The United States on Thursday condemned Thailand for deporting 40 Uyghurs to China, despite fears they could face imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.
“As a longstanding ally of Thailand, we are alarmed by this action, which runs afoul of its international obligations,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday.
“The U.S. condemns this action. We urge the Thai government to ensure and verify that the Uyghurs are treated with dignity and that their rights are protected,” Rubio said.
Rubio said the “forced return of the Uyghurs” could violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture and the International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
“This act runs counter to the Thai people’s longstanding tradition of protection for the most vulnerable and is inconsistent with Thailand’s commitment to protect human rights,” he argued.
Rubio urged “all governments in countries where Uyghurs seek protection not to forcibly return ethnic Uyghurs to China,” and called on Chinese officials to “provide full access to verify the well-being of the returned Uyghurs on a regular basis.”
The 40 Uyghurs have been held at the Immigration Detention Center in Bangkok since they were arrested with almost 300 of their fellows in 2014. The Uyghurs illegally crossed Thailand’s border while fleeing brutal Chinese repression in their homeland of East Turkestan, which the Chinese refer to as Xinjiang province.
China’s abuse of the Uyghurs has been denounced as genocide by the United States, and a massive violation of human rights by numerous other governments and the United Nations.
China herded huge numbers of Uyghurs into concentration camps where they were subjected to physical and psychological abuse, exploited the captive Uyghur population for forced labor, and has even tried to physically eliminate their culture with forced contraception, abortion, and forced dispersal of the Uyghurs to prevent them from raising families.
Thailand imprisoned the Uyghur refugees for over a decade without accusing them of any crime besides entering the country without a visa. Most of the 300 detainees were eventually deported to Turkey, although about a hundred were sent back to China in 2015, prompting an international outcry from human rights groups.
Thursday’s deportation – which appears to have been accomplished in a matter of hours early in the morning, using trucks wrapped in black plastic and a chartered aircraft – was the first time Thailand has sent Uyghurs to China since 2015.
The outcry was once again ferocious, especially since Thailand acted so suddenly and without explanation. Thai officials belatedly explained they decided to give the Uyghurs to Communist China because they had been incarcerated for over a decade and no other country had stepped forward to take them, including Turkey.
Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra declined to confirm the deportations in a press conference on Thursday, but she said China gave her assurances that any deportees would be treated humanely.
“In any country in the world actions must adhere to the principles of law, international processes, and human rights,” she said.
These assurances did not mollify the Thai opposition, the U.S. government, or human rights organizations.
“What is the Thai government doing?” asked opposition lawmaker Kannavee Suebsang. “There must not be Uyghur deportation to face persecution. They were jailed for 11 years. We violated their human rights for too long.”
“Thailand’s transfer of Uyghur detainees to China constitutes a blatant violation of Thailand’s obligations under domestic and international laws,” said Human Rights Watch (HRW) Asia Director Elaine Pearson.
Pearson pointed out that up until Wednesday, Thai officials “had made multiple public assurances that these men would not be transferred, including to allies and U.N. officials.”
“Their ordeal is already chilling: they fled repression in China, only to find themselves arbitrarily detained in Thailand for more than a decade,” said Amnesty International (AI) China Director Sarah Brooks.
“The fact that they now may be forcibly returned to a country where Uyghur and other non-Han ethnic groups in Xinjiang have faced torture and ill-treatment, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance is unimaginably cruel,” she said.
“The Thai government should have protected these men, but instead it has wilfully exposed them to these grave risks. In doing so it has ignored pleas from Amnesty International and U.N. experts who urged it not to violate the internationally and domestically recognized principle of non-refoulement,” she noted.
Brooks said the deportations were especially outrageous because Thailand was elected to the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in October. Thailand’s human rights record was already spotty, so its callous treatment of the Uyghurs dashed the hopes of human right advocates that joining UNHRC would inspire Shinawatra’s administration to raise its human rights game.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk warned Thailand’s action “violates the principle of non-refoulement for which there is a complete prohibition in cases where there is a real risk of torture, ill-treatment, or other irreparable harm upon their return.”
Turk said it was “regrettable” for Thailand to ignore the urgings of his office to protect the Uyghur detainees. He said attention would now turn to China, which has an obligation to “disclose their whereabouts, and to ensure that they are treated in accordance with international human rights standards.”
Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI) and Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) of the U.S. House Select Committee on Chinese Communist Party issued a joint statement on Thursday calling Thailand’s action “disgraceful and inhumane.”
“Thailand has condemned these individuals to forced labor, prison, torture, and worse – despite the fact there are countries willing to welcome them with open arms. This is unacceptable behavior for any member of the international community – let alone a U.S. treaty ally,” they declared.
“The Thai officials complicit or active in this decision must be held accountable through concrete actions, with sanctions remaining an option,” they warned.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian waved all of these concerns aside in a press conference on Friday, dismissing “human rights” concerns as nothing but a pretext for interfering in China’s internal affairs.
“The repatriation was carried out in accordance with the laws of both China and Thailand, as well as international law and international practices,” he insisted.
Lin sneered that “some countries and international organizations, while disregarding facts, have unjustly criticized the normal law enforcement cooperation between China and Thailand in combating smuggling and other cross-border illegal activities, even fabricating lies related to Xinjiang and politicizing the issue.”
Chinese state media portrayed the 40 repatriated Uyghurs as dangerous criminals whose return to captivity in China was “a reflection of the Chinese police’s commitment to effectively protecting the legitimate rights and interests of its citizens.”
“Chinese public security authorities have implemented strict, standardized, fair and civilized law enforcement requirements, processing the individuals in accordance with legal procedures, facilitating their reintegration into society and helping them resume normal life as quickly as possible,” China’s state-run Global Times claimed on Thursday.
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