Angelina Jolie addresses
U.N. correspondents at a press conference at an earlier two-day
meeting on "Celebrity Advocacy for the Millennium Development Goals"
at United Nations headquarters in New York.
UN.Photo
#161427/ Evan Schneider
VIDEO:
ANGELINA JOLIE VOICES SUPPORT FOR MYANMAR REFUGEES IN THAILAND CAMPS: 19/02/2009
(MaximsNews Network)
UNITED
NATIONS - / MaximsNews Network / 19
February 2009 -- BAN MAI NAI SOI REFUGEE CAMP, Thailand, – UNHCR Goodwill
Ambassador Angelina Jolie has called on the Thai government to grant Myanmar
refugees in northern Thailand greater freedom of movement, after spending a day
earlier this month listening to refugees tell of the difficulties they have faced in two decades of
living in closed camps.
"I was saddened to meet a 21-year-old woman who was born in a refugee
camp, who has never even been out of the camp and is now raising her own child
in a camp," Jolie said after her visit Wednesday to Ban Mai Nai Soi camp,
home to 18,111 mainly Karenni registered refugees, just three kms from the
Myanmar border, near Mae Hong Son.
"With no foreseeable chance that these refugees will soon be able to
return to Burma (Myanmar), we must find some way to help them work and become
self reliant," she said.
The 111,000 registered refugees who live in nine camps in northern Thailand
along the Thai-Myanmar border are not allowed to venture outside the camps to
work or receive higher education.
down on the floor and
chatted with refugee Ma Pai, a 44-year-old minority ethnic Kayan woman who has
applied for resettlement to the United States.
At a boarding school for orphans and children separated from their parents,
Jolie listened attentively as two teenage girls – sent across the border to
the refugee camp by their parents for education – told of their fears that
they might have to go back to Myanmar when they finish their schooling.
"I hope we can work with the Thai authorities to speed up the government
admissions process and that you will not be forced to go back to Burma if danger
remains," Jolie said.
The Thai government's Provincial Admissions Board, the only body that can
grant refugee status to people fleeing fighting or persecution in Myanmar, has
yet to process some 5,000 people who arrived in Mae Hong Son province in 2006
and 2007, the last time there was significant fighting in Kayah State just
across the border. Throughout last year, people continued to trickle into Ban
Mai Nai Soi and three other camps in the province, mostly fleeing forced labour
and other human rights abuses.
One 26-year-old woman, Pan Sein, told Jolie she fled her village in Kayah
State last November, and took a circuitous, hazardous journey on foot that
finally brought her to the camp at the beginning of January.
"Weren't you scared to leave your parents and come on your own?"
Jolie asked.
"Yes, I was scared," Pan Sein replied. "It was dangerous to
flee, but even more dangerous to stay in my village."
Jolie's visit came at a time of worldwide attention to the large numbers of
Rohingya migrants fleeing Myanmar's northern Rakhine state in rickety boats, and
just after UNHCR gained access to 78 Rohingya boat people in detention in Ranong
in southern Thailand.
"Visiting Ban Mai Nai Soi and seeing how hospitable Thailand has been to
111,000 mostly Karen and Karenni refugees over the years makes me hope that
Thailand will be just as generous to the Rohingya refugees who are now arriving
on their shores," Jolie said.
"I also hope the Rohingya situation stabilizes and their life in Myanmar
improves so the people do not feel the desperate need to flee, especially
considering how dangerous their journey has become," she added. "As
with all people, they deserve to have their human rights respected."
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