Friday, a Thai court opened an hearing on the fate of 43 Uighurs who spent more than a decade in detention in the middle of the fears that the Thai authorities are preparing to expel them towards China, where they are likely to be imprisoned and inhuman treatment. As Radio Free Asia (RFA), Chuchart Kanpai, a lawyer who worked in close collaboration with members of the Uighur community in Thailand, reported on January 29, reported that men had spent that men had spent enough time locked up on accusations of immigration and were to be released.
“The more than 40 Uighurs in detention did not commit crimes in China. They have already served their sentence for the illegal entry into Thailand, but have been deteriorating the conditions of detention for more than 11 years, “said CHUCHART in court yesterday, according to RFA.
As reported by the Associated Press last month, the group is part of more than 300 Uighurs who were arrested in 2014 by the Thai authorities near the Malaysian border, after having fled the oppression in the Xinjiang region in China. In July 2015, Thailand sent 173 Uighurs, mainly women and children, in Türkiye; The following week, she expelled 109 other detainees in China against their will, which aroused a storm of indignation for foreign governments and human rights groups. This left 53 Uighurs trapped in Thai immigration detention, pending their political asylum requests. Since then, five have died in detention, including two children.
Among the remaining detainees, 43 are held within the cramped limits of the Immigration Center (IDC) in Bangkok, while five others are in Thai prisons purging sentences linked to an escape attempt in 2020.
The deposit of the Kanpai CHUCHART petition came in the middle of the renewed fears that they were expelled in China. The Associated Press reported that on January 8, “the Uighur prisoners were invited to sign voluntary expulsion documents by officials of Thai immigration”, which made it fear that they are on the point D ‘Be returned to China. This prompted the 43 Uighur men in the detention of immigration to write a letter which made a public appeal to stop what they called an imminent threat of expulsion.
“We could be imprisoned and we could even lose your life,” said the letter, according to the AP. “We urgently use all international organizations and countries concerned about human rights to intervene immediately to spare us from this tragic fate before it is too late.”
This has caused the United Nations interventions and a number of human rights groups. “The treatment of the Uighur minority in China is well documented,” said a group of United Nations experts in a statement on January 21. “We fear that they are risky to undergo irreparable damage, in violation of the international ban on torture.”
The UN allegedly alleged that men “were held de facto Holding of immovable for more than a decade, “without access to lawyers, family members or representatives of the United Nations Refugees Agency.
The Secretary of State of American President Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, during his confirmation hearings in the Senate, also promised that he would put pressure on Thailand against deportations, which would be “an opportunity for us to recall in the world »Chinese oppression of OUGHURS. Thai Royal Police (RTP) later denied that he intended to expel the Uighurs to China.
The Thai government has also been criticized for the conditions within the IDC, where the 43 men are detained, which the Bangkok post described as “Welter, nauseating, [and] cramped. “”
“The conditions are appalling,” Chalida Tajaroensuk, director of the people of the people’s empowerment, said last month, trying to help Uighurs at the BBC. “There is not enough food – it is above all a cucumber and chicken bone soup. He is piled up in there. The water they get, both to drink and wash, is dirty. Only basic drugs are provided and these are inadequate. If someone falls ill, it takes a long time to get an appointment with the doctor. »»
During the court hearing on Friday, RFA reported, the question of the conditions was raised by the three people who testified. “Many detainees face serious health problems with limited medical access,” said independent researcher Nirola Selima in court. “Those inside are in a terrible state, as if he was slowly waiting for death.”
The court should meet tomorrow.