Ekip
23 June 2016•Update: 29 June 2016
By Max Constant
BANGKOK
A large deployment of police and military officers failed to stop thousands of Myanmar migrant workers breaking through security gates in a seafood market close to the Thai capital Thursday -- a desperate attempt to get a closer glimpse of the woman many see as having the nation's hopes in her hands.
State counselor-cum-foreign minister Aung San Suu Kyi had arrived in Bangkok earlier in the day for a three-day official visit -- her first since her party, the National League for Democracy, romped home in the Nov. 8 election last year.
Mu Mu Hsein, a Myanmar housewife born in Dawei in southeast Myanmar and currently living in the city of Mahachai located around 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of Bangkok, told Anadolu Agency that after waiting for seven hours "words could not express how happy" she felt.
Hundreds of thousands of Myanmar migrant workers are employed in Mahachai in seafood processing factories,
“I cannot go close to her, but still I am just so happy to see her coming,” she tearfully added, minutes before migrants shouting “Daw Suu (Mother Suu)", pushed aside security gates and converged on a convoy driving Suu Kyi to a closed part of the market where she was due to a deliver a speech to a chosen few.
Suu Kyi’s visit to Thailand is a triumph for the four million-strong Myanmar migrant worker community in Thailand. While President Htin Kyaw -- Suu Kyi's former driver -- is purely considered the government's figurehead, Suu Kyi is the de facto head of state.
“The conditions are very different from her first visit four years ago,” migrant rights activists Andy Hall underlined to Anadolu Agency.
Hall was involved in organizing Suu Kyi's visit to Mahachai in 2012 -- when she also spoke at the World Economic Forum in Bangkok -- soon after she was elected MP.
“There is a heavy Thai state security deployment. It is a bit disappointing, but I can understand that there are security concerns."
Earlier in the day, other migrant workers, however, had been less than enthusiastic about Suu Kyi.
A press conference organized by the Coalition for the Rights of Refugees and Stateless Persons (CRSP), a Thailand-based NGO focusing on the plight of Myanmar's long-suffering Muslim Rohingya, was cancelled by the Thai police, apparently out of concern that the event could disturb Suu Kyi’s visit.
“I am banned to speak on Rohingya rights,” a Rohingya man involved in organizing the event told Anadolu Agency.
After speaking, the man -- who did not wish to be identified out of fears for his security -- placed scotch-tape across his mouth as a symbol of his lack of freedom of expression.
In a statement distributed to reporters, the CRSP said it wanted to recommend to Suu Kyi several measures to help diminish the pressure on Rohingya.
These included “reinstating nationality to Rohingya who used to be bestowed with the Myanmar nationality before the 1982 law” and to “stop discriminating against ethnic minorities in Myanmar”.
Suu Kyi has often been criticized by international human rights organizations for what they see as indifference to the ethnic minority's plight.
She recently called for people to stop using the word “Rohingya” to refer to the Muslims of western Myanmar, and instead use "Muslim Community in Rakhine State".
With nationalists in the country referring to Rohingya as “Bengali” -- a name which implies that they are interlopers from neighboring Bangladesh -- the new term is seen by analysts as an attempt to strike a balance.
“I think these people have the right to name themselves as 'Rohingya'," Angkhana Neelapaijitr, a member of the Thai national human rights commission involved in the organization of the press conference told Anadolu Agency.
"They have the right to birth registration and nationality. They must have the right to have access to education and the right to work," she added.
“I think Mrs. Aung Suu Kyi should recognize this.”
