Trump nominee speaks up for Uyghurs in Thailand
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Trump nominee speaks up for Uyghurs in Thailand

Secretary of State pick Marco Rubio vows to lobby Thailand not to deport detainees to China

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The detention centre at the Suan Phlu Immigration Bureau offices in Bangkok holds 43 Uyghurs who have been detained in poor conditions for nearly a decade. Five others are serving prison sentences for a 2020 escape attempt. (Photo: Immigration Bureau Facebook page)
The detention centre at the Suan Phlu Immigration Bureau offices in Bangkok holds 43 Uyghurs who have been detained in poor conditions for nearly a decade. Five others are serving prison sentences for a 2020 escape attempt. (Photo: Immigration Bureau Facebook page)

Donald Trump’s nominee for US Secretary of State has said that he would lobby Thailand against deporting 48 Uyghurs to China where they could face persecution.

Marco Rubio made the comments at his confirmation hearing in Washington on Wednesday. The Republican senator from Florida is widely expected to be confirmed as the top diplomat in the incoming Trump administration.

New reports emerged last week that the Uyghur men who have been detained in Thailand for more than a decade believe the Thai government is preparing to send them back to China, where they would be at risk of abuse and torture, say activists.

Democratic Sen Jeff Merkley, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said at Wednesday’s hearing that Thailand was “on the verge” of sending the Uyghurs back to China, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported.

“Will you lobby for Thailand to not send these Uyghurs back to the horror they will face if they’re returned?” he asked Rubio.

Rubio, known to take a hard line on China policy, said he would.

“Yes, and the good news is that Thailand is actually a very strong US partner — strong historical ally as well — so that is an area where I think diplomacy could really achieve results because of how important that relationship is and how close it is,” he said.

Rubio called the situation in Thailand “one more opportunity for us to remind the world” about the persecution Uyghurs face in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where authorities have detained an estimated 1.8 million members of the ethnic minority in internment camps beginning in 2017.

Risk recedes

The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) said this week that the fresh publicity about the case of the Uyghur detainees in Thailand meant that they were no longer at immediate risk of being returned.

WUC president Turgunjan Alawdun said the council had been in contact with a Thai official who cannot be identified because of the confidential nature of their talks.

The official reportedly said Thailand’s image was seriously damaged after the deportation of more than 100 Uyghurs to China in 2015, and that the country is still recovering.

For Thailand to deport Uyghurs again would be “diplomatic suicide”, the Thai official was quoted as saying.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees told RFA on Monday that, after hearing unconfirmed reports that the Uyghurs were to be deported, it checked with Thai authorities, who assured the agency to the contrary.

A decade ago, Thailand became part of a popular route for Uyghurs fleeing intensifying repression in China and seeking to reach Turkey, which has historically supported Uyghur asylum seekers.

Most of the group now detained in Bangkok were part of a larger group of around 350 who were arrested by immigration authorities near the border with Malaysia in March 2014.

In July 2015, around 170 women and children from the group were released to Turkey. About a week later, 109 — mostly men — were deported to China. Their whereabouts now are unknown. The rest were kept in immigration detention in Thailand. At least a dozen have escaped, and five have died in detention, including two children.

Five of the asylum seekers are serving prison sentences related to a 2020 escape attempt, while the remaining 43 are being held without charge in the Suan Phlu detention centre, amid sweltering, foul-smelling, cramped conditions. They are barred from communicating with their families, lawyers, or even other detainees.

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