In late February, representatives of a Thai Muslim organization brought a reassuring message to 40 Uyghur men terrified they were going to be sent back to China: The government had no immediate plans to deport them.
Less than 72 hours later, the men were on a plane bound for China’s far west Xinjiang region, where U.N. experts say they could face torture or other punishment.
Thailand decided to deport the men more than a month earlier, while denying plans to do so to the public, lawmakers and Muslim religious leaders until almost the very end, according to testimony from parliamentary inquiries, interviews, meeting notes and voice messages. That gave the detainees and their advocates no chance to make a last-ditch appeal before they were bundled off and sent back to China.
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Thai officials [...] have also said the men returned voluntarily, despite evidence to the contrary.
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The men deported last month were part of a larger group of Uyghurs detained in Thailand in 2014 after fleeing China. That left Thailand facing competing demands from Beijing and Washington.
Beijing said the Uyghurs were terrorists and wanted them sent back, but hasn’t presented evidence. Uyghur activists and Western officials said the men are innocent and have urged their resettlement elsewhere.
Facing potential backlash from all sides, Thailand kept the men in detention for over a decade.
That changed when Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra took office last year. Her father, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, has close links to top Chinese officials.
Thai officials began secretly discussing plans to deport the Uyghurs as early as December, a month after Paetongtarn met Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the AP earlier reported.
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Their deportation also caused a diplomatic rift between Thailand and Western countries. On March 14, the U.S. State Department announced visa sanctions on an unknown number of Thai officials for their role in the deportations, while the EU parliament passed a resolution condemning the deportation.
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