A senior Thai official admitted that the government had expelled 40 Uighur asylum seekers in China last week by concern concerning any reprisals in Beijing if he let the group settle elsewhere.
Yesterday, in a statement, Russ Jalichandra, Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs in the country, admitted that some other countries (he did not name them) had proposed to reinstall Uighurs, which have been in detention of immigration for more than a decade.
But he said that the offers of these foreign countries were “unrealistic” and that allowing them to reinstall the Uighurs carif of China, reported Reuters.
“Thailand could face reprisals from China which would have an impact on the livelihoods of many Thai,” he said. Although he did not say what form these reprisals could have taken, nor how serious it could have been, the government determined that sending the group to China was the “best option”.
The Uighur Muslims, which are part of a group of more than 300 who were arrested by the Thai authorities in 2014 after fled the Chinese region of Xinjiang, were drawn from the immigration center in Bangkok and placed on a charter flight to Kashgar during a secret operation in the first hours of February 27.
This decision caused an immediate outcry by United Nations experts and human rights groups who have said that Uighurs will likely be faced with serious ill -treatment if they had returned to China. Russ yesterday rejected these concerns, repeating the statements of the previous government that the Chinese government had promised that Uighurs would be well treated and that this would allow the Thai government to monitor its situation in the Xinjiang.
Russ’s admission contradicts the previous comments of Thai officials that the government had received no firm proposal to reinstall Uighurs. On March 3, the Minister of Defense, Phumtham Wechayachai, said: “We waited for more than 10 years, and I spoke to many major countries, but no one told me with certainty.” Phumtham later repeated that in spite of expressions of sympathy for the fate of Uighurs, no nation had officially agreed to take them.
Admission is an apparent response to recent reports that the Thai government had received offers to reinstall Uighurs – and has chosen to ignore them by concern about Beijing’s probable response. Reuters reported on Wednesday that Canada, the United States and Australia all offered to take Uighurs before expulsion. Shortly after, Kannavee Suebsan, an opposition legislator, said that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was aware that the United States, Sweden and Australia had all proposed to reinstall Oights from July last year. Human rights activists involved in advocacy for Uighurs have said about the same thing.
The Thai government deserves a certain credit for having come to the political calculations of its move – even if the flow of revelations forced its hand. But the whole case is a sign of the priority that the Thai government has its relations with China at a moment of increasing Sino-American strategic competition. In this regard, it is surely significant that the Thai government went ahead with the expulsion despite the fact that the United States had proposed to reinstall Uighurs, and after the new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, expressed his opposition to this decision.