BANGKOK — Thailand deported 40 Uyghur asylum-seekers to China on Thursday, activists and Thai officials said, despite warnings from rights advocates and U.S. officials that they could face torture and imprisonment if they were returned.
The Uyghurs, who had been detained for more than a decade, were part of a group of more than 300 people who were arrested in 2014 after fleeing China to seek protection in Thailand.
The Chinese government denies accusations that it has committed large-scale abuses against Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic group who live mainly in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang.
The Thai national police chief, Kitrat Phanphet, told reporters that 40 people had been deported and that officials in China “showed the sincerity and the intention to take care of this group of Chinese Uyghurs.”
The Chinese Ministry of Public Security said 40 Chinese nationals who had entered Thailand illegally had been deported, without saying whether they were Uyghurs.
The deportation was carried out in accordance with the laws of both China and Thailand, the Chinese government said, adding that the legal rights of the individuals involved had been fully protected.
The U.S. strongly condemned the move by Thailand, a longtime ally. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thailand risked “running afoul of its international obligations” under the U.N. Convention Against Torture and called on Thai officials to “fully verify continuously” that Chinese officials were not violating the Uyghurs’ human rights.
“We urge all governments in countries where Uyghurs seek protection not to forcibly return ethnic Uyghurs to China,” he said in a statement.
Rights groups and Thai lawmakers also criticized the Thai government, which had said earlier that it had no plans to deport the Uyghurs.
“What is the Thai government doing?” Thai opposition lawmaker Kannavee Suebsang said in a post on X. “We have violated their human rights more than enough. There must be a better resolution,” he added.
Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said the deportation by Thailand “constitutes a blatant violation of Thailand’s obligations under domestic and international laws.”
“The men now face a high risk of torture, enforced disappearance, and long-term imprisonment in China,” she said in a statement.
Responding to comments from rights groups, Lin Jian, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said his “is a rule-of-law country with comprehensive legal frameworks and mechanisms for protecting human rights.”
“All ethnic groups in China, including the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, enjoy full economic, social, cultural and civil rights,” Lin said at a regular briefing in Beijing.
“China firmly opposes interference in its internal affairs under the pretext of human rights and rejects using the Xinjiang issue to interfere with normal law enforcement cooperation between countries,” he added.
Photos published in Thai media and taken early Thursday showed trucks with black tape covering their windows leaving an immigration center in the country’s capital, Bangkok, where 48 Uyghurs had been detained.
An unscheduled China Southern Airlines flight left the Don Mueang airport in Bangkok at 4:48 a.m. local time (4:48 p.m. Wednesday ET) and landed six hours later in the city of Kashgar in Xinjiang, according to data from the tracker Flightradar24.
Speaking to reporters earlier in the day before the deportation was reported by Chinese state media, Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra did not confirm whether anyone had been deported.
“This sort of issue, for any country, one has to follow the law, international process and human rights,” she told lawmakers, according to Reuters.
Thailand was previously criticized in 2015 when it deported more than 100 members of the original Uyghur group to China. Most of the rest of the group was sent to Turkey, while 53 remained in Thailand.
Five of those 53 have since died, including two children, according to United Nations human rights experts. They say almost half of the remaining 48 Uyghurs were suffering from serious health conditions, including diabetes, kidney dysfunction, and heart and lung conditions.
The status of the eight Uyghur detainees who do not appear to have been deported to China on Thursday was not immediately clear.
Rights activists have criticized the Uyghurs’ condition in Thai detention, saying they were denied access to family members, lawyers and international organizations. In a letter to the Thai government last year, U.N. experts said its treatment of the Uyghur detainees could be a violation of international law.
Amid concerns that their deportation to China was imminent, the U.N. had urged Thailand not to repatriate the Uyghur detainees, saying last month that they were “at real risk of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment if they are returned.”
Rights groups say Uyghurs in China face discrimination and the suppression of their cultural identity. The U.S. and other Western governments have said that Beijing’s policies on Uyghurs, including the forced detention of possibly a million or more people, amount to genocide.
Nat Sumon reported from Bangkok, and Jennifer Jett reported from Hong Kong.
