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A Uygur boy stands inside a police van in Khlong Hoi Khong in southern Thailand in March, 2014 He was among about 200 Uygurs rescued from a human trafficking camp in Songkhla province. Photo: AP
Thailand sent more than 100 ethnic Uygurs back to China on Thursday, ignoring calls from the international community to protect the group and ensure they were not forced back to face possible persecution by the Chinese government.
Government spokesman Major General Verachon Sukhonthapatipak said Thailand had assurances from Chinese authorities that “their safety is guaranteed”.
He said the group of 109 Uygurs had been in Thailand for more a year, along with others who had arrived in waves claiming to be Turkish. Thai authorities sought to verify all of 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 Uygurs 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 marginalisation under Beijing’s rule.
Xinjiang, a vast region that shares borders with Russia and seven Central and South Asian countries, is home to about a dozen the ethnic minorities. The largest is the Uygurs, who number about 10 million, while there about 8.5 million Han Chinese, many of them recent settlers.
Beijing is also waging a war against terrorism in Xinjiang, where ethnic violence has left hundreds of people dead over the past two years. It has blamed religious extremism for the violence.
Beijing has express displeasure with Turkey for taking the other 173 Uygurs from Thailand last week.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the Uygurs had left China illegally, and that Beijing opposes “any actions that aid and abet, or even support illegal migration”.
“We believe that the international community should share common responsibility for combating and preventing illegal migration,” Hua said.
The World Uygur 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.
The US State Department and human rights groups like Human Rights Watch had urged Thailand to protect the Uygurs and not force them to return to China.
Workers clean up after the Thai consulate in Istanbul had its windows smashed and offices ransacked. Photo: Reuters
Turkish anti-Chinese demonstrators stormed the Thai consulate in Istanbul in protest at the deportation by Bangkok of dozens of Uygur Muslims to China, as diplomatic tensions flared on Thursday in an increasingly combustible controversy.
The attack was the latest in a series of nationalist-tinted protests in Turkey during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan over China's treatment of the Turkic-speaking, largely Muslim Uygurs in the northwestern Xinjiang region.
Nine people were arrested after the action at the consulate building in Istanbul late on Wednesday organised by a group calling itself East Turkestan Education Association, the Dogan news agency reported.
They broke down the doors to the building, pulled down the sign outside and damaged the furnishings inside, television footage showed.
The Thai flag was pulled down as the building was also pelted with stones. Files were flung outside while a man was seen battering a window down with a post.
Shocked consulate workers returned to the office yesterday to find their workplace upturned, with broken glass and debris littering the floor.
Thailand said it had deported around 100 Uygur Muslims detained in the kingdom since last year to China, in a move sparking fears for their safety.
"If we send them back [to China] and there is a problem that is not our fault," Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said.
The fate of the Uygurs, who presented themselves to police as Turkish, had been the subject of a diplomatic tussle between Ankara and Beijing.
Thai government spokesman Werachon Sukhondapatipak said "some 100" Uygurs were deported to China on Wednesday after finding "clear evidence they are Chinese nationals". He also said an earlier group of Uygurs, 172 women and children, were sent to Turkey in late June.
The Turkish foreign ministry condemned Thailand for sending the Uygur Turks back to China, accusing it of "acting against the international laws".
"We are saddened to know that 115 Uygur Turks detained in Thailand were sent to a third country without their will and consent," the ministry said.
The UN refugee agency said it was "shocked" by the deportation to China. It was "a flagrant violation of international law", said Volker Turk of UNHCR.
Turkey last week summoned the Chinese ambassador to convey its "deep concerns" over alleged restrictions on the Uygur community during Ramadan. Beijing has denied the claims.
