Forced Migration Online: Blog

Since the mid-1980s, over two million Burmese migrant workers have entered Thailand, searching for a better future.

The jobs they have found are dirty, dangerous and difficult. Often undocumented, migrant workers risk arrest, extortion, deportation and other human rights abuses.

Something of these difficulties and tragedies faced by these workers are documented in these images by Thailand-based documentary photographer John Hulme.

The exhibit ‘In Search of a Job – Any Job: The Life of Burmese Migrant Workers‘, was held by the Refugee Studies Centre and International Migration Institute in Oxford. It ran from 17 – 25 February 2011.

• In Search of a Job – Any Job: The Life of Burmese Migrant Workers
• John Hulme’s website

FMO’s latest resource summary highlights a selection of web-based resources that focus on both on South Korean refugee policy and on the status of refugees from North Korea.

Links are provided to full-text documents, journal articles, external resources, and organizations.

South Korea joined the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees in 1992 and recognised its first refugee in 2001. Due to its democratic political system and successful economic growth in the 1980s, South Korea has seen a recent increase in the number of refugees claiming asylum.

The South Korean constitution stipulates that all North Koreans are entitled to South Korean citizenship. North Koreans are therefore admitted under a resettlement program that includes basic job training, healthcare services and financial subsidies. Due to this policy, the UNHCR considers North Koreans to be ‘persons of concern’ rather than refugees.

• Resource summary

A new collection of photographs, focusing on Karen and Karenni refugees in Thailand, is now available to view in the FMO photo gallery.

The Karen people reside primarily in southern and southeastern Myanmar (Burma), where they make up approximately 7 percent of the population. The Karenni people are a subgroup of the Karen people.

An estimated 400,000 Karen and Karenni refugees have fled to Thailand, in order to escape persecuting by Myanmar’s military government, many of them living in camps on the border. These photographs provide a rare glimpse into daily life in two camps along the Thai-Burma border: Mae La and Ban Mai Nai Soi.

The photographs were taken by Amity Malack, a graduate from the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

A full archive of FMO photo collections can be accessed through the FMO photo gallery.

• Photographs: Karen refugees in Thailand

The latest in FMO’s growing selection of podcasts focuses on a new Chinese government policy, recruiting young Uyghur women from majority Uyghur areas of East Turkestan, and transferring them to work in factories in urban areas of eastern China.

Under this policy, thousands of Uyghur women have been removed from their families and placed into substandard working conditions thousands of miles from their homes. Though official propaganda slogans promote the program as an overwhelmingly positive experience for these women, less than two years after the initiation of the policy, it has already left a history of broken promises and shattered families. Local leaders, who are subject to intense pressure from higher levels of the PRC government, have used deception, pressure, and threats in order to recruit women to participate in the program.

In this podcast, four experts talk about the impact this programme is having on these women:

• Dr. Michael Dillon, visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing
• Omer Kanat, Uyghur Service at Radio Free Asia
• Amy Reger, Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP)
• Enver Tohti, chairman of the UK Uighur Association

These interviews were recorded between September 2008 and July 2009, by film-maker S L James.

• Podcast
• Subscribe via iTunes

The film ‘Silk Road to Guantanamo: The Story of Adel Hakimjan‘ is now available to view online. Silk Road to Guantanamo shows the plight of ex-Guantanamo Bay inmate Adel Hakimjan, a Chinese Uighur, who was abused, persecuted, traded, and falsely imprisoned. There will be a screening of the film at the Blue Boar Lecture Theatre, Christ Church College, University of Oxford, on Tuesday, 17th November 7.30pm-9.30pm. After the screening there will be a Q & A with the film’s director S L James and Enver Tohti, chairman of the UK Uyghur Association.

• Silk Road to Guantanamo: The Story of Adel Hakimjan
• Screening in Oxford
• Subscribe via iTunes

Issue 33 of Forced Migration Review: Protracted displacement is now available in the digital library (FMR is one of five journals available).

Increasingly, growing numbers of displaced people remain displaced for years, even decades. This latest issue of FMR includes 29 articles by academic, international and local actors which assess the impact of such situations on people’s lives and our societies and explore the ‘solutions’ – political, humanitarian and personal.

The issue also includes a spotlight on the ‘internment camps’ in Sri Lanka and a mini-feature on Collective centres, plus a selection of articles on other aspects of forced migration such as rights and responsibilities in Darfur, smuggling in South Africa, IDP health needs in Colombia, climate change agreement talks, peace mediation, and community resilience in East Timor.

