DRULAP

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Bangkok — As Thailand faces a growing influx of refugees from Myanmar following the military coup, MP Rangsiman Rome, chair of the Thai House Committee on National Security and deputy leader of the People’s Party, emphasizes the need for urgent reform.

“The immediate step is to register the people,” Rome tells VOA, citing corruption and the lack of legal recognition that leave many refugees vulnerable. “By recognizing them, we can give them access to education and work, while ensuring they contribute by paying taxes.”

In this exclusive interview with VOA, Rome discusses Thailand’s challenges with migration, corruption and the need for coordinated government action to address the crisis.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

VOA: What are your criticisms of the government’s handling of this crisis, and what should they do differently?

Rangsiman Rome: The civil war in Myanmar is devastating, forcing many to flee into Thailand. Unfortunately, Thailand wasn’t prepared, and refugees now live in the shadows without legal status. We can’t return them due to international and domestic laws, so we’ve been working with [nongovernmental organizations] to provide humanitarian aid, but a long-term solution is necessary.

Thailand shares a 2,400-kilometer border with Myanmar, and instability there allows for illegal activities like drug smuggling and human trafficking, affecting Thailand and the region. ASEAN [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations] must pressure the State Administration Council [SAC], Myanmar’s junta, to support peace and democracy in Myanmar.

In the short term, Thailand must register the 6 million Myanmar people here, providing them with legal status, work and education. Right now, the government’s policy on this issue remains unclear.

VOA: What immediate steps should be taken?

Rome: Registering the Myanmar people who are in Thailand would be a good first step. One of the problems that we are facing is corruption. A lot of refugees have to pay the money to the police or other authorities in order to work. If the Thai government would recognize these people living in Thailand, it would make it so they can not only access health care and education, but also they will be able to work and therefore have the responsibility to pay taxes. At the same time, we need to reach out to our friends like Japan, the U.S. and Australia for help with managing this situation, such as humanitarian aid.

VOA: A recent Lower House report highlighted legal loopholes contributing to human rights violations. What changes do you propose?

Rome: When we register them, we can make sure that our law will protect them. Abuses can happen because we don’t recognize them. So, [if] anything happens to them, they cannot report it; but if they are registered, they can earn, can live like normal people in Thailand.

At the same time, if you want to solve this, we have to talk about how it starts. In Myanmar we find out that as many as 2 million refugees are in the IDP [internally displaced people] camps because of the ongoing bombardment by the SAC. If everyone in the international community would come together to pressure the SAC to stop this, maybe a million refugees could return to their homes again. So, we need to not just manage the refugees in Thailand, but we have to deal with the situation in Myanmar.

VOA: Ministries have been criticized for working in “silos.” How do you plan to improve coordination?

Rome: As chair of the National Security Committee, I ensure that our recommendations benefit Thailand. We aim to play a larger role in the U.N. Human Rights Council, but we must manage the refugee situation appropriately to maintain our reputation.

We are working with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ensure Myanmar refugees can live safely in Thailand. Additionally, the SAC has been using Thailand’s banking system to launder money for weapons, and we’ve been pushing the foreign minister to take action on this.

VOA: Access to health care, education and basic services for migrants remain major issues. How do you assess the government’s efforts, and what would you do differently?

Rome: The policy around education in Thailand is not very clear. For example, there have been cases where the government closed a day care because they were singing a song to the children in Burmese and they found that unacceptable. The problem is that it’s very hard for refugee children to access school in Thailand and not every school has the same policies.

The people at the border, they cannot have a Thai education, so the Thai authority is trying to create a separate Burmese program for them, but it doesn’t make sense to me. How can the Thai government make a Burmese program?

I think one of the very important things is we need to change this policy. Kids are innocent. They should have access to the Thai education system, and actually, we have space for them. We are an aging society. Schools are actually closing due to a lack of enrollment because of low birth rates. I think Thailand must change, and if I controlled the government, absolutely we would open the education system for Myanmar people to study in Thailand. I believe that if they are better educated, it benefits not only themselves but all of Thailand.

VOA: There was a protest in front of the Myanmar Embassy a few days ago where protesters were complaining about the large number of Myanmar refugees in Thailand. What do you think is driving this protest?

Rome: Thailand’s struggling economy has led to job losses, and with over 6 million Myanmar refugees here, tensions are rising. Corruption adds to the issue, with refugees forced to pay bribes just to live. Crimes involving Myanmar refugees are often publicized more, worsening relations between Thai and Myanmar people.

Registering the refugees would reduce corruption and ensure equal treatment under the law. Right now, Thai law restricts foreigners from working in many sectors, but if managed properly, Myanmar workers could contribute significantly to our economy. They are essential to Thailand and bringing them out of the shadows will help us all.

VOA: Given the current situation, what message would you like to share with the Myanmar migrants living in Thailand?

