Thai Police announce all Nigerians in #Thailand will be investigated

Bangkok - Police on Friday said they will target ALL Nigerians in Thailand for investigation in a move a top UN human rights official warns could amount to illegal and discriminatory policing.

Tourist Police chief Maj. Gen. Surachet Hakpal made the announcement while displaying people rounded up in the latest mass arrests of 72 foreign nationals from 75 locations nationwide, including Khaosan Road. He said arrests were also made at 18 schools where the foreign nationals were working without work permits.

Eleven foreigners were arrested for overstaying their visas, 46 for illegal entry and 15 for petty crimes. Among them were Russians, Indians, Laotians, Ugandans and Nigerians.

Surachet said the campaign has seen more than 2,000 foreigners permanently banned from entering Thailand.

“This doesn’t mean all Nigerians are bad people,” he said. “Our crackdown so far is to separate the bad guys from the good ones.”

He said the roughly 1,400 Nigerians currently residing in Thailand and recorded by Immigration  will be investigated next week and questioned about their income to prevent further crimes committed by foreigners.

A member of the National Human Rights Commission associated with the UN warned that indiscriminately investigating all Nigerians without evidence of wrongdoing or probable cause could be against the law and is discriminating against Nigerian citizens.

“They should not randomly investigate people just because they’re Nigerians, because it will become a discrimination against their race.” Angkhana Neelaphaijit said, adding that those arrested have the right to legal defense and to file a complaint if their rights have been violated.

Online commentators and individuals responded quickly to the remarks stating that Nigerians are not a race and are a nationality and when the vast majority of foreigners arrested for overstay and crimes since Operation X Ray began were Nigerian it should be permissible to check on every one residing in the country. Those residing legally, not on overstay and with proper permits if working should be allowed to stay the commentators said.

Source - ThePattayaNews

Fugitive Thai ex-PM Yingluck in Dubai, aiming for UK

Fugitive former Thai premier Yingluck Shinawatra fled to Dubai and may try to seek asylum in the UK, a junta source told AFP Saturday, after she ducked a legal ruling, wrong-footing the court and her supporters alike.

Yingluck, 50, was due on Friday morning to arrive at the Supreme Court for the ruling in her trial for criminal negligence that could have seen her jailed for 10 years.

But she did not show up, staging a vanishing act that wrote a dramatic closing chapter to the 16-year political saga of her mega-rich Shinawatra family.

Speculation swirled on Saturday on the whereabouts of Thailand's first female prime minister -- and her possible escape route.

The junta source, who is well-placed in the security hierarchy, gave a detailed description of her escape, saying she took a private jet from Thailand to Singapore and onto Dubai, the base of Shinawatra family patriarch Thaksin, who is Yingluck's older brother.

"Thaksin has long prepared escape plan for his sister... he would not allow his sister to spend even a single day in prison," the source added, requesting anonymity.

"But Dubai is not Yingluck's final destination," the source said, adding she may be aiming "to claim asylum in Britain".

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Thaksin, who once owned Manchester City football club, owns property in London and spends significant amounts of time in the city.

The Shinawatra's political network remained tight-lipped on Saturday in a media blackout that only served to heighten speculation over her dash from Thailand and the likelihood of a possible deal with the junta to allow her to leave.

A senior source inside the family's Pheu Thai party, also requesting anonymity, on Saturday told AFP Yingluck had fled the country for Dubai a few days before the ruling.

The Shinawatra political dynasty emerged in 2001 with a series of groundbreaking welfare schemes that won them votes and the loyalty of the rural poor.

But their popularity rattled Thailand's royalist, army-aligned elite, who battered successive governments linked to the clan with coups, court cases and protests.

Yingluck's government was toppled by a coup in 2014 and she was put on trial over negligence linked to a costly rice subsidy that propped up her rural political base. 

Source - The Jakarta Post