Work with UNHCR
Re: "Army delivers donated aid to fleeing Karen", (BP, April 6).
I'm glad that the Royal Thai Army is delivering donated supplies to Karen refugees fleeing the Myanmar violence, for as Khun Samanea Saman notes in his April 6 letter, "Thailand has a long and honourable history of sheltering and nurturing refugees fleeing atrocities in neighbouring countries."
We could do an even better job by working through the UNHCR rather than the RTA. The RTA came under a firestorm of criticism after it earlier allegedly blocked food from reaching refugees, and the Tatmadaw looks to model itself after our junta-derived government.
Letting the UNHCR manage donations would assure everybody that Thailand was, indeed, being neutral in this conflict, protect the RTA's image and shield our troops from Covid. There now are 91,809 refugees in Thailand from Myanmar ethnic minorities living along the Thai-Myanmar border (source: UNHCR), and the UNHCR could merge the newcomers with them.
Go with the UNHCR.
Burin Kantabutra
Just sour grapes?
Michael Setter's April 6 letter, "Biden's dark future", makes little sense.
It jumps from a comparison between the economies of the US and Thailand, which is hardly on anyone's radar, to the jingoistic Trumpian rhetoric that "the US is the strongest nation on Earth by far", which automatically makes it a magnet for investment. Khun Michael obviously can't see how rapidly that position is being eroded by China. From there we go to how Mr Biden's policies are destroying US superiority by virtue of a bit of video of two children being dropped over the USA/Mexico border wall -- a godsend moment for Fox News!
Khun Michael proceeds to detail China's rising belligerence in foreign policy. In some weird twist of logic, he would have us believe Mr Biden's foreign policy initiatives, almost universally more critical of human rights abuses than the Trump era, are "ushering in a dark period in human history when authoritarian rule will overwhelm human rights and freedoms". Given Mr Trump's cosying with the likes of Kim Jong-un, Putin, Erdogan, and initially Xi Jinping it's hard to see Mr Setter's hostility to Mr Biden as anything other than sour grapes.
Ray Ban
Correction
The five demands made by ethnic groups to the National Ceasefire Agreement as cited in April 7 article "Ethnic armies fight for a federal future", by Larry Jagan should read: An end to the military's massive bloodshed, including deaths; the immediate and unconditional release of all people detained; voiced commitment to the spring revolution and the civil disobedience movement; an acceptance of the CRPH's abolition of the 2008 Constitution; and in particular, a welcoming of the CRPH's federal democracy charter "as an effort in building a Federal Democratic Union".
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