BANGKOK - A Thai lawyer is seeking the release of 42 Uyghurs who have spent more than a decade in detention and who rights groups fear could be deported to China where they would be at risk of torture.
The men from the mostly Muslim minority from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China have been held on immigration charges at a Thai detention center since attempting to escape Beijing’s persecution through Thailand.
Lawyer Chuchart Kanpai said in a petition submitted to a court on Thursday that the men had spent enough time locked up and should be freed.
“They have been jailed from 2013 to 2025, more than 10 years. It is obvious that they have completed the sentence,” Chuchart said in the petition, according to a copy obtained by Radio Free Asia.
“Detention is therefore unlawful.”
The rights group Justice for All said early this month that reports from 48 detained Uyghur asylum seekers indicated that Thai authorities were coercing them to fill out forms in preparation for their deportation to China.
It was not immediately clear why the rights group referred to 48 detained Uyghurs but Chuchart identified 42 in his petition.
A government spokesman told RFA on Jan. 23 that Thailand had “no policy” to deport the Uyghurs and he dismissed speculation that they would be forced back to China.
Uyghurs in China’s vast Xinjiang region have been subjected to widespread human rights abuses, including detention in massive concentration camps.
China denies that but U.N. experts on Jan. 21 also urged Thailand not to deport the Uyghurs saying they would likely face torture.
Chuchart, after lodging the petition, said the court would hold a hearing on Feb. 17.
“We will have witnesses including the ones from the World Uyghur Congress,” Chuchart told reporters, referring to an advocacy group that this month appealed to Thailand not to send the men to China.
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‘Risky’
The refugees are part of an originally larger cohort of more than 350 Uyghur men, women and children, 172 of whom were resettled in Turkey, 109 deported back to China, and five who died because of inadequate medical conditions.
In 2015, Thailand, Washington’s longest-standing treaty ally in Asia, faced stiff international criticism for those it did deport back to China. Thailand is not a signatory to the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention, and therefore does not recognize refugees.
Angkhana Neelapaijit, a senator who chairs the Senate’s human rights committee, said the court proceedings initiated by Chuchart could backfire.
“The court may invite anyone to testify in the hearings, including the Chinese ambassador,” she told RFA. “If the court believes that China will treat them civilly, that’s risky.”
New U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at his confirmation hearing on Jan. 15 that treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang was ‘horrifying’ and he would reach out to Thailand to prevent the return of the men.
The treatment of Uyghurs in China was not “some obscure issue” that should be on the sidelines of U.S.-China ties, Rubio, a China hawk, told the hearing.
“These are people who are basically being rounded up because of their ethnicity and religion, and they are being put into camps. They’re being put into what they call re-education centers. They’re being stripped of their identity. Their children’s names are being changed,” he said.
“They’re being put into forced labor – literally slave labor.”
China denies accusations of slave labor in Xinjiang.
Edited by RFA Staff