Junta Forcing Migrants Home for Referendum

By MIN LWIN
The Irrawaddy News

Burma’s military government is organizing a census of Burmese families in southern Shan State with a view to forcing migrant workers to return to their hometowns to vote in May, say family members of workers employed in Thailand.

Earlier this month, according to sources form southern Shan State, local authorities and the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) drew up a plan to register all Burmese citizens for voting in the constitutional referendum in May.

Residents in southern Shan State said the authorities were demanding that family members contact migrant workers and tell them to come back and vote in the referendum. “The USDA and the local authorities are forcing the families to call back their relatives,” said a resident from Ponpakyin, southern Shan State.

“If the worker can’t come and fails to vote in May, the authorities will take them off the census list,” said another source from Ponpakyin.

"The local authorities are collecting the names of people who need temporary identity cards, which they will then use as a supporting list for the referendum," said a resident in Mong Pan, southern Shan State.

A migrant worker in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, said that she and her friends will not return to their hometowns to vote in the referendum. “My mother was asked by the local authorities to call me to go back, but I can’t,” she said on condition of anonymity.

“My trip home isn’t easy,” the woman said. “The cost of returning to my hometown is 6,000 to 10,000 baht (US $188 to $313), which is three months salary.

Everyone over 18 is being issued a temporary national identity card, a doctor from Tachilek in Shan State said. "The temporary national identity cards issued by the immigration office are mainly for citizens to vote in the upcoming referendum.”

According to a resident of Ponpakyin, many young people who live near the Thai border go to work in Thailand after they finish their education. “Most youths, like me, come and work in Thailand because there are not enough jobs for us in Burma,” she said.

Hundreds of thousands of Burmese citizens live in Thailand. According to MAP foundation in Chiang Mai, 95 percent of the 121,488 workers who are registering for work permits in Chiang Mai are ethnic Shan.