Rome: I understand that the people from Myanmar seek peace and safety here, hoping to provide for their families. The crisis in Myanmar forced them to flee and find opportunities elsewhere.

As an MP, I want Thailand to uphold human rights, but that’s difficult due to many factors — history, education and the economy. Still, I believe that Myanmar and Thailand, as neighbors, must work together. Real change requires improving the situation in Myanmar. I know the Myanmar people want peace and democracy, and I hope we can achieve that together.
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MANILA, PHILIPPINES — The armed forces of five countries conducted joint maritime exercises in a portion of the South China Sea on Saturday as China carried out its own military drills in the disputed waterway. 

The exercises involving the Philippines, United States, Australia, Japan and — for the first time — New Zealand took place in Manila’s exclusive economic zone and sought to improve the militaries’ interoperability, the Philippine armed forces said in a statement.

Saturday’s exercises included a Philippine warship, the United States’ USS Howard, Japan’s JS Sazanami and New Zealand’s HMNZS Aotearoa, the statement said.

Australia’s Department of Defense said the drills demonstrated “our collective commitment to strengthen regional and international cooperation in support of a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific.”

The exercises follow a series of air and sea encounters between the Philippines and China, which have sparred over disputed areas of the South China Sea, including the Scarborough Shoal, one of Asia’s most contested features. The shoal has been occupied by China’s coast guard for more than a decade.

On Wednesday, naval vessels from New Zealand and Australia sailed through the Taiwan Strait, part of the South China Sea.

China, which claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own, says it alone exercises sovereignty and jurisdiction over the strait. The U.S. and Taiwan say the strait — a major trade route through which about half of global container ships pass — is an international waterway.

Australia has “consistently pressed China on peace and stability in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait,” Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Saturday.

“We have welcomed the resumption of leader- and military-level dialogue between the U.S. and China,” Wong said, according to a transcript.

Chinese air and naval forces conducted maneuvers in a disputed area of the sea hours after the country’s top diplomat discussed ways of reducing regional tension with his U.S. counterpart.

China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, despite overlapping maritime claims by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, angering its neighbors.
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KATHMANDU, NEPAL — At least 38 people have been killed in Nepal since early on Friday as persistent downpours triggered more flooding and landslides, closing major roads and disrupting domestic air travel, officials said on Saturday.

The death toll could rise, they added, with an additional 29 people reported missing over the last 30 hours.

Most of the deaths took place in the Kathmandu valley, which is home to 4 million people and the country’s capital, where the flooding brought traffic and normal activity to a standstill.

Rescue workers used helicopters and rubber boats to help people stranded on rooftops or elevated ground as some parts of Kathmandu reported up to 322.2 millimeters of rain over the last day.

Most rivers in the Himalayan nation have swollen, spilling over roads and bridges, authorities said, after nearly a week’s delay in the retreat of South Asia’s annual monsoon rains brought torrential downpours across the region.

Police were working to clear debris and reopen roads after landslides blocked highways in 28 places, said police spokesperson Dan Bahadur Karki.

The earliest let-up in the rains might not come until Sunday, said Binu Maharjan, a weather forecasting official in Kathmandu, who said a low-pressure system over parts of neighboring India had caused this year’s extended rains.

“Heavy rains are likely to continue until Sunday morning, and the weather is likely to clear after that,” Maharjan told Reuters.

Most central and eastern areas had received moderate to extremely heavy rainfall, ranging from 50 millimeters to more than 200 millimeters, she added, with moderate levels recorded elsewhere.

International flights are operating, but many domestic flights have been disrupted, said Rinji Sherpa, a spokesperson for Kathmandu airport.

The Koshi River in the southeast, which causes deadly floods in India’s eastern neighboring state of Bihar almost every year, was running above the danger level at 450,000 cusecs, versus the normal figure of 150,000 cusecs, one official said.

A cusec is a measurement of water flow equivalent to one cubic foot a second.

The river level is still rising, added Ram Chandra Tiwari, the area’s top bureaucrat.

Hundreds of people die in the monsoon season every year in landslides and flash floods common in the mountainous nation.

Authorities said at least 254 people have died and 65 gone missing in landslides, floods and lightning strikes since mid-June, when annual monsoon rains started.
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ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN — Media watchdogs and journalists in Kazakhstan have raised fears that new regulations governing reporters, adopted outside a new media law, leave room for authorities to obstruct access to information and limit journalists’ ability to work.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed the media law in June, expanding the definition of media subject to the law to include “internet resources” without specifying what that means. Many journalists distribute information on such channels as Telegram, YouTube and Facebook, which are separate from their accredited outlets.

The law allows the Culture and Information Ministry, which oversees media, to set the rules for accrediting journalists. The regulations, which came into force last month, limit journalists to publishing information in outlets to which they are accredited, preventing them from publishing it in other outlets, and require them to comply with new and unspecified “rules and regulations established by accrediting organization.”

