Muslim Rohingya refugees from Burma who arrive in Thailand are reportedly being urged to return home, despite official Thai assurances that they will be helped to resettle in third countries.

Thailand’s supreme military commander, Gen Boonsang Niampradit, said o­n Friday that his country’s interim government was prepared to help in the resettlement of not o­nly Rohingya refugees but Hmong people from Laos. He warned, however, that “limited resources” and the large numbers of arriving refugees posed problems for the government.

As the general spoke, more than 100 Rohingya refugees living in the Thai-Burmese border town of Mae Sot were reportedly being urged to return to Burma.

Tin Maung Thet, chairman of the All Burma Muslim Union, told The Irrawaddy o­n Friday: “They [the Thai authorities] said that if they accept all newcomers in their country, they are not able to cope with the burden and they ordered those [Rohingyas] to go back where they came from.”

Tin Maung Thet said Rohingya refugees in Mae Sot had been camping out o­n the town’s football pitch, but the ABMU were now helping them with food and accommodation.

The Rohingyas included groups who had left Burma’s Arakan coast by open boat and landed in southern Thailand after failing to reach Malaysia. The Thai newspaper Matichon quoted Gen Boonsang o­n Friday as saying the troubles in Thailand’s Muslim-dominated southern provinces made third countries wary about accepting them.

Thailand’s Hmong refugees include 7,000 living in a temporary camp in the country’s Petchaboon province. They fled to Thailand from Laos, and the Lao government is currently discussing with Thailand the possibility of accepting them back.

International rights groups maintain the Hmong refugees would face intimidation and persecution by the Lao government if they had to return. Many living in the Petchaboon camp claim they fought with the US Central Intelligence Agency against the Communist Pathet Lao before the fall of Vientiane in 1975.