Assessment for Northern Hill Tribes in Thailand

Risk Assessment | Analytic Summary | References

Risk Assessment

The Northern Hill Tribes have two of the factors that increase the likelihood of future rebellion: territorial concentration and a history of lost autonomy. Factors that could inhibit future rebellion include Thailand's decade of democratic rule and its efforts to promote economic development in the hill tribal regions.

Analytic Summary

The hill tribes form a majority in Thailand's northern regions, but there are tribals dispersed throughout the country. There has been significant group migration across the regions of Thailand due to voluntary movements, hardship, and either compulsion by the state or the threat of or actual attacks by other communal groups.

There are numerous social and cultural differences between the hill tribals and the majority Thai population. Group members speak multiple languages; they are primarily animists in contrast to the majority Buddhist Thais, and they follow different social customs than the dominant group (LANG = 2; BELIEF = 3). In addition, the Northern Hill Tribes are a physically distinguishable subtype of the same racial stock as the Thais (RACE = 1).

The approximate one dozen northern hill tribes were autonomous prior to the 1900s and their incorporation in the Thai state (AUTLOST = 1). The most numerous and politically significant tribes are the Hmong (referred to by the Thai as the Meo) and the Karen. The Karen, who form about a half of the tribal population, reside in the northwest along the border with Burma (Myanmar) where their ethnic Karen kin have been engaged in more than 50 years of rebellion against successive Burmese military juntas. While there are Burmese Karen refugees in Thailand, relations between the Thai Karen and state authorities are cordial.

The Hmong, on the other hand, have elicited the attention of government officials for their reported involvement in anticommunist insurgencies, their production of opium, and tribal use of swidden or shifting agriculture which is viewed as environmentally damaging. Hmong involvement in the Communist Party of Thailand insurgency in the 1960s and 1970s led to military actions in tribal regions along with the enactment of policies designed to assimilate the northern hill tribes (REBEL65X = 6). State repression against the Hmong continued until 1975 when the communist victory in Laos led many Laotian Hmong refugees in Thailand to return to their home country.

The northern hill tribes are subject to numerous demographic stresses. These include deteriorating public health conditions in comparison to other groups, declining caloric intake, environmental decline in group-inhabited areas due to heavy flooding, rural to urban migration in search of better opportunities, and migrations of ethnic kin from neighboring states into tribal-majority areas. The northern drug economy has been accompanied by the spread of prostitution as addiction coupled with poverty has led family members to sell young boys and girls to child traffickers. These factors have also increased the spread of HIV/AIDS among community members.

Group members are substantially underrepresented in the political arena as more than half of the tribal population does not possess Thai citizenship due to lengthy delays in processing their claims or the tribals' lack of the required documentation. As a result, tribals who are not considered Thai citizens are not allowed to vote, seek jobs in the civil service, or purchase land and there are restrictions on their movements within the country. In May 2000, the government eased the evidence requirements and created a new citizenship category for hill tribals referred to as highlanders (POLDIS03 = 2). This is expected to allow a number of tribal members to obtain citizenship. Public policies are also in place to further development in the north to address the tribals economic underrepresentation which is a result of historical neglect and restrictions (ECDIS03 = 1).

The hill tribes are seeking equal civil rights and status, greater economic opportunities, and the protection of their culture and lifeways. Development programs have included the promotion of tourism and local crafts in tribal areas and the replacement of opium production with other crops such as cabbage. However, tourism is often viewed by tribals as treating them as "spectacles" rather than helping to ensure their way of life.

Group members are represented by umbrella organizations and also by movements that draw their support primarily from the tribal community. The Tribal Assembly of Thailand which represents seven tribes and some 170 tribal villages held mass gatherings in the north in May 1999 to develop a lobbying campaign to promote more explicit public policies that address key tribal concerns such as citizenship rights and the management of natural resources. While the Northern Hill Tribes are a mosaic group with multiple or crosscutting identities, recent political activism points to the early development of a broader sense of identity (COHESX9 = 2).

Relations between the hill tribes and the lowland Thai have periodically been tense in recent years. In June and August of 2000, Thai villagers attacked a Hmong orchard alleging that it was encroaching on an environmentally protected area. Anti-tribal demonstrations were also held in 1998. No intergroup conflict was reported between 2001 and 2003 (INTERCON01-03 = 0).

Political activism by the hill tribes, in the form of rebellion, first began in the mid-1950s but these actions ceased by the mid-1970s and the end of communist insurgencies in Thailand and neighboring Laos and Cambodia (REBEL55X = 6; REBEL70X = 2). Protest actions such as demonstrations first arose in the mid to late 1990s (PROT97 = 3), but none have been reported in recent years (PROT01-03 = 0).

References

Far Eastern Economic Review 1990-94.

Keesings Record of World Events 1990-93, 2001-2003.

Lexis-Nexis news reports, 1990-2003.

Phase I, Minorities at Risk, overview compiled by Monty G. Marshall, 06/89.

THE HMONG. Edited by Robert Cooper. (Times, 167 pages). 1998

U.S. Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Thailand, 2001-2003.