Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt pay visit to Thai camp
“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,” the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported Jolie as saying.
The camp, 3km from the Burma border, is home to more than 18,000 mainly ethnic Karen refugees who have no freedom of movement and are not allowed outside to seek work or higher education.
They fled crackdowns on ethnic rebel armies in military-ruled Burma.
“With no foreseeable chance that these refugees will soon be able to return to Burma, we must find some way to help them work and become self reliant,” Jolie said.
Jolie previously visited the camp in 2004 and wanted to return to show her partner Pitt, UNHCR spokeswoman Kitty McKinsey said.
Ban Mai Nai Soi is the third largest of nine refugee camps in northern Thailand housing a total of
111,000 registered refugees.
Most refugees are from Burma’s ethnic groups, including many Christians from the Karen minority.
Jolie urged Thai authorities to speed up the processing of 5000 migrants who arrived in Mae Hong Son province in 2006 and 2007 after fighting across the border in Burma’s Kayah state.
Her visit comes with Thailand in the spotlight for its treatment of ethnic Rohingya migrants arriving on its southern shores from Burma’s north.
The Thai military is accused of pushing hundreds of the migrants back to sea in rickety boats without adequate food and water – a charge it categorically denies.
Jolie said the fair treatment of refugees in the northern camps “makes me hope that Thailand will be just as generous to the Rohingya refugees who are now arriving on their shores”.
This entry was posted on Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 3:36 am and is filed under Angelina Jolie News.
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