETENTION MONITORING
INTERNATIONAL TREATIES & TREATY BODIES
International Treaties Ratified
Ratio of relevant international treaties ratified
Relevant Recommendations or Observations Issued by Treaty Bodies
Global Detention Project and Partner Submissions to Treaty Bodies
> UN Special Procedures
Relevant Recommendations or Observations by UN Special Procedures
> UN Universal Periodic Review
HEALTH CARE PROVISION
HEALTH IMPACTS
COVID-19
Country Updates
Government Agencies
Immigration Bureau: http://www.immigration.go.th/nov2004/en/base.php
Immigration Bureau: http://www.imm.police.go.th/nov2004/en/base.php
International Organisations
UNHCR: https://www.unhcr.or.th/en
IOM: http://th.iom.int
Media
Bangkok Post: http://www.bangkokpost.com
The Nation: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/index.php
NGOs and Research Institutions
Mekong Migration Network: http://www.mekongmigration.org