Surprising revelation that three boys and coach rescued from Thai cave are not Thai citizens.
The discovery that the soccer coach who was trapped in a Thailand cave for two weeks, and three of the boys he teaches, are stateless has surprised many in the country.
“They are not Thai citizens,” said Weenat Seesuk, an interior ministry official in Bangkok.
Thais are now calling for the quartet to be given citizenship following their ordeal.
Seesuk said that officials were checking to see if they qualified for citizenship.
Coach Ekkapol Chantawong, or Ek as he is known, is a member of the Tai Lue minority, one of several groups whose people have over generations moved around the region, across open borders in remote hills between southern China, Myanmar and Laos, and into northern Thailand’s ethnic patchwork of communities.
Many such people do not have Thai citizenship papers and are officially stateless.