Deportation looms for Uyghurs held in Thailand

Niluper says she has been suffering a lot.

A Uyghur refugee, she has spent the past decade hoping that her husband would join her and their three sons in Turkey, where she now lives.

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

Niluper – not her real name – now fears she and her children will never see her again.

Ten days ago, they learned that the Thai authorities had tried to persuade the detainees to sign forms allowing them to return to China. After realizing the contents of the forms, he refused to sign them.

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

“I don’t know how to explain it to my children,” Niluper told the BBC in a video from Turkey. His sons, he says, still ask about their father. The younger one has never met him.

“I don’t know how to digest this. I am in constant pain, I fear that at any moment I will get news from Thailand that my husband has been deported.”

The last time Thailand expelled Uyghur refugees it was in July 2015. Without warning, it put 109 people on a plane back to China, prompting protests from governments and human rights groups.

The few pictures that have been released show them wearing helmets and handcuffed, being guarded by a large number of Chinese police. Little is known of what happened to them after their return. Some deported Uyghurs received long prison terms in secret prisons.

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

Their living conditions have been described by a human rights defender as “hell on earth”.

All are being held at the Immigration Detention Center (IDC) in central Bangkok, which houses many of those accused of violating Thailand’s immigration laws. Some are there briefly, as they await deportation; some stay longer.

Driving down the narrow street known as Suan Phlu it’s easy to miss the group of poorly defined cement buildings, and it’s hard to believe that they hold around 900 prisoners – Thai authorities don’t give exact numbers.

IDC is known for being hot, crowded and unsanitary. Journalists are not allowed to enter. Lawyers often warn their clients not to be sent there if possible.

There are 43 Uyghurs there, including five who are in Bangkok jail for trying to escape. They are the last of about 350 who fled China in 2013 and 2014.

They are isolated from other prisoners and are not allowed to be visited by outsiders or lawyers. They get few opportunities to exercise, or even to see the light of day. He has not been charged with any crime, except for entering Thailand without a visa. Five Uyghurs have died in prison.

“What’s happening there is serious,” says Chalida Tajaroensuk, director of the People’s Empowerment Foundation, an NGO that is trying to help the Uyghurs.

“There is not enough food – mainly a soup made of cucumbers and chicken bones. They live full in there. The water they get, drinking and washing, is black. The only medicines are given and these are not enough. Someone gets sick, it takes a long time to see a doctor.

But the worst part of their detention, said those who met them, is that they do not know how long they will be detained in Thailand, and the fear of being sent back to China.

Niluper says there are always rumors of evictions but it was difficult to find out more. It was difficult to escape because they had children.

“It was very bad. We were always very scared,” Niluper remembers.

“If we decided to be sent back to China, we would prefer to die in Thailand.”

China’s oppression of Muslim Uyghurs has been well documented by the UN and human rights groups. Up to one million Uyghurs are believed to have been detained in re-education camps, which human rights activists say is a government campaign to eradicate Uyghur culture and culture. There are many reasons for torture and forced flight, which China denies. It says it has been running “workshops” focused on deporting Uyghurs.

Niluper says she and her husband were criticized by Chinese authorities because of their religion – her husband was an avid reader of religious texts.

The family decided to run away from people they knew were being arrested or missing. The family was among 220 Uyghurs caught by Thai police trying to cross the border into Malaysia in March 2014.

Niluper was held at the IDC near the border, and then in Bangkok, and with 170 other women and children, they were allowed in June 2015 to go to Turkey, which usually provides protection for Uyghurs.

But her husband still lives in Bangkok IDC. They were separated when he was incarcerated, and have not spoken to him since they were briefly reunited in July 2014.

It is said that she was one of 18 pregnant women and 25 children who lived in a room that was only four by eight meters. The food was “bad and not enough for all of us”.

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

Niluper was also separated from her eldest son, who was just two years old at the time and lived with his father – which she says left her heartbroken, after she had a “scary” experience and saw a guard beating a prisoner. When the guards brought him to the woman, he said he did not recognize him.

She was very scared, screaming and crying. He did not understand what had happened. He didn’t want to talk to anyone.

It took time for him to accept his mother, he says, and after that he never left her side even for a moment, even when he arrived in Turkey.

“It took a long time for them to understand that they were in a safe place.”

Thailand has not explained why it will not allow the remaining Uyghurs to join their families in Turkey, but it is almost certainly due to pressure from China.

Unlike other IDC detainees, the fate of the Uyghurs is not overseen by the Immigration Department but rather by Thailand’s National Security Council, a body headed by the prime minister in which the military has significant influence.

While the influence of the US, Thailand’s oldest military ally, is waning, that of China is increasing. The current Thai government is keen to build closer ties with China, in order to help rebuild its struggling economy.

The United Nations Refugee Agency is accused of doing little to help the Uyghurs, but they say they are not given access to them, so they cannot do much. Thailand does not recognize them as refugees.

China’s desire to repatriate the Uyghurs is not dangerous. Thailand has just taken a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, which has exerted considerable pressure.

Deporting the 48 men who have already endured more than a decade in prison would seriously damage the image the Thai government is trying to project.

Thailand will recall the incident just a month after the mass deportations in 2015.

On 17 August that year A powerful bomb has exploded in a holy place in Bangkok which was popular with Chinese tourists. Twenty people were killed, in what many thought was retaliation by Uyghur forces, although Thai authorities tried to reduce the relationship.

Two Uyghur men were charged with the bombing, but their case has been going on for nine years, never ending. One of them, his lawyers say, is almost entirely innocent. A shroud of mystery surrounds the case; authorities seem unwilling to allow anything from bomb-making charges to deportations to get out.

Even the Uyghurs who managed to reach Turkey have to deal with their own uncertainty, and the loss of all contact with their families in Xinjiang.

“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 Turkey.

He was in the same group as Niluper who was captured by the Malaysian border in 2014.

He remembers how the Thai authorities in the following year deceived them about their intention to deport some of them to China. He says that he was told that some men will be transferred to another place, because the place where they stayed was full.

This happened after some women and children were sent to Turkey, and, unusually, the men in the camp were also allowed to talk to their wives and children in Turkey on the phone.

“We were all excited, hopeful,” says Hassan. “They picked them, one by one. At this time they didn’t know that they would be sent back to China. After some time, through the intercepted phone we had, we found out from Turkey that they would be deported.”

This caused the rest of the prisoners to become frustrated, recalls Hasan, and two years later, when they were temporarily transferred to another prison, he and 19 others made a decision. amazing escapeusing a nail to drill through a broken wall.

11 were captured again, but Hasan was able to cross the forest border with Malaysia, and from there he reached Turkey.

“I don’t know what kind of situation my parents are in but for those who were arrested in Thailand it is very difficult,” he says.

They fear being extradited and imprisoned in China – and they fear it could mean harsh punishment for their families, he explains.

“The stress on them is unbearable.”