A senior Thai official has admitted that the government deported 40 Uyghur asylum seekers to China last week out of concern about possible retaliation from Beijing if it let the group settle elsewhere.
In a statement yesterday, Russ Jalichandra, the country’s vice-minister for foreign affairs, acknowledged that some other countries (he did not name them) had offered to resettle the Uyghurs, who had been in immigration detention for more than a decade.
But he said that the offers from these foreign countries were “unrealistic” and that allowing them to resettle the Uyghurs would potentially anger China, Reuters reported.
“Thailand could face retaliation from China that would impact the livelihoods of many Thais,” he said. Although he did not say what form this retaliation might have taken, or how serious it might have been, the government determined that sending the group to China was the “best option.”
The Uyghur Muslims, part of a group of more than 300 who were detained by Thai authorities in 2014 after fleeing China’s Xinjiang region, were taken from the Immigration Detention Center in Bangkok and placed aboard a charter flight to Kashgar in a secretive operation in the early hours of February 27.
The move prompted an immediate outcry from U.N. experts and human rights groups who said that the Uyghurs would likely face grievous mistreatment if returned to China. Speaking yesterday, Russ dismissed these concerns, repeating earlier government claims that the Chinese government had promised the Uyghurs would be treated well and that it would allow the Thai government to monitor their situation in Xinjiang.
Russ’ admission contradicts previous comments by Thai officials that the government had received no firm proposals to resettle the Uyghurs. On March 3, Defense Minister Phumtham Wechayachai said, “we waited for more than 10 years, and I have spoken to many major countries, but no one told me for certain.” Phumtham later repeated that despite expressions of sympathy for the Uyghurs’ plight, no nation had formally agreed to take them in.
The admission is an apparent response to recent reports that the Thai government had received offers to resettle the Uyghurs – and chose to ignore them out of concern over the likely response from Beijing. On Wednesday, Reuters reported that Canada, the United States, and Australia had all offered to take in the Uyghurs prior to the deportation. Shortly afterward, Kannavee Suebsan, an opposition lawmaker, claimed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was aware that the U.S., Sweden, and Australia had all offered to resettle the Uyghurs as early as July of last year. Human rights activists involved in advocating for the Uyghurs have said much the same thing.
The Thai government deserves some credit for coming clean about the political calculations behind its move – even if the stream of revelations to a great extent forced its hand. But the whole affair is a revealing sign of the priority that the Thai government puts on its relationship with China at a time of growing Sino-American strategic competition. In this respect it is surely meaningful that the Thai government went ahead with the deportation despite knowing that the U.S. had offered to resettle the Uyghurs, and after newly appointed Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed his opposition to the move.