Updated Oct. 09, 2024,, 10:45 p.m. ET.
As Thailand won a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council for its 2025-27 term, Y Quynh Bdap sat in Bangkok Remand Prison awaiting an appeal against extradition to Vietnam, where he faces a 10-year prison sentence for “terrorism.”
On Sept. 30, a court in the Thai capital ruled that the ethnic Ede and founder of Montagnards Stand for Justice could be sent back, following a request by Vietnamese authorities, whose representatives sat in court throughout the trial.
Montagnards is a term used to describe members of mainly-Christian minority groups who live in Vietnam's Central Highlands. Bdap's grandfather, like many Montagnards, worked with the U.S. military that fought alongside South Vietnamese forces in the 20-year war won by North Vietnam in 1975.
Y Quynh Bdap, 32, first fell foul of the authorities in 2012, detained for five months without access to a lawyer and pressured to sign an agreement to abandon Protestantism. He ignored the threats but, after years of intimidation, fled with his family to Thailand in 2018, hoping for more freedom as a refugee.
In spite of that status being recognized by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Thailand has not ratified the 1951 convention, which outlines the legal protection, rights and assistance a refugee is entitled to receive.
In January this year, following pressure from Vietnam, Thai police arrested Bdap and sent him to court for a judge to consider the extradition case and an accusation he overstayed his visa.
Bdap was tried in absentia by a Vietnamese court in January in connection with a June 2023 attack on two government offices in Dak Lak that left nine people dead. He has always denied involvement and Vietnam’s claims that the organization he founded to help Montagnards is a terrorist organization that helped plan the attack.
“Our argument in the extradition case is that he cannot be extradited because he is a recognized refugee and he was undergoing the resettlement process,” said Bdap’s lawyer Nadthasiri Bergman at a Wednesday news conference on Thailand’s obligations to her client.
“One day before he was arrested the UNHCR was asking for him to come in and give an interview [to see] if he had any connection with the incident in Dak Lak. They found no evidence he was connected and his status was never revoked so he is still confirmed as a refugee.”
Most asylum seekers don’t want to live in Thailand but come here out of necessity while waiting for resettlement in a third country, Bergman said.
She was speaking hours before Thailand won the vote to gain a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council.
Thailand has a history of cooperating with foreign governments seeking the extradition of activists in spite of its commitment to the international principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits forcing people back to places when there are grounds for believing they would be at risk of “irreparable harm on account of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, or other serious human rights violations.”
On Jan. 26, 2024, Thai police arrested Vietnamese blogger Truong Duy Nhat and handed him over to Vietnamese police, who took him across the border into Laos, and from there back to Vietnam. Nhat had been seeking asylum in Thailand.
On April 13, 2024, Vietnamese journalist Duong Van Thai disappeared in Bangkok in what many believe was an abduction. Shortly afterwards, Vietnamese authorities announced they had caught him trying to sneak into the country illegally.
Thailand may have felt obliged to return a few favors. Prakaidao Phruksakasemsuk, deputy director of Thailand-based rights organization Cross Cultural Foundation, cited at least nine cases of Thai political activists being arrested or disappearing in neighboring countries. They include Chucheep Chiwasut, Siam Theerawut and Kritsana Thapthai – accused of insulting the Thai monarchy – who vanished in Vietnam in 2019.
Thai authorities say they have no information on the whereabouts of those people, who disappeared under the watch of the military government of then Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha, who operated a “swap mart” with abusing neighbors, according to Phil Robertson, director of Bangkok-based consultancy Asia Human Rights and Labour Advocates.
Robertson said he’d been hoping for a change following a May 2023 election, especially considering Thailand’s announcement that year it was running for Human Rights Council membership, during which the then foreign minister, Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara, said the government was committed to advancing democracy and human, civil and political rights.
Last month, current Foreign Affairs Minister Maris Sagiampongse repeated Thailand’s commitment to protecting human rights before a U.N. General Assembly meeting that newly elected Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra had decided not to attend.
“If Thailand wants to sit as a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva it needs to consistently stand up for human rights principles. And that includes pushing back on bad advice and refusing sinister requests from human rights abusing neighbors,” Robertson said hours before Thailand won the vote to sit on the council.
“What happens to Y Quynh Bdap will be a very important way for the international community to determine which side of the human rights stance the new government of Thailand is going to stand on.”
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Y Quynh Bdap’s defense team is still waiting for a copy of the final court judgment before lodging an appeal. If Bdap loses in court, the Thai government still has the power to overrule his extradition. Rights groups that have taken up his case plan to send a letter to the government next week supporting Bdap’s claims that he faces torture or even death if sent to Vietnam.
“We don’t want to repeat history when we sent back 109 Uyghurs to China in 2015,” Krittaporn Semsantad, program director of the Thai non-profit Peace Rights Foundation told the news conference.
“That was a violation of the non-refoulement principle even though the Chinese government was trying to prove that these people were involved in criminal actions and said ‘if you send them back you can have a diplomatic assurance … they will not be treated inhumanely.’ Despite this assurance we still don’t know to this day how those Uyghurs have been treated.”
Edited by Taejun Kang.
Updated to show Thailand won a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council.