Thailand sends Myanmar refugees back despite the threat of death

The young woman from Myanmar and her family now live amid the tall grasses of a riverbank on the Thai border, trapped between a country that does not want them and a country whose military could kill them.

Like thousands of others fleeing mounting violence after a military takeover in Myanmar last February, Hay left her village for neighboring Thailand in search of a safe haven that does not exist. Returning to Myanmar would place her and her family at risk of death. And yet that is precisely what Thai authorities — wary of jeopardizing their relationship with Myanmar’s ruling military — tell them to do at least once a week, she says.

“When they told us to go back, we cried and explained why we can’t go back home,” says Hay, who lives in a flimsy tent on the Moei River, which divides the two countries. The…