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A United Nations official is accusing Thai authorities of barring a group of 20 Burmese refugees from resettling in New Zealand because they are a "human zoo" tourist attraction in a remote area of Thailand.
Foreign tourists visiting villages in Mae Hong Son, near the border with Myanmar, pay to see and photograph Padaung women who from the age of five wear brass coiled rings around their necks to give them a giraffe-like appearance.
But the BBC has quoted a UN High Commissioner for Refugees regional spokeswoman, Kitty McKinsey, as saying Thai authorities have refused to allow 20 Padaung to leave the country, despite firm offers to resettle them in New Zealand and Finland.
"The Thai authorities are treating them in a special way," she told the BBC, pointing out that some 20,000 other Burmese refugees had recently been allowed to move to third countries.
"It's absolutely a human zoo . .. One solution is for tourists to stop going."
One of the Padaung women, Zember, 23, has removed her neck rings in protest after being told two years ago she and her family had been accepted for resettlement, only to be prevented from leaving Thailand.
"I was so happy," she said. "They tell me a house is already waiting for us in New Zealand."
Her family fled eastern Myanmar 18 years ago after government troops raided their village and took the men away by force to work as porters.
Wachira Chotirosseranee, the deputy district officer and refugee camp commander, disputed that Zember and the other 19 Padaung were refugees and insisted that tourism had nothing to do with the issue.
"According to the regulations, you have to live inside the refugee camp. They don't meet the criteria."
But Ms McKinsey said the Padaung group were refugees.
"It comes as a great surprise that the Thai authorities are criticising them for living outside the camps, when it was the Thai authorities who wanted them to live (outside)."
New Zealand's Labour Department today confirmed it had assessed the Padaung group and issued permanent residence visas under the UNHCR quota programme.
But so far the "Thai authorities have not issued the necessary exit permits to allow them to come to New Zealand".
- NZPA