Two violations of the rules can lead to suspension of accreditation for six months.

“Any document adopted by a government body, including the Ministry of Culture and Information, undergoes legal expert examination. This means all provisions, all points, comply with the constitution and don’t contradict laws,” Culture and Information Minister Aida Balayeva told journalists this month after they raised concerns over the legality of the new regulations.

“When we see that we drift away from the topic of a press briefing and, in fact, our briefings and news conferences shift to some other planes … when there is improper behavior by journalists — here we need regulation,” she said.

Astana-based freelance journalist Tamara Vaal, who writes for the country’s leading vlast.kz news site and other outlets, said in a Facebook post that the rules “are a violation of the constitution, direct censorship and a ban on the trade of journalist.”

In addition, she said, what the ministry is doing “is nothing but ultimately killing the profession” — journalists in Kazakhstan frequently must supplement their regular income with work for outlets other than the news organizations to which they are accredited.

“Not only do these rules ban us from raising additional income, but also they deprive us of our job because just two violations of rules and regulations and you lose your accreditation for six months,” Vaal told VOA.

Vaal said in her post that journalists write for several outlets because “they want to have children, save up for home and live a life at the end of the day, but this is not possible, unfortunately, on just one wage.”

Vaal and others VOA spoke to cite the constitutional provisions banning censorship and ensuring citizens’ rights to access information and to work.

Ainur Koskina, another Astana freelance journalist, said she believes the requirement that journalists write for only their accredited outlets would hurt journalists working outside the current and former capitals of Astana and Almaty.

“They write for several outlets, and thanks to this, they can ensure a decent existence for themselves. This opportunity has now been taken away from them. I am afraid local journalism will go extinct, first of all, because of these accreditation rules,” Koskina told VOA.

In a statement issued in July when the rules were put up for public discussion, the Almaty-based Adil Soz International Foundation for Freedom of Speech Protection said the new accreditation rules implied that information received from government bodies was not the public domain and was protected by copyright, so it should not be distributed to third parties.

“Adil Soz believes that the rules regulating the work of journalists and media should facilitate access to information, not complicate it,” the statement said.

Karlygash Jamankulova, the head of Adil Soz, told VOA that media outlets and journalists — as employers and employees, respectively — could regulate their labor relations themselves and decide whether journalists could work for other outlets. She suggested that while the new rules were vague, it remains to be seen how they would be implemented and how they would affect journalists.

“This kind of issue cannot be disputed by public organizations,” she said. “It should be journalists themselves who can take it to court, and if we will have this kind of journalist in Kazakhstan, we are ready to stand by [that journalist] and provide all required legal support.”

The head of the Media Qoldau, or Support, legal service, Gulmira Birzhanova, cited what she believes is a recent tendency toward tightening media legislation in Kazakhstan.

“Accrediting organizations, which are state-owned companies along with government bodies, will establish their own rules and regulations, and I am afraid this could be used against journalists in the future,” Birzhanova told VOA.

Vaal concluded: “This is a very bad trend, and I don’t know what future holds for Kazakh journalists.”
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TAIPEI, TAIWAN — China has urged Japan to maintain a “healthy and stable” relationship with Beijing after former Japanese Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba won the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s leadership race Friday.

Ishiba is set to become Japan’s next prime minister when Japanese lawmakers convene on October 1.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told reporters Friday that the “sustained, sound and steady” development of China-Japan relations is in both countries’ interests, characterizing the path as “the only right choice.”

China, he said, hopes Japan will “have an objective and right perception of China, take an active and rational China policy, take concrete efforts to comprehensively advance the strategic relationship of mutual benefit, and work with China to promote the sustained, sound and steady development” of bilateral relations.

Beijing’s remarks come amid rising tension between China and Japan. China has increased the frequency of its military activities in waters and airspace near Japan in recent weeks, sailing its aircraft carrier Liaoning through the “contiguous zone” near Japan’s westernmost island of Yonaguni on September 18 and conducting large-scale military exercises near the Sea of Japan.

Meanwhile, a Japanese battleship sailed through the Taiwan Strait for the first time Wednesday, prompting Beijing to reiterate its strong opposition to such “freedom of navigation” operations.

Japan also expressed concern after China test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean for the first time in 40 years Wednesday. The Japanese government said Beijing did not notify it before the missile test and described China’s increasing military activity in the region as “a serious concern.”

Analysts say the Chinese Foreign Ministry statement shows Beijing remains cautious about Ishiba’s stance on relations with China.

“Beijing is very cautious and concerned about Ishiba’s stance because he has been very assertive and hardline about Japan’s security policy,” Kyoko Hatakeyama, an international relations professor at the University of Niigata Prefecture, said in a phone interview with VOA.

