1 Hundreds of Vietnamese boat people drowned or otherwise died violent deaths last year after Thai authorities turned the refugees back to sea, a U.S. human rights group charged today.
2 The government rejected the report as 'prejudiced' and said all refugee boats were allowed to land.
3 The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, in its 193-page report, detailed several alleged incidents of murder and brutality by Thai authorities.
4 It said Thai pirates 'ravaged, raped, and killed hundreds of Vietnamese boat people' pushed out to sea.
5 The New York-based committee said Thailand continued to refuse refugees permission to land despite its January 1988 announcement that it renounced the policy.
6 In addition, about 330,000 Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees were exposed to lawlessness and cross-border warfare in camps along the Cambodian frontier last year, says the report entitled 'Refuge Denied.'
7 'Accounts by survivors received by the Lawyers Committee through their relatives in the U.S. reveal a pattern of murder, sexual abuse and robbery by Thai security forces authorized to `push off' new Vietnamese arrivals,' the report declared.
8 A written statement from the Foreign Ministry described the report as 'unbalanced, prejudiced and at times sensational.'
9 It said all refugee boats were permitted to land and that arrivals were taken to a special camp in cooperation with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
10 Kasit Piromya, chief of the Department of International Organizations, disputed the committee's assertion that hundreds of Vietnamese drowned.
11 'Most of the fatalities that occurred resulted from capsizing of unseaworthy boats outside of Thai territorial waters,' he said in the statement.
12 He said piracy against Vietnamese boat people declined from attacks on 77 percent of boats in 1981 to 10 percent in 1988.
13 The U.N. refugee agency also has reported a decrease in attacks.
14 Thailand has been praised for giving temporary asylum to hundreds of thousands of Cambodian, Vietnamese and Laotian refugees who have fled their homelands since the communist victories in Indochina in 1975.
15 But the Thais have been criticized for the treatment some local authorities give refugees, reluctance to act against pirates and policies that sometimes cause undue suffering to those seeking asylum.
16 In one case, the report says, 74 Vietnamese refugees who came via Cambodia in June 1988 were surrounded by Thai soldiers and towed back to sea in four small boats.
17 The soldiers abducted eight young girls, shot at one of the boats, tried to ram another and abandoned the survivors, the report says.
18 It says that in another case that month, only two boys survived of 61 Vietnamese who were towed to sea in small boats and fired on by soldiers with automatic rifles.
19 'Thai fishermen have interpreted the push-back policy and attitudes expressed by Thai officials and police as a mandate to rape, rob and murder Vietnamese boat people,' the report said.
20 Officials should 'ensure respect for the basic human rights of the Vietnamese boat people,' it said.
21 It accused Thailand of deterring refugees by creating poor living conditions at refugee camps.
22 The report was based on interviews and trips to Thailand by committee members last year.

The government rejected the report as " prejudiced " and said all refugee boats were allowed to land .
all refugee boats were allowed to land
Do they have proof of this?