Pakistani refugees freed on bail

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Pakistani refugees freed on bail
The Nation 2011-06-06

Immigration police Monday released on bail 96 Pakistani refugees of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community who had been detained for nearly six months.

"Today is our day of freedom," said Mehmood, one of the released Pakistanis. "We thank God."

The group was detained in December after arriving from Pakistan to seek resettlement abroad with the help of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which has a regional office in Bangkok.

The group claimed political persecution in Pakistan. Among those released on bail were 34 children under the age of 12, and one infant who was born in while his mother was detained.

Their release was made possible by the Thai Committee for Refugees, a non-government organisation that put up a 5-million-baht (166,666-dollar) bond for the refugees, who will be housed in Bangkok while waiting for the UNHCR to process the resettlement applications.

The Ahmadiyya, a Muslim minority sect, claim to be a non-political community with 160 million members worldwide.

"We are different from other groups, in that the Ahmadiyya never engage in violence, and never break the laws and regulations of the countries we live in," said Iftikhar Ahmad Ayaz, a spokesman of the London-based Ahmadiyya Muslim Foreign Mission International.