Uyghurs in Thai prison ‘heartbroken’ to learn friends deported

BANGKOK – Four ethnic Uyghurs held in a Thai prison cried when they learned that 40 of their friends had been deported to China after being held for more than a decade in a Thai immigration lock-up, a friend of the men said on Friday after visiting them.

Thailand deported the 40 Uyghurs to China on Thursday, ignoring warnings from the U.S., the U.N. and human rights groups that they risked torture when they were returned to the northeastern region of Xinjiang, which they fled more than 10 years ago.

“When they learned that their 40 friends had been sent to China, they were heartbroken,” a 37-year-old friend of the detained Uyghurs, who asked to be identified as just Marzeryya, told us.

“They cried, something they had never done before, because they are so worried about their friends,” she said.

There are five Uyghurs in Bangkok’s Klong Prem prison where they were sent after trying to escape. Marzeryya said she met four of them on Friday.

It was not clear why the five were not also sent back to China on Thursday.

Thailand has defended its deportation of the 40, saying it had received an “official request” from China and sent them back after assurances from the “highest level” of the Chinese government on their safety.

Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, in her first public comment on the deportations that threatens to create a rift with old ally the U.S., rejected any suggestion Thailand had sent the men back in exchange for some commercial reward from China, adding they had volunteered to go.

“This is about people, not goods. People are not merchandise. We definitely did not trade them,” she told reporters.

“I confirm that they returned voluntarily. Otherwise, there would have been dragging. There was no dragging, they walked up normally,” she said, referring to their transfer from Bangkok’s main immigration detention center to a flight back to China.

Mostly Muslim Uyghurs in China’s vast Xinjiang region have been subjected to widespread human rights abuses, including detention in massive concentration camps.

China denies that but U.N. experts said on Jan. 21 the Uyghurs in Thailand would likely face torture if forced back to China and they urged Thailand not to deport them.

Trucked at night to airport

The 40 were taken in the dead of night in trucks with windows blocked with sheets of black plastic, escorted by police cars and under a media blackout, to Bangkok’s Don Mueang airport for the flight home.

Marzeryya rejected the suggestion that they had gone back voluntarily.

“Why would they want to return to China when they fled from there because they had no freedom and couldn’t practice their religion? That’s why they’d never want to go back,” she said.

Marzeryya said none of the five in prison wanted to go to China.

“They don’t want to return. They begged us to pray that they would be relocated to a third country,” she said.

Chalida Tajaroensuk, director of the People’s Empowerment Foundation, also visited four of the imprisoned Uyghurs on Friday.

“They confirmed that they don’t want to go to China, they want to go to a third country,” Chalida told BenarNews.

“They said they had already escaped from China, so why would they want to go back? This contradicts what the Thai government has said.”

Another three ethnic Uyghurs are still being held at the Bangkok immigration detention center. They have Kyrgyzstan passports and so were not sent to China, Chalida said.

The 48 Uyghurs were part of a cohort of more than 350 Uyghur men, women and children, who left China in the hope of finding resettlement abroad and were stopped and detained in Thailand in 2014.

Turkey accepted 172 of them while Thailand sent 109 of them back to China in 2015, triggering a storm of international criticism . Several of them have died of illness over the years.