More than 110,000 Cambodians have fled Thailand to return home in the past week, an official said yesterday, amid fears of a crackdown on migrant workers after last month’s military takeover.
Laborers from Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar play a key role in Thai industries such as seafood, agriculture and construction, but they often lack official work permits.
On Wednesday, Thailand’s military regime, which seized power in a coup on May 22, threatened to arrest and deport all illegal foreign workers.
‘DAM COLLAPSING’
“They’re returning en masse like a dam collapsing. They’ve never come en masse like this before in our history,” Kor Sam Saroeut, governor of northwestern Banteay Meanchey Province where the main Cambodian-Thai border crossing is located, told reporters by telephone.
More than 110,000 Cambodian migrants had returned from Thailand in the last week as of yesterday morning, many of them transported to the border by the Thai military, he said.
“They said they are scared of being arrested or shot if they run when Thai authorities check their houses,” Saroeut added. “Most of them went to work in Thailand without a work permit.”
Cambodian authorities have arranged nearly 300 cars and military trucks to transport workers from the Aranyaprathet-Poipet border checkpoint to their homes.
MASS EXODUS
Thai military officials were not immediately available for comment on the mass exodus.
Soum Chankea, a coordinator for Cambodian rights group ADHOC who has met many workers at the border, said the number of migrants returning home was growing each day.
“They keep coming, more and more. Thousands more have arrived in Poipet this morning,” he told reporters by telephone.
Six Cambodian workers and a Thai driver transporting them to the border province of Sa Kaeo died in an accident early yesterday morning, Thai police official Sommart Meungmuti said.
The accident, which left another 12 people injured, is suspected to have been caused by a tire explosion, he added.
Thailand is usually home to more than 2 million migrant workers, according to activists.
In the past, Thai authorities turned a blind eye to the presence of illegal laborers because these workers were needed when the economy was booming.
Yet now Thailand is on the verge of recession after the economy contracted 2.1 percent quarter-on-quarter in the first three months of the year.
The army has floated the idea of creating special economic zones in border areas to better manage the movement of migrant workers, although so far details of the plan remain vague.
The coup followed years of political divisions between a military-backed royalist establishment and the family of fugitive former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra — a close ally of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who once called him an “eternal friend.”
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number