Thailand has been at the centre of asylum and refugee disputes since the year began. But in the past six weeks, what has emerged is not a pretty picture. A young Saudi woman won world Twitter backing and a ticket to Canada. A Bahraini refugee from Australia won freedom for a second time with inventive diplomacy. Now three of the seven Uighur migrants who escaped detention at the Mukdahan Immigration office have "won" a police manhunt and a legal limbo where extradition back to China is their No.1 likely future.
What Thais and the world can take from this, and from years of such cases in the past, is that there's no national policy. The trend is unfortunately towards siding with some of the world's worst regimes, and with their secret police. Both the Saudi woman and the Bahrain refugee were detained by force, their papers taken. By casual appearance, authorities were fully prepared to send both to the very places they had just escaped.
The seven Uighur men of Mukdahan are the third recent case. They have no champions, on social media or elsewhere. So after one of the world's most arduous refugee treks from Xinjiang in China to the Mekong River in Thailand, this is their current fate. They are not detained; they are prisoners for illegal entry. They have no right to an extradition hearing. If they win sympathy and decent treatment from their guards, the Police Immigration Bureau will bring punishment.
The current status of the government policy on refugees depends on the status of the refugees themselves. If detention brings bad publicity for Thailand, the government gives them help and civilised farewells. Otherwise, it's a police lockup, no contact with the outside world and a future so devoid of hope that the asylum seekers are willing to try to escape into the local population.
Thailand has held an unknown number of Uighur refugees for several years. The number is unknown because government does not want outsiders to know its full situation. On several occasions, government has turned over Uighur asylum seekers to China, where the Muslim ethnic group is badly treated, to understate the case.
The most infamous refoulement since the days of the Cambodian border war was in early July of 2015. Thais helped Chinese police shackled, drape hoods over and violently take Uighurs aboard a special Chinese plane. The very next month, Uighur terrorists exploded a bomb at the Erawan shrine, killing 20 people, most of them ethnic Chinese.
Thailand used to have a refugee policy. The country gave asylum to -- among hundreds -- leaders of the Indochinese and Burmese revolutions. Ho Chi Minh, as a refugee, lived just a short distance from where the Uighurs of Mukdahan now live as illegal immigrants. In the interim, Thai governments have refused repeatedly to sign international agreements on refugees and asylum seekers.
The treatment of refugees can be complicated, and made more difficult by whether they come in huge groups or individually. But that is no excuse for the lack of policy. A compassionate view of refugees must be applied. Those who arrive at the borders seeking help should know they will receive it.