By LAWI WENG
The Chiang Mai-based Shan Literature and Cultural Society handed in a letter at the office of the city’s governor on Wednesday, appealing for an end to a crackdown on Shan migrant workers.
The crackdown, by police and immigration officials, followed the arrest of two Shan men suspected of involvement in the rape and murder of a Thai student at Chiang Mai’s Mae Jo University earlier this month.
Nang Seng Oo, a member of the Shan Literature and Cultural Society, said the letter to the governor stressed that all Shan migrants living in Thailand condemned the murder.
The society also sent a letter of condolences to the family of the dead student.
Ill-feeling towards Shan migrants in Chiang Mai, fuelled by the murder, is still in evidence, although the official crackdown that followed the crime has slackened off, according to Khuensai Jaiyen, editor of the Shan Herald Agency for News, in Chiang Mai.
In one Chiang Mai suburb, however, village leaders broadcast loudspeaker warnings to local people not to offer refuge to illegal immigrants.
Mae Jo university students have also urged the authorities to take action against illegal Burmese migrants. Some students called for the demolition of migrant camps near the university.
An estimated 80,000 Burmese migrants, the majority of them Shan, work legally and illegally in the Chiang Mai area.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment