Thailand Deported Uyghurs Over China Retaliation Fears, Minister Admits

Admission comes after reports emerged that Thailand received offers from three countries to take the Uyghurs.

Advisor to the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Thailand Russ Jalichandra attends a plenary session during the Summit on peace in Ukraine, at the luxury Burgenstock resort, near Lucerne, Switzerland, on June 16, 2024. Urs Flueeler/Pool/ AFP via Getty Images

Thailand deported Uyghur refugees to China last week in fear of possible “retaliation” from the Chinese regime, a Thai minister said on Thursday.

This comes as the Southeast Asian country has faced condemnation after its government sent some 40 Uyghur asylum seekers back to China on Feb. 27. The deportation was carried out despite an earlier warning from a U.N. human rights expert that the group was “at real risk of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment if they are returned.”

Following the deportation, the United States, the UK, Australia, Canada, and the European Union, among others, condemned the Thai government’s decision.

Amid the uproar, Thai officials denied that third countries had offered to resettle the refugees, who were held in detention in Thailand for 11 years before their deportation. However, reports emerged that Thailand had received several such offers to relocate the Uyghurs.

In response, Russ Jalichandra, Thailand’s vice minister for foreign affairs, said in a statement on Thursday that some countries had offered to resettle the Uyghurs, but the Thai government considered the offers to be “unrealistic” as resettling the Uyghurs would not shield Thailand from a potential fallout China, which is Thailand’s biggest trade partner.

“Thailand could face retaliation from China that would impact the livelihoods of many Thais,” he said, adding that sending the group to China was the “best option.”

Pisan Manawapat, a Thai ambassador to Canada and the United States between 2013 and 2017 and a senator before he retired in 2024, previously told Reuters that at least three countries had approached Thailand with proposals to resettle the Uyghurs, but the Thai government “did not make the decision at the political level to go through with this” because it “didn’t want to upset China.”

Internment Camps in Xinjiang

The Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group that is primarily Muslim. They have been subjected to mass detention in China, with an estimated one million or more being placed in a sprawling network of internment camps and other detention facilities in the far-western region of Xinjiang.

Survivors of the camps have described experiencing forced labor, forced sterilizations, political indoctrination, and other abuses during their time in detention.

The U.S. government has referred to the Chinese regime’s repression in Xinjiang as a genocide.

The U.N. human rights office in 2022 found that the regime’s clampdown on Uyghur Muslims could amount to crimes against humanity.

The individuals deported last week were among hundreds of Uyghurs detained by Thai authorities in 2014 after they fled Xinjiang, which pro-independence Uyghur activists call East Turkistan.

Chinese refugees, including the Uyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners, and others, often rely on people smugglers in their travels to Bangkok, where they seek asylum through the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Many applicants remain in the country in limbo for years, with some being held at Thailand’s chronically crowded and unsanitary immigration detention center.

Of more than 300 Uyghurs detained in Thailand in 2014, five have since died in detention. In 2015, Thai authorities sent 173 Uyghur detainees to Turkey, while its deportation of 109 Uyghurs to China in July of that year led to a protest in Turkey outside the Thai embassy in Istanbul.

The 2015 deportations also allegedly led to a bombing in a Bangkok tourist area that left 20 people dead. Two Uyghur suspects held over the bombing deny being involved. Their court case continues.

Eva Fu, Dorothy Li, and Reuters contributed to this report.