Before Friday’s leadership election, Ishiba proposed the creation of an “Asian NATO,” which he said could pave the way for a nuclear-sharing arrangement among like-minded countries or a return of U.S. nuclear tactical weapons to the Indo-Pacific region.

During a live debate held by Japan’s Fuji News Network on September 22, Ishiba said it is time to allow Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to fire warning shots at foreign forces intruding Japan’s territorial airspaces and waters.

Hatakeyama said Ishiba would likely continue to deepen Japan’s defense and security relationship with like-minded democracies, including the United States, South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines.

Unlike outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, she said, Ishiba wants Japan to have more autonomy in shaping its security policies.

“He thinks it’s not good for Japan to follow Washington’s lead and he believes Japan should become more independent in working with other like-minded countries in the region,” Hatakeyama told VOA by phone.

Some Chinese analysts say Beijing should keep an eye on Ishiba’s policies toward China, based on his previous remarks and proposals.

“China needs to stay alert to Ishiba as he reportedly had called for creation of an ‘Asian NATO’ by combining the U.S.-Japan alliance and U.S.-South Korea alliance,” Da Zhigang, director of the Institute of Northeast Asian Studies at China’s Heilongjiang Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, told China’s state-run tabloid Global Times.

Xiang Haoyu, a research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, told Global Times he expects Japan to keep using “the Taiwan question” and its alignment with the U.S. to “contain China.”

While Ishiba will likely uphold Japan’s current defense and security policies, some experts say he may also seek to adjust Tokyo’s overall policies toward China.

“In his recently released book, Ishiba said some members of the Japanese government play up the idea of the China threat and the need for more military without really explaining them to the Japanese people,” Jeffrey Hall, an expert on Japan studies at Kanda University of International Studies.

He said while Ishiba has highlighted the need for Japan to maintain deterrence against China, the incoming Japanese prime minister will try to put less emphasis on threats by China to help Japan avoid “a security dilemma.”

“He has many big ideas about it, but in the next year, he will continue foreign policy as it was under Kishida,” Hall told VOA in a video interview.

While Ishiba may seek to adjust Japan’s policies toward China, Hall said he will also continue Tokyo’s approach of maintaining close relations with Taiwan, as it did under Kishida and deceased former prime minister Shinzo Abe.

“Ishiba’s visit to Taiwan in August was strategically timed because he wanted to show conservatives in Japan that he would stand with Taiwan if he becomes prime minister,” he told VOA, adding that Ishiba will not sacrifice commitment to Taiwan for the sake of friendlier relations with China.

Despite the heightened tension between Japan and China, caused mainly by Beijing’s military actions and the death of a 10-year-old Japanese boy in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, Hatakeyama said Tokyo and Beijing will both try to play a balancing act in managing bilateral relations in the near future.

“China has recently agreed to gradually resume imports of Japanese seafood and Japan’s Cabinet Office didn’t declare the Japanese warship’s passage through the Taiwan Strait, which signals that Tokyo and Beijing both want to prevent bilateral tensions from further escalating,” she told VOA. 
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SUNGAI ABU, Indonesia — Mud, rugged terrain and lack of telecommunications hampered rescue efforts Saturday after a landslide set off by torrential rains smashed down into an unauthorized gold mining operation on Indonesia’s Sumatra Island, killing at least 12 people.

Villagers had been digging for grains of gold in the remote village in the Solok district of West Sumatra province when mud plunged down the surrounding hills and buried them on Thursday.

Several people managed to escape and some were pulled out by rescuers, said local search and rescue agency chief Abdul Malik. Eleven people were injured.

Malik said rescuers recovered 12 bodies, revising an earlier death toll of 15 after officials discovered that lack of communications and the remoteness of the village had affected the counting of the victims. Two other people are believed still missing under tons of mud, he said.

Rescuers earlier said the devastated area could only be reached by walking for four hours from the nearest settlement.

“Relief efforts for the dead and missing were hampered by rugged terrain and blocked roads covered by thick mud and debris,” Malik said, adding that many residents also did not want outsiders, including search and rescue officers, to enter their traditional mining areas.

Informal mining operations are common in Indonesia, providing a tenuous livelihood to thousands who labor in conditions with a high risk of serious injury or death.

Landslides, flooding and collapses of tunnels are just some of the hazards facing miners. Much of gold ore processing involves highly toxic mercury and cyanide and workers frequently use little or no protection.

The country’s last major mining-related accident occurred in July when a landslide crashed onto an illegal traditional gold mine in Gorontalo province on Sulawesi island, killing at least 23 people.

In April 2022 a landslide hit another gold mine in North Sumatra’s Mandailing Natal district, killing 12 women.

In February 2019, a makeshift wooden structure in an illegal gold mine in North Sulawesi province collapsed partly due to shifting soil. More than 40 people were buried.
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