Bangkok // Thailand deported more than 100 Uighurs back to China yesterday, ignoring concerns that the ethnic minority faces persecution by the Chinese government, while protesters in Turkey, which had accepted an earlier batch of refugees, ransacked the Thai honorary consulate.
Deputy government spokesman Maj Gen Verachon Sukhonthapatipak said that Thailand had assurances from Chinese authorities about the safety of 109 Uighurs.
In Beijing, however, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that China would take action against those suspected of breaking the law.
The group had been in Thailand for more than a year, along with others who had fled China and claimed to be Turkish, Maj Gen Verachon said. Thai authorities sought to verify their nationalities before relocating them, he said.
“We found that about 170 of them were Turkish, so they were recently sent to Turkey,” he said. “And about 100 were Chinese, so they were sent to China as of this morning, under the agreement that their safety is guaranteed according to humanitarian principles.”
The Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority in China’s far west Xinjiang region. The group has complained of cultural and religious suppression as well as economic marginalization under Chinese rule.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office said it considered Thailand’s action “a flagrant violation of international law”.
“I strongly urge the Thai authorities to investigate this matter and appeal to Thailand to honour its fundamental international obligations,” said Volker Turk, UNHCR assistant high commissioner for protection.
Such deportations, he said, violated the right to protection against return to a country where a person had reason to fear persecution, and had been described by UNHCR as “the cornerstone of asylum and of international refugee law”.
The body said it had repeatedly brought up the matter of the Uighur refugees with the Thai government, and “in response, the agency was given assurances that the matter would be handled in accordance with international legal standards, and that the group would continue to receive protection”.
China’s position is that the Uighurs left the country illegally.
“China’s relevant departments will bring those who are suspected of committing serious crimes to justice according to law,” Ms Hua said. “As for those who are not suspected of committing crimes or who commit lesser offences, we will find proper ways to deal with them.”
In Turkey, which has cultural ties to the Uighurs and agreed to take in the other 170 refugees despite China’s objections, mostly Uighur protesters stormed and vandalized the Thai consulate in Istanbul. The office was closed yesterday.
The protesters waved Uighur flags and brought down the Thai flag, smashed windows and demolished pictures and furniture inside the consulate. Police allowed about 100 protesters to pray outside the building before taking nine away for questioning.
The Thai embassy issued a statement urging its nationals in Turkey to be on alert for “an expression of dissatisfaction over Thailand’s handling of the Uighurs who entered the country illegally”.
It also advised tour guides against using the Thai flag while travelling in Turkey and urged Thais to avoid any protest areas.
China has accused Uighur separatists of terrorism in Xinjiang, where ethnic violence has left hundreds of people dead over the past two years.
Last year, China blamed a group of eight Uighurs for a knife attack that killed 31 people at a train station in the south-west city of Kunming, after the suspects failed to flee the country. Three men caught before the attack were sentenced to death.
“For reasons of realpolitik, Bangkok callously treated these Uighurs as expendable pawns to be sacrificed to big brother China in clear violation of international rights standards,” said Phil Robertson, Human Rights Watch Asia division deputy director.
The World Uyghur Congress, a German-based advocacy group, said that those repatriated could face criminal charges and harsh punishment, possibly execution, under China’s opaque legal system – the reasons they fled China in the first place.
* Associated Press