Deportation of Uighurs detained in Thailand looms

Nilobar says she was living in agony.

A Uyghur refugee, she has spent the past decade hoping that her husband and three children would join her in Türkiye, where they now live.

The family was detained in Thailand in 2014 after fleeing increasing repression in their hometown in China's Xinjiang province. She and her children were allowed to leave Thailand after a year. But her husband remained in detention, along with 47 other Uyghur men.

Nilober – not her real name – now fears that she and her children may never see him again.

Ten days ago, I learned that Thai officials had tried to persuade detainees to sign consent forms to be returned to China. When they realized what was on the forms, they refused to sign them.

The Thai government denied any immediate plans to return them. But human rights groups believe they could be deported at any time.

“I don’t know how to explain this to my children,” Niluber told the BBC via video call from Türkiye. She says her children keep asking about their father. The youngest had never met him.

“I don’t know how to comprehend this. I live in constant pain, and in constant fear that at any moment I will receive news from Thailand that my husband will be deported.”

the Thailand last deported Uyghur asylum seekers That was July 2015. Without warning, it put 109 of them on a plane back to China, sparking a storm of protests from governments and human rights groups.

The few photos published show them bound with their hands covered, and guarded by a large number of Chinese police officers. Little is known about what happened to them after their return. Other deported Uyghurs have received long prison sentences in secret trials.

The nominee for Secretary of State in the incoming Trump administration, Marco Rubio, has promised to pressure Thailand not to return the remaining Uyghurs.

One human rights defender described their living conditions as “hell on earth.”

They are all being held at an immigration detention center in central Bangkok, which houses most of those accused of immigration violations in Thailand. Some are only there briefly, awaiting deportation; Others are there much longer.

Driving along the narrow, busy road known as Suan Phu, it's easy to miss the collection of nondescript concrete buildings, and it's hard to believe they house an estimated 900 detainees — and Thai authorities don't provide exact numbers.

The International Data Center is known to be hot, overcrowded and unsanitary. Journalists are not allowed to enter. Lawyers usually warn their clients against sending them there if at all possible.

There are 43 Uyghurs there, as well as five others being held in a Bangkok prison for trying to escape. They are the last of about 350 people who fled China in 2013 and 2014.

They are held in isolation from other prisoners and are rarely allowed visits from strangers or lawyers. They have few opportunities to exercise, or even to see daylight. They were not charged with any crime, except for entering Thailand without a visa. Five Uyghurs have died in custody.

“The conditions there are terrible,” says Shalida Tajaronsuk, director of the People’s Empowerment Foundation, an NGO trying to help Uyghurs.

“There is not enough food – it is mostly just soup made of cucumber and chicken bones. They are crammed in there. The water they get, both for drinking and for washing, is dirty. Only basic medicines are provided and they are not enough. If someone gets infected With the disease, it takes a long time to get a doctor's appointment, and because of dirty water, hot weather, and poor ventilation, many Uyghurs develop rashes or other skin problems.

But the worst part of their detention, those who experienced it say, is not knowing how long they will remain in prison in Thailand, and the constant fear of being sent back to China.

Nilober says there were always rumors about deportation but it was difficult to find out more. Escape was difficult because they had children with them.

“It was terrible. We were so afraid all the time,” Nilobar recalls.

“When we thought about being sent back to China, we would have preferred to die in Thailand.”

China's repression of Uyghur Muslims has been well documented by the United Nations and human rights groups. Up to one million Uyghurs are believed to be detained in re-education camps, in what human rights advocates say is a government campaign to eradicate Uyghur identity and culture. There are many allegations of torture and forced disappearance, which China denies. It says it runs “professional centres” focused on combating extremism among the Uyghurs.

Nilobar says that she and her husband faced hostility from Chinese state officials because of their religiosity, as her husband was an avid reader of religious texts.

The couple made the decision to flee when people they knew were arrested or disappeared. The family was among a group of 220 Uighurs who were arrested by Thai police as they attempted to cross the border into Malaysia in March 2014.

