Stop trying to please China on Uighur returns

More than 70 Uighurs locked up in the Thai Immigration Police detention centre have been on a hunger strike to appeal for help and raise awareness about their situation – facing the threat of being sent back to China, where they could be prosecuted for fleeing the country.
A handwritten appeal by Uighur detainees was obtained by Radio Free Asia’s Uighur Service, part of which was posted on the agency’s website.
The detainees said they would rather die in Thailand than go back to China. “If we were returned back to China, we will face physical and emotional torture, and be killed or sentenced to stay in prison for life,” RFA quoted the group as saying. They have called themselves ‘For Freedom’.
“Therefore, we announced a hunger strike and thought it would be better to die from a hunger strike while in here. We will continue our hunger strike until we are freed or relocated to a third country or till we die here.”
Like it or not, the spotlight is on Thailand for good and obvious reasons. First of all, immediate attention is on this group of more than 70 people, who accuse Thai officials at the detention centre of treating them as something less than human.
Besides inflicting “profound suffering upon us”, the Thai authorities “separate us from our wives and children, parents and siblings. Other countries did not help us at all. We are not criminals.”
The group said they escaped from China to escape “layer upon layers of oppression to free our wives and children detained in the democratic country of Thailand. If Thailand is a democratic country, they should let us go to countries like Turkey.”
Apart from the alleged mistreatment, there is also concern that Thailand would send them back to China, where they will surely face persecution.
Last year, Thailand surprised the entire world with its decision to hand over 109 Uighurs to Chinese authorities. China promised Thailand that the Uighurs would be treated humanely but photographs of them being hooded and dragged from the transport plane suggested otherwise.
As part of damage control, Thailand talked about sending officials to visit the returnees but that idea didn’t get any traction either. The bottom line is that Thailand should know China will not allow Thailand’s sensitivity to override its security concerns.
Knowing full well what the Chinese authorities will do to any Uighurs they return, the junta-appointed government tried hard to put on a humanitarian front. Was it pretention or just plain ignorance on Thailand’s part
When local reporters confronted Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha about the deportation, the junta chief shot back and asked, “Do you want us to keep them for ages until they have children for three generations”
For the Uighurs, Thailand is just a transit point. Prayut shouldn’t flatter himself about them wanting to stay here because Thailand has long been a transit point – a hub, even – for many of the world’s lovers of freedom.
In recent decades Thailand has permitted many to enter the country, and in some cases facilitated their stay here – the anti-Communist Lao, to the Khmer Rouge leaders on the eastern border, to all the different anti-Burman ethnic armies (Shan, Karen, Mon, etc), not to mention the now-defunct Tamil Tigers.
Thailand has lots of experience with different groups seeking refuge here. So, there is no need to bend over backwards to please the Chinese.
Remember the ransacking of the Thai consulate in Istanbul last July and the protest at the Thai embassy in Turkey by an angry Uighur mob
And have we forgotten the attack at the Erawan Shrine by the Ratchaprasong intersection that killed 20 people, mostly foreign tourists, on August 17, last year Officials have tried hard to kill the notion that the reason for that terrorist attack was revenge for the deportation of the 109 Uighurs.
Thai police conveniently concluded the attack was the work of human traffickers who were upset at the government’s crackdown on their activities.
It wasn’t much of a crackdown, really, if one was to look at the initial arrest of these Uighurs. More than 200 were found huddled together in a rubber plantation in Songkhla. Thai police thought these Uighurs were Rohingya fleeing Myanmar.
We should show these people more compassion.