FMR is also published in French, Spanish and Arabic and the other language editions will follow soon.

A resource summary to complement FMR 33 is now available on Forced Migration Online and provides links to related key resources websites and documents.

Full Issue

• FMR 2009, No. 33: Protracted displacement

Individual Articles

• Sri Lanka: a question of rights
• Protecting housing rights for IDPs in Sri Lanka
• Understanding the challenge
• Doubly forgotten
• Riding on the back of a tortoise
• Listening to the experiences of the long-term displaced
• Crisis and displacement in Somalia
• Addressing core problems
• Repatriation to Afghanistan: durable solution or responsibility shifting?
• Unfinished business: IDPs in Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Europe’s IDPs still marginalised
• Darfur: a way of life lost
• Comprehensive solutions: a ‘whole-of-government’ approach
• Daring to dream of an end to exile in sub-Saharan Africa
• Local integration in West Africa
• Durable solutions for Burundian refugees in Tanzania
• Burundi: seven years of refugee return
• Refugees: asset or burden?
• Refugee resources: Sri Lankan Tamils in India
• Displacement shock and recovery in Cyprus
• Local integration for refugees in Serbia
• Displacement, decentralisation and reparation in post-conflict Peru
• Peacebuilding in displacement
• Importance of access to financial services
• Hope and opportunities for young people
• Sudanese refugee youth ‘gangs’ in Cairo
• Activism among a new generation of Palestinian exiles
• Use of housing vouchers in Georgia
• Confidence-building measures in Western Sahara
• Refugees and mobility
• A regime at a loss?
• A missing element of ‘camp management’
• When ‘temporary’ lasts too long
• Rights and responsibilities in Darfur
• South Africa’s smugglers’ borderland
• IDP health in Colombia: needs and challenges
• Towards a humanitarian climate change agreement
• Protracted Muslim displacement in Sri Lanka
• Internal displacement and peace mediation
• Community resilience in rural East Timor

One year on from the war between Georgia and the Russian Federation, thousands of civilians remain stranded from their homes with little prospect of imminent return. An estimated 30,000 people are displaced according to a new Amnesty International report released August 7th. Civilians continue to endure human rights violations and remain directly affected by the aftermath of the conflict.

• Amnesty International Report ‘Civilians in the Aftermath of War: The Georgia-Russia Conflict One Year On’
• Oxfam, Georgia Crisis – One year on
• BBC New story ‘Geneva Conventions’ struggle for respect’

In a new report entitled ‘Unlock the Camps in Sri Lanka’ Amnesty International has urged Sri Lanka’s government to set free hundreds of thousands of Tamil war refugees currently detained in camps. The report is a wide-ranging critique of the conditions in which some 300,000 Tamils are now living and includes testimony from refugees now abroad, or their relatives.

• Amnesty International
• BBC News ‘Colombo ‘must free’ war refugees’
• Sri Lanka Ministry of Disaster Management & Human Rights

The newly released DVD title On a Tightrope is an additional resource for understanding the culture and situation of China’s Muslim Uighur minority in the wake of the current crisis.

It is a portrayal of four children at a government orphanage in Xinjiang who despite religious persecution maintain their cultural heritage through learning the ancient Uighur tradition of tightrope walking.

The film has won several awards, including a nomination at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival.

• On a Tightrope Trailer (YouTube)
• On a Tightrope Website

In 2007 Forced Migration Online first highlighted the situation faced by Uyghurs in Xinjiang province, China. The film ‘Lost Nation: Stories from the Uyghur Diaspora’ included an interview with Rabiya Kadeer, the most prominent Uyghur in the world today. Channel 4 news also interviewed Rabiya Kadeer yesterday as the situation has suddenly worsened in Urumqi.

Today Lindsey Hilsum interviewed Rebiya Kadeer, the President of the World Uighur Congress, the most significant Uighur leader, either in China or abroad, and a hate figure for the Chinese government.

Ms Kadeer used to be a businesswoman in Xinjiang, China’s most westerly province, until she was imprisoned for separatist activities.

On her release she fled to the USA where she is now based.

The Chinese government has accused her of orchestrating the violence which erupted in Urumqi yesterday.

• Lost Nation: Stories from the Uyghur diaspora
• Interview with Rabiya Kadeer
• Channel 4 News: Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer
• Subscribe via iTunes