Nilober was held in an international detention center near the border, and later in Bangkok, until in June 2015 she and 170 other women and children were allowed to go to Turkey, which typically offers asylum to Uyghurs.

But her husband is still at the International Data Center in Bangkok. They were separated when they were detained, and she has had no contact with him since a brief meeting they were allowed to have in July 2014.

She says she was one of 18 pregnant women and 25 children crammed into a room measuring just four by eight metres. The food was “bad and there wasn't enough for all of us.”

“I was the last one to give birth at midnight in the bathroom. The next day, the guard saw that my condition and that of my child was not good, so they took us to the hospital.”

Nilobar was also separated from her eldest son, who was just two years old at the time and was detained with his father — an experience she says traumatized him, having lived through “terrible conditions” and witnessed a guard beat an inmate. She says that when the guards brought him back to her, he did not recognize her.

“He was very scared, screaming and crying. He couldn't understand what happened. He didn't want to talk to anyone.”

She says that it took a long time before he accepted his mother, and after that he did not leave her for a single moment, even after they arrived in Türkiye.

“It took a really long time for him to understand that he was finally in a safe place.”

Thailand has never explained why it is not allowing the remaining Uyghurs to join their families in Türkiye, but it is certain that the reason is pressure from China.

Unlike other prisoners at the International Disability Centre, the fate of the Uyghurs is not being handled by the Immigration Department but instead by Thailand's National Security Council, a body headed by the prime minister and over which the military has significant influence.

As the influence of the United States, Thailand's oldest military ally, has declined, China's influence has been steadily increasing. The current Thai government is keen to build closer relations with China to help revive the faltering economy.

The UNHCR has been accused of doing little to help the Uyghurs, but says it is not allowed to reach them and is therefore unable to do much. Thailand does not recognize refugee status.

However, fulfilling China's desire to reclaim the Uyghurs is not without risks. Thailand has just won a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, and has been lobbying hard for it.

Deporting 48 men who have already endured more than a decade of imprisonment would tarnish the image the Thai government is trying to project.

Thailand will also be mindful of what happened just one month after the last mass deportation in 2015.

On August 17 of that year A powerful bomb exploded at a shrine in Bangkok Which was popular with Chinese tourists. Twenty people were killed, in what is widely believed to be retaliation by Uighur militants, although Thai authorities have tried to downplay the connection.

Two Uyghur men were charged with the bombing, but their trial lasted nine years, with no end in sight. His lawyers say one of them is almost certainly innocent. A veil of secrecy surrounds the trial; Authorities appear reluctant to let anything come out of the hearings linking the bombshell to deportation.

Even those Uyghurs who manage to reach Türkiye must then deal with their uncertain status there, and with all contacts with their families in Xinjiang cut off.

“I haven’t heard my mother’s voice for 10 years,” says Hasan Imam, a Uyghur refugee who now works as a truck driver in Türkiye.

He was in the same group in which Nilobar was arrested at the Malaysian border in 2014.

He recalls how the Thai authorities deceived them the following year about their plan to deport some of them to China. He says they were told that some of the men would be transferred to a different facility because the facility they were in was too crowded.

This was after some women and children were sent to Türkiye. Unusually, the men in the camp were allowed to speak to their wives and children in Türkiye by phone.

“We were all happy and full of hope,” Hassan says. “They picked them out one by one. At this point they had no idea they were being sent back to China. We didn’t find out from Turkey that they had been deported until later, through an illegal phone we had.”

This filled the rest of the detainees with despair, and two years later, when he was temporarily transferred to another detention camp, he and 19 others made the attempt, Hassan recalls. Noticeable escapeUsing a nail to make a hole in the dilapidated wall.

Eleven people were arrested, but Hassan managed to cross the forested border into Malaysia, from where he reached Türkiye.

“I don't know what condition my parents are in, but the situation is worse for those who are still detained in Thailand,” he says.

He explains that they fear being sent back and imprisoned in China – and they also fear that this will lead to harsher punishments for their families.

“The psychological pressure for them is unbearable.”