BANGKOK: Human rights experts from the United Nations have warned Thailand against returning 48 Uyghurs under its custody to China, stating that doing so could subject them to torture, mistreatment, and irreversible harm.
Human rights groups and some Thai lawmakers have raised concerns in the past week that the transfer to China of the Uyghurs, who have been held in immigration detention for more than a decade, was imminent. According to the government, it has no such intentions.
Rights organizations charge Beijing with pervasive mistreatment of the roughly 10 million Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority living in western Xinjiang, including forced labor in camps and ubiquitous surveillance. Beijing disputes any wrongdoing.
The U.N. says that these people shouldn’t be sent back to China. In a statement on Tuesday, specialists discussed the 48 Uyghurs.
Instead, they must be provided with access to asylum procedures and other humanitarian assistance, the experts said, adding that half of the group had serious health conditions.
While national police head Kittirat Panpetch stated on Monday that there had been no government order on the deportation of the Uyghurs, Thai Deputy Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai stated last week that there was no immediate plan to deport them to China.
Babar Baloch, a United Nations spokesperson. refugee agency, said last week that the agency had been assured by Thai authorities that they would not be transferred to China.
A request for comment on Wednesday was not immediately answered by China’s embassy in Thailand.
During his confirmation hearing last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubios stated that he would leverage the close ties between the United States and Thailand to stop the return of the Uyghurs.
The detainees were among 300 Uyghurs who were apprehended in Thailand in 2014 after fleeing China.
In July 2015, Thailand deported over 100 Uyghurs to China, a move that sparked international outrage and raised concerns that they would be tortured once they returned. Their fate is unknown.
In June 2015, more than 50 Uyghurs were detained in Thailand after more than 170 others—mostly women and children—were deported to Turkey. In the last 11 years, at least five of them—including two children—have perished in Thai captivity, according to the U.N. experts said.
The Chinese authorities at the time said many Uyghurs who fled to Turkey via Southeast Asia planned to bring jihad back to China, saying some were involved in terrorism activities.
Over the years, hundreds, possibly thousands, of Uyghurs have escaped Xinjiang by traveling clandestinely via Southeast Asia to Turkey.
According to security analysts and diplomats, Thailand’s 2015 repatriation of Uyghurs to China sparked the deadliest bombing of its sort on Thai soil, killing 20 people at a shrine in Bangkok a month later.
Thai authorities concluded that attack was linked to its crackdown on a human trafficking ring, without specifically linking the group to the Uyghurs.
Two ethnic Uyghur men were arrested, and charged with murder and illegal possession of explosives. Their trial is still going on, but it has been postponed several times.