Top US refugee official says Myanmar election must be fair for refugees to return home

US official: Fair Myanmar vote a must for refugees

BANGKOK — Myanmar refugees cannot be expected to return home if the upcoming election in the military-ruled country is not fair, a senior U.S. State Department official said Thursday.

Eric Schwartz said the junta’s repression of political opponents and restrictions on the electoral process so far suggest Myanmar’s election will lack international legitimacy.

That would mean little change in political conditions and would “not alter the need of Burmese who fear persecution to have access to protection outside of Burma,” he said, referring to Myanmar by its former name.

The main opposition party, led by detained Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, is boycotting the polls because it believes the electoral laws are unfair and undemocratic. The party won Myanmar’s last election in 1990, but the military junta never allowed it to take power. The junta plans elections this year but the exact date has not been disclosed.

Schwartz, who heads the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, spoke during a visit to Thailand looking into issues regarding asylum-seekers there from Myanmar and Laos.

About 140,000 Myanmar refugees live in camps along the countries’ border. Schwartz said he spoke with Thai authorities who seemed to recognize the importance of allowing them continued safe refuge.

Schwartz will visit one of the border camps Friday before going to Laos, where he will hold talks about ethnic Hmong returnees sent back from Thailand.

Schwartz said he will discuss the thousands of members of the ethnic Hmong minority who fled from Laos to Thailand only to be sent back home again. The Hmong claim they are persecuted by the communist government of Laos, but Thailand claims most are economic migrants.

Last December, Thailand forcibly repatriated some 4,500 Hmong, including more than 150 who were offered resettlement in third countries after the U.N. designated them “persons of concern” with a well-founded fear of persecution if returned to Laos.

Schwartz said he hoped the matter of those offered resettlement “is an issue we can move forward on.”

He said the U.S. has a continuing interest in the well-being of those who have returned — many still in holding camps — as well as ways in which Washington can assist the Lao government in supporting the humanitarian needs of those who have gone back.