BANGKOK – Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra may come under pressure from China to send back 48 Uyghur men who have been in Thai detention for more than a decade and her government should release them immediately, a Uyghur activist group said.
Paetongtarn will travel to China on Wednesday to mark the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations and for talks with President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Qiang on economic cooperation, her government’s spokesman said, adding that she would not raise the issue of the Uyghurs.
Thailand has said it has no plan to deport the men from the mostly Muslim minority from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China, who have been held at a Thai Immigration Detention Center since 2014 after attempting to escape Beijing’s persecution through Thailand.
Nevertheless, rights groups worry that they could be deported back to China where they would face the risk of torture.
“The CCP has a pattern of pressuring foreign governments, and bending international law for its own agenda,” Rushan Abbas, executive chair of the World Uyghur Congress, which advocates for Uyghurs around the globe, told Radio Free Asia on Friday, referring to the Chinese Community Party.
“If Thailand is truly committed to human rights and international law, it must immediately release the Uyghur refugees and facilitate their safe resettlement. The world is watching, and these Uyghurs must not be sent to their deaths,” Abbas said.
The rights group Justice for All said last month that reports from the detained Uyghurs indicated that Thai authorities were coercing them to fill out forms in preparation for their deportation.
But the Thai government has denied that.
Asked about the Uyghurs last week, Defense Minister Phumtham Wechayachai reiterated that the detained Uyghurs would not be deported.
“It is important to abide by international laws, human rights basis and non-refoulement principle. These remain Thai government principles. Don’t you worry,” he told reporters.
Uyghurs in China’s vast Xinjiang region have been subjected to widespread human rights abuses, including detention in massive concentration camps.
The group of refugees in Thai detention 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.
New U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at his confirmation hearing last month that he would reach out to Thailand to prevent the return of the Uyghurs to China.
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Thai government spokesman Jirayu Huangsab said the Uyghurs would not be on the prime minister’s agenda during her China visit.
“There won’t be talks on the Uyghur, it’s not on the agenda. There’s nothing to this issue,” Jirayu told RFA on Tuesday.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, asked about the Uyghurs in Thailand at a Jan. 22 briefing, said she was not familiar with the issue but said that more broadly, China was resolutely opposed to illegal immigration.
The international rights group Amnesty International has told Thailand that it too was concerned the men “would be at risk of human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, torture and other ill-treatment, if returned to China.”
“The organization calls on your government to strictly adhere to domestic and international legal obligations not to forcibly return individuals in violation of the internationally recognized principle of non-refoulement,” the group said in a Jan. 27 letter to Phumtham, who is also a deputy prime minister.
The prohibition on refoulement prevents the forcible transfer of people to a place where their life and liberty may be at risk.
The rights group called for the release of the Uyghurs.
U.N. experts last week joined rights groups in raising concern about the Uyghurs.
A Thai lawyer has submitted a petition to a court calling for the release of the Uyghurs on the grounds that they have spent enough time locked up. The court is due to consider the submission on Feb. 17.
Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.