Thailand has ignored international pleas for mercy and secretly deported at least 40 Uyghurs to China, prompting an angry response from Washington and accusations that Bangkok has bowed to pressure from Beijing.
Their deportation, after 11 years of “inhumane” detention in the Thai capital, dashed their hopes for political asylum and a fresh life abroad. It was also a major embarrassment for Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who had previously promised to adhere to international human rights law.
And it was a diplomatic slap in the face for U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, given he told his confirmation hearing last month that he would use his influence to stop Thailand – a major U.S. ally – from deporting the Uyghurs.
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms Thailand’s forced return of at least 40 Uyghurs to China, where they lack due process rights and where Uyghurs have faced persecution, forced labor, and torture,” Rubio, who holds a strong track record on human rights, said in a statement.
If this wasn’t such a serious issue, the clandestine attempt to get rid of the Uyghurs would be worthy of a Hollywood script comparable with the Keystone Cops. Who knew?
Well, pretty much anyone with a smartphone, a Facebook account, and an interest.
An eleventh hour petition in a Bangkok criminal court by the Cross Cultural Foundation, seeking to “halt acts of torture, cruel treatment, and the deportation, expulsion, or extradition,” was lodged Thursday as word spread that the Uyghurs were to be surrendered to an unknown fate.
They had already been sneaked out of the Immigration Detention Center in six transport trucks with windows covered by black tape at 2:14 a.m. that morning.
A China Southern Airlines plane took off from Don Mueang Airport at 4:48 a.m., with a destination marked “unspecified” on the Flightradar24 system and landed at Kashgar Airport, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, about six hours later. In Bangkok, the petition was dismissed.
“It is obvious this was done only to obey China – where state media now celebrates the victory of getting their hands on the refugees,” said Magnus Fiskesjo, an associate professor of anthropology at Cornell University.
“The propaganda machine is in full swing, including with bots and influencers online.”
Uyghurs are a Turkic, majority-Muslim ethnic group from China’s far west Xinjiang region where China has been accused of grave human rights abuses.
The 48 were part of a group of more than 300 Uyghurs who fled China for Turkey via Thailand, where they were arrested in 2014. More than 100 were forcibly returned in mid-2015, their fate unknown.
Another 173, mostly women and children, were sent to Turkey. Of the 53 that remained, five, including two children, have since died, leaving 48, of which Beijing and Bangkok have confirmed that “at least 40” were repatriated.
Beijing had insisted on their return, claiming the 48 Uyghurs are jihadists and that it opposes “any act of condoning or even supporting illegal immigration,” while its embassy in Bangkok says human rights reports about the detained Uyghurs were more about spreading false narratives.
Rights groups suspected that Thailand intended to return them imminently. On January 21, U.N. experts urged authorities to “immediately halt” any transfer, warning they faced the “real risk of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment if they are returned.”
One day later, Thai authorities denied any immediate plan to forcibly repatriate. Yet further warnings were issued on February 26, as preparations were being made in secret – despite promises to the contrary – to deport at least 40 in the dead of night.
Bangkok is now facing accusations that a deal was struck with Beijing to surrender the Uyghurs, under the guise of a wider crackdown on Chinese criminal syndicates running industrialized human trafficking and scam compound operations along its borders.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that the operation had violated standard procedures and the use of black tape to seal vehicles was unprecedented, with the use of police escorts to the airport evading independent efforts to monitor their plight.
“Thailand blatantly disregarded domestic law and its international obligations by forcibly sending these Uyghurs to China to face persecution,” said Elaine Pearson, HRW’s Asia director.
“After 11 years of inhumane detention in Thailand’s immigration lockup, these men are now at grave risk of being tortured, forcibly disappeared, and detained for long periods by the Chinese government.”
Fiskesjo, a political anthropologist specializing in China and Southeast Asia, noted a Thai court hearing had been scheduled for March 27, “but that was just set aside as if Thailand is no longer a country of laws.”
He added, “Thailand’s betrayal of human rights overrides the Thai politicians and lawyers and others who tried to protest, arguing that refugees had suffered enough, languishing in Thai jails for over 10 years.”
Paetongtarn, with less than a year in office, had earned respect for navigating Thailand’s complex political system dominated by her own family dynasty. She has also been applauded for tackling the criminal syndicates operating across Thai borders in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos.
But in giving up the luckless Uyghurs, much of that goodwill has been lost.