At least 40 Uyghur men detained in Thailand have been deported to China after more than a decade despite concerns they could be at risk of human rights violations.
The Chinese embassy in Bangkok confirmed on Thursday that the Uyghur men, who had entered Thailand illegally, were sent back home to the northwestern Xinjiang province by a chartered flight. It said the men had been detained in Thailand for more than 10 years due to "complicated international factors".
The deported men were part of a group of nearly 350 Uyghurs who had fled alleged persecution in Xinjiang in 2014. They had been held in Thai immigration detention centres ever since.
Their deportation took place weeks after Thai prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra met Chinese leader Xi Jinping to mark the 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two countries.
Schoochart Kanpai, a lawyer representing the men, said any action to deport them without due process would “not only violate Thai law but also severely damage Thailand's international reputation”.
Thai lawmakers, Western governments and UN officials had urged Bangkok not to deport the Uyghur men, warning it would amount to a serious rights abuse.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk called the deportation "a clear violation of international human rights laws and standards".
US secretary of state Marco Rubio said that the deported men were at risk of torture, ill-treatment and "irreparable harm".
He reiterated that China’s treatment of the Uyghur minority amounted to "genocide and crimes against humanity", a designation the US first made in the waning hours of Donald Trump's first presidential term in 2021.
“We urge all governments in countries where Uyghurs seek protection not to forcibly return ethnic Uyghurs to China," Mr Rubio said in a statement.
China is accused of committing "crimes against humanity" in its treatment of Uyghurs and Hui Muslims over the past decade, an allegation that Beijing routinely denies as the “lie of the century”.
The UN claims China has detained more than a million minority Muslims, mostly ethnic Uyghurs, since a dramatic escalation in counterterrorism policies in the spring of 2017.
The Chinese foreign ministry responded to Mr Rubio’s remarks saying that certain US politicians should stop "fabricating and spreading lies" related to Xinjiang. Genocide and forced labour were "lies of the century", a ministry spokesperson reiterated on Friday.
Australia's foreign minister Penny Wong on Friday criticised Thailand for handing over the Uyghur men to China. "Australia has grave concerns about the human rights situation in Xinjiang and the treatment of the Uyghur and other Muslim minorities in China,” Ms Wong said.
"We have repeatedly raised our concerns with the Thai government and have also now raised our expectations about the group's treatment with the Chinese authorities.”
The Uyghurs detained in Thailand were forbidden contact with relatives, lawyers or other advocates, and allegedly subjected to a different standard of care than other detainees, The New York Times reported. Thailand isn’t a party to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, which leaves asylum seekers vulnerable to arrest and detention as “illegal migrants”.
Thailand was keeping 43 Uyghur men in a Bangkok detention centre in addition to five men serving prison sentences for an escape attempt. It was unclear why China had only confirmed the deportation of 40 men.
