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Myanmese pay ultimate price for ID card evasion

Alan Morison

It is a simple identity card, about the same size and shape as the old Hong Kong identity card. Hardly worth your life.

But 54 illegal Myanmese migrants, most of them women, suffocated in a cramped seafood container in southern Thailand on Wednesday while being smuggled to the resort island of Phuket in a bid to find jobs without official documentation.

Increasing numbers of Myanmese seem prepared to risk death to cross the border into Thailand, where they expect to find work doing menial labour. Construction sites, fishing trawlers, home help: the Myanmese do all the lowly-paid jobs that many Thais are reluctant to do.

It is said the resorts along the Andaman Sea that were hammered by the 2004 tsunami have mostly been rebuilt on the backs of Myanmese.

They are now coming in such numbers that cross-border migration has become an issue of national security, with the Thai Navy exploring a top-level suggestion that an island detention centre would be a suitable deterrent.

The wealthy tourists who flock to Phuket in growing numbers drive past shanty towns composed of corrugated iron shacks where Myanmese labourers live in primitive conditions under an 8pm curfew. They are forbidden to own mobile telephones or motorcycles, and are blamed for crime and accused of spreading tuberculosis and HIV.

Phuket's foremost heroines, immortalised in a large statue, are a pair of sisters who helped to beat off a Myanmese invasion of the island in 1785. Ever since, it seems, the Myanmese have been trying to creep back.

The chief of Phuket's Employment Office, Nataya Anudit, says 35,116 Burmese have the precious ID cards, and at least 20,000 more work illegally on the island. 'Construction companies are always looking for more workers,' she said. 'If they cannot get them legally, they usually find them illegally.'

The problem is mirrored in other provinces along the coast, but Phuket - with its heady mix of wealthy tourists and booming economy - is where the Myanmese most want to be. And more are dying for the opportunity.

It is a sudden increase in the arrivals of Rohingya, a minority Muslim ethnic group, that has now caused a headache for the Thai military.

A boatload of about 80 recently arrived on a small island north of Phuket. They were reported to local authorities by anxious villagers and told immigration officials that there had been deaths during their 11-day voyage south.

Like all illegal Myanmese caught on the Andaman coast, the Rohingya were trucked back to the border, where they are usually refused entry because Myanmar does not allow illegal migrants to return.

Thai authorities fear unless an example is made, Muslims from Myanmar could link up with the Muslims who are being blamed for the deadly separatist unrest in Thailand's southernmost provinces.

The Myanmese who do find legal jobs - like Too Nu, who works on a construction site in Phuket city - benefit from the minimum daily wage of 193 baht (HK$47), which is about four times what labourers are paid in Myanmar. Too Nu, 24, came legally nine years ago. Others say they bribe police to get into the country and stay.

Laurence Gray, of World Vision Asia Pacific, confirms that extortion is likely among vulnerable groups such as the Myanmese in Thailand. 'Illegal migrants will often be made to work long hours or not paid wages at all,' he said.

A 2005 World Vision survey of almost 1,200 Myanmese involved in so-called 'blind migration' - where people cross borders without a job to go to - indicated about one in 10 were led into prostitution.

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