Updated at 4:54 pm ET on Jan. 15, 2025
The Trump administration’s pick to become the top U.S. diplomat said Wednesday he would lobby Thailand against deporting 48 Uyghurs to China where they could face persecution.
The issue came up at Republican Sen. Marco Rubio’s Senate confirmation hearing on his nomination for the post of U.S. secretary of state.
Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Thailand was “on the verge” of sending the Uyghurs back to Thailand.
“Will you lobby for Thailand to not send these Uyghurs back to the horror they will face if they’re returned?” Merkley asked Rubio.
Rubio, a hawk on China policy, said he would.
“Yes, and the good news is that Thailand is actually a very strong U.S. partner — strong historical ally as well — so that is an area where I think diplomacy could really achieve results because of how important that relationship is and how close it is," he said.
Rubio called the situation in Thailand “one more opportunity for us to remind the world” about the persecution Uyghurs face in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where authorities have detained an estimated 1.8 million members of the ethnic minority in internment camps beginning in 2017.
“This is not some obscure issue,” Rubio told the committee. “These are people who are basically being rounded up because of their ethnicity and religion and they are being put into camps.”
At the hearing, Rubio described China as the “biggest threat” to U.S. security today. He is expected to be confirmed as secretary of state.
Decade of detention
The 48 Uyghurs have been detained at Thailand’s Immigration Detention Center since 2014 after attempting to use the Southeast Asian nation to escape persecution in China.
The Campaign for Uyghurs, a U.S.-based advocacy group, says they have been kept in poor conditions in the prison-like facility, barred from legal or social contact and denied access to healthcare.
A Uyghur detainee told RFA on Monday that, upon hearing news late last week that he and others might be deported to China, “we were deeply concerned and anxious.”
In response, the 48 Uyghurs began a hunger strike on Jan. 10 and called upon fellow Uyghurs living abroad for support, the detainee said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisal.
“We are appealing to anyone who can assist in preventing our deportation to China,” he said.
RELATED STORIES
Thailand urged not to deport 48 Uyghurs to China
Rubio says US at risk of relying on China
Lawmakers urge UN to protect 4 dozen Uyghurs detained for a decade in Thailand
Fates of Uyghur refugees deported from Cambodia in 2009 revealed
Bangkok court clears Thai woman of link to accused Uyghur bombers
The group of refugees is part of an originally larger cohort of over 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.
But the U.S. State Department and Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, have urged Thailand that governments are obligated to uphold the principles of non-refoulement, which prohibit returning individuals to places where they are at risk of serious human rights violations.
On Tuesday, Campaign for Uyghurs warned that deporting the Uyghurs would violate Thailand’s obligations under the Convention Against Torture and its own Anti-Torture Act.
Advocacy group says deportation risk easing
U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, a Republican who co-chairs the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, has said that it appeared China was pressuring the Thai government to repatriate the remaining Uyghurs and hand them over “to be incarcerated, tortured and cast away in forced labor camps as the U.S. implements its transition to a new government.”
But there were also signs this week that Thailand was listening to the human rights concerns.
Turgunjan Alawdun, president of the World Uyghur Congress, or WUC, told RFA that it “received news” that they were no longer at immediate risk of being returned.
The WUC, a group established to represent Uyghurs around the globe, said that because of the confidential nature of their communication, the Thai official cannot be identified. But it added that it had been working to coordinate a campaign for the detainees’ release with the European Union, U.S. Congress, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, and rights groups.
According to the WUC, the Thai official said Thailand’s image was seriously damaged after the deportation of the Uyghurs to China in 2015, and that the Southeast Asian country is still recovering.
For Thailand to deport Uyghurs again would be “diplomatic suicide,” the Thai official said, according to the WUC.
Thailand has not officially indicated whether the Uyghurs will be protected from deportation and the WUC’s claim could not be independently confirmed. Thai officials were not immediately reachable for comment.
But the WUC’s claim appear to have been corroborated by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, which told RFA on Monday that, after hearing unconfirmed reports the Uyghurs were to be deported, it checked with Thai authorities, who assured the agency to the contrary.
Alawdun said Tuesday that the Uyghurs must be released from the Thai immigration facility where they have been held for the past 10 years.
“Although they are now safe from the immediate threat of deportation, having them remain imprisoned indefinitely does not align with international laws and regulations regarding human rights and freedom,” he said. “We must not cease our efforts to secure their freedom.”
The WUC has organized protests in front of Thai embassies in multiple countries to take place on Friday, Alawdun said.
“Our main demand at these protests is the release of our imprisoned compatriots to a third free country,” he said. “We are demanding that Thailand stop unjustly detaining them in prison.”
Translated by Shahrezad Ghayrat for RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
Updated to recast lead, make edits.