Suu Kyi and Thai junta chief Prayuth Chan-ocha will on Friday sign a memorandum of understanding to help Myanmar migrants work legally in Thailand, according to a Thai government document distributed before the visit.
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The 71-year-old is officially Myanmar’s foreign minister and state counsellor.
A planned visit by Myanmar’s State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi to a Myanmar refugee camp in western Thailand, earlier scheduled for Saturday, has been cancelled, China’s Xinhua news agency reported a Thai government official as saying. When her motorcade passed the gate, Ms Suu Kyi opened the vehicle window and waved to the workers to follow, prompting many of them to burst through the barricades, spilling over the entrance gate of the compound in front of the hall.
This coastal town has come to symbolize the Thailand-Myanmar relationship for decades.
“We are trying to make sure our citizens obtain their fundamental rights granted by the laws of this country”, she said.
Thirteen Thailand-based activist groups for workers arranged for roughly 500 migrant workers to attend a question-and-answer session with Aung San Suu Kyi inside the factory.
The European Union said on Wednesday Myanmar needed “space” to deal with human rights abuses in its restive northwest, adding it would respect the call by country leader Aung San Suu Kyi to avoid the term “Rohingya” to describe persecuted Muslims there. “That’s why a lot of workers are in front of the hall and are showing their dissatisfaction”.
Myanmar migrants are sneered at by many Thais, routinely blamed for crimes and vulnerable to extortion from corrupt officials – especially if they lack work permits. Numerous workers are undocumented. Thailand strongly supports Naypyidaw’s new peace efforts to bring an end to the 40-year civil war in Myanmar and for the country to attain national reconciliation.
Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party swept last year’s general election to take power in March, but she is blocked from becoming president by a clause in the constitution enacted under army rule that bars her from holding the post.
Her tightly-controlled schedule allows little interaction with the media, seen by some as a way of avoiding hard questions about the treatment of Rohingya Muslims, who are held in camps in apartheid-like conditions in Myanmar’s west. “It’s the promise that she made many years ago, so she’s coming back to live this promise today”.
When Lee met with Rohingya in the camps, they told her about the plight of refugees in Rakhine and the impoverished state’s need for development.
She said that one important qualification of human beings is “karuna” (kindness) – a term used by both Thais and Myanmar people which carries the same meaning. She also noted that youths have an important role in the promotion of peace and making the world a better place.
Her visit “fills me with hope”, Myanmar migrant Thon Barami, 50, told AFP at the scruffy port, which is a hub for Thailand’s huge seafood industry and home to more than 100,000 low-paid Myanmar labourers.
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Additionally, there are approximately 103,000 more persons on the Thai side waiting for repatriation and another 108,000 living in 24 townships across the border in Myanmar.
