The unintentionally forgotten ethnic native Thais and their statelessness in the postcolonial citizenship law of Thailand

The study focuses on postcolonial Thai citizenship, with reference to Thailand’s status as a semi-colonial nation-state from the late nineteenth century until 1938. Its purpose is to demonstrate why, despite the fact that the Thai nationality act has been in place without any indication of ethnic discrimination since 1913, not all native Thais are recognised as Thai nationals. The existence of a semi-colonial Thailand is explained because the Thai monarch was compelled to grant extraterritorial rights to subjects of colonial powers, beginning with the Britain and France. Extraterritoriality benefited other Western subjects, Asian subjects, ethnic Chinese, and anyone else recognised as a western foreign subject, thus underlining the ambiguity of subjecthood at the height of colonialism. Thailand could not tolerate the phenomenon of the majority of Thais enrolling as foreign subjects to be eligible for extraterritorial privileges, resulting in only half of total residents being Thai subjects. Thailand, with its traditional recognition of Thai subjects based on diverse race, culture, and language, without assimilation, became aware of a dwindling population, based on claims of extraterritoriality resulting in the loss of Thailand’s autonomy. As a result of the ambiguous traditional methods of identifying Thai subjects, Thailand changed her way of negotiating with western countries by identifying Thai nationals in a western-style manner. Consequently, the first written Thai Nationality Act was passed in 1913 with the principles of Thai subjecthood by birth and descent. Thailand's Nationality Act, enacted earlier than those of other Southeast Asian decolonised governments, did not use racial grounds to discriminate against indigenous people. Even so, several groups of ethnic indigenous Thais faced statelessness throughout Thailand's postcolonial era. There were the stateless hill-tribe indigenous peoples who live in the uncertain border area between Thailand and Myanmar. This group, representing a range of ethnic groups, served as a reminder to the Thai government regarding Thailand's long background as a multiethnic state, and resulted in the 2000 Regulation on Proving Thai Nationality for Hill-tribe Indigenous People. This does not, however, address all cases of statelessness, notably among the Maniq people, an ethnic indigenous community that lives in the forest and frequently migrates across Thailand and Malaysia, and the Lau ethnic minority in Bangkok, Thailand's capital city. Using empirical fact of stateless native people, I argue that the new legal institution of Thai nationality, introduced on the model of nationality employed by European states during the semi-colonial era, might not have been completely understood by the Thai government. Particularly during the transitional period from a traditional understanding of Thai people to Thais identified by nationality, the Thai government, in the abrupt situation of having to integrate the nationality law into Thailand’s modernisation policy, did not acknowledge the ways of nationality investigation and acquisition so as to recognise all Thais amongst the multiethnic Thai modern state. Furthermore, native Thais in remote rural areas may not have understand the necessity of being recognised as Thais, and some may fail to seek recognition. The statelessness of native Thais, which still persists, therefore arose unintentionally.