{"id":247820,"date":"2025-02-27T10:06:08","date_gmt":"2025-02-27T10:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/27\/thailand-deports-dozens-of-uyghurs-to-china-activists-say\/"},"modified":"2025-02-27T10:06:08","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T10:06:08","slug":"thailand-deports-dozens-of-uyghurs-to-china-activists-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/27\/thailand-deports-dozens-of-uyghurs-to-china-activists-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Thailand Deports Dozens of Uyghurs to China, Activists Say"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/27\/multimedia\/27thailand-uyghurs-tmhg\/27thailand-uyghurs-tmhg-facebookJumbo.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Thailand Deports Dozens of Uyghurs to China, Activists Say\" title=\"Thailand Deports Dozens of Uyghurs to China, Activists Say\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Thailand on Thursday deported 40 Uyghur asylum seekers back to China, drawing a sharp rebuke from the United Nations\u2019 refugee agency and activists who had long warned that the men would possibly face torture and long-term imprisonment upon their return.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Thailand\u2019s police chief, Kittirat Panpetch, confirmed the move at a news briefing on Thursday, saying that Thailand had deported the Uyghurs at the request of the Chinese government. He said the matter had been handled by the country\u2019s police and national security council.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees called the deportation of the Uyghurs a \u201cclear violation\u201d of international law.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">China has used its power and influence to silence its critics abroad and pressure governments to repatriate citizens fleeing persecution. The group of Uyghurs, a persecuted Muslim minority in China, had been detained in Bangkok for over a decade. They were part of a wave of more than 300 people who fled China in 2014, hoping to use Thailand as a transit point to get to Turkey, which is home to a sizable Uyghur community. Last month, some of the detainees, who are all men, went on a <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/19\/world\/asia\/uyghurs-thailand-hunger-strike.html\" title=\"\">hunger strike<\/a> amid fears of being returned to China.<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"imageblock-wrapper\">\n<figure class=\"img-sz-small css-1189og3 e1g7ppur0\" aria-label=\"media\" role=\"group\"><figcaption data-testid=\"photoviewer-children-caption\" class=\"css-13ytnnu ewdxa0s0\"><span class=\"css-jevhma e13ogyst0\">A photograph provided on condition of anonymity showed Uyghur detainees sitting in an immigration detention center in Bangkok, in February.<\/span><span class=\"css-14fe1uy e1z0qqy90\"><span class=\"css-1ly73wi e1tej78p0\">Credit&#8230;<\/span><span><span aria-hidden=\"false\">Associated Press<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The plight of the Uyghur detainees in Thailand has drawn scrutiny from many governments, including the United States. During his confirmation hearing for secretary of state last month, Marco Rubio said he would lobby Thailand not to send the Uyghurs back to China. And on Tuesday, U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee members Jim Risch and Jeanne Shaheen warned that any deportations would be \u201cill-advised.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Rights activists who had been monitoring the situation began reporting in the early hours of Thursday that there were signs the Uyghurs were being prepared for deportation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In Bangkok at around 2 a.m., a reporter witnessed six trucks that had their windows covered with black cloth leaving an immigrant detention center in downtown Bangkok where the detained Uyghurs had been held. Several police cars accompanied the trucks, cordoning off traffic around them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A few hours later, an unscheduled China Southern Airlines flight took off from Bangkok to Kashgar in Xinjiang, the native homeland of Uyghurs, according to FlightRadar24, which tracks flights around the world. It landed just after 12 p.m. local time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cAll signs point to at least 40 of the men having been deported,\u201d said Julie Millsap of No Business With Genocide, a Washington-based group that has been lobbying governments to free the Uyghurs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In a statement, Human Rights Watch criticized the Thai authorities for having deported the men despite making public assurances earlier that they would not do so.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThailand\u2019s transfer of Uyghur detainees to China constitutes a blatant violation of Thailand\u2019s obligations under domestic and international laws,\u201d said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. \u201cThe men now face a high risk of torture, enforced disappearance, and long-term imprisonment in China.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman did not directly answer a question about whether the Uyghurs had been deported, saying that 40 Chinese nationals who had illegally entered Thailand had been repatriated legally on Thursday. China\u2019s official news agency, Xinhua, which carried a report on the return of the \u201cillegal immigrants,\u201d appeared to be deliberately vague about the deportees, providing no details regarding their identities or where in China they were from.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Thai foreign ministry did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The police chief, Police General Kittirat, said that in its letter to the Thai authorities seeking the deportations, the Chinese government had pledged to take care of the Uyghurs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-798hid etfikam0\">Pirada Anuwech<!-- --> contributed reporting from Bangkok.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/02\/27\/world\/asia\/thailand-china-uyghurs.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thailand on Thursday deported 40 Uyghur asylum seekers back to China, drawing a sharp rebuke from the United Nations\u2019 refugee agency and activists who had long warned that the men would possibly face torture and long-term imprisonment upon their return. Thailand\u2019s police chief, Kittirat Panpetch, confirmed the move at a news briefing on Thursday, saying [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/27\/multimedia\/27thailand-uyghurs-tmhg\/27thailand-uyghurs-tmhg-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[24935,166114,168,5500,174112,9482,165768,3096,6342,172441,172443],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247820"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247820"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247822,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247820\/revisions\/247822"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}