Refugee crisis escalates: Thailand should allow Chinese Uyghurs to emigrate to Turkey

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) urges the government of Thailand to allow 367 Uyghur refugees from China to emigrate to Turkey. "Refugees are not commodities. There must be an end to the inhuman haggling between Thailand, China and Turkey over the Uyghur people who fled to Southeast Asia," said Ulrich Delius, the STP's China expert, in a letter to the Thai government. A deportation to China is out of the question, since the Uyghurs would be facing the death penalty there. The STP also urges Antonio Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, to help put an end to the refugee drama which has been going on for the last ten months.

On Wednesday, 140 of the 367 interned Muslim refugees from northwestern China started a hunger strike as a form of protest against their catastrophic prison conditions. At least 195 of the refugees are women and children. A three year old child has already died from tuberculosis due to the bad hygienic conditions. The large number of children and their parents clearly shows that it is often families who decide to flee. However, the men and women were separated and are now living in different detention camps under inhuman conditions. There are often dozens of people in the overcrowded cells. They have no beds and the food is barely edible. Many of the refugees have become sick. At the beginning of November, more than 100 inmates managed to flee from these conditions – and only about 20 of them have so far been arrested again.

Turkey declared to be willing to take up the refugees, but Thailand is reluctant to release the members of the minority group – who are persecuted in China – so as not to offend the Chinese government. Immediately after it became known that some of the Uyghurs managed to escape in March 2014, the People's Republic had demanded their extradition. General Prawit Wongsuwon, Thailand's Minister of Defense and Deputy Prime Minister, thinks it would not be problematic to send the refugees back to their home country. On November 17, the general had declared that China – as a world power – would surely not take revenge on them. "Statements like this are ignorant. During the past decade, dozens of Uyghurs who were deported to China were then sentenced to death or to long prison sentences," said Delius.

Last weekend, China had increased the pressure on the neighboring countries once again, demanding not offer Uyghur refugees any protection, declaring them to be "terrorists". The Chinese police stated that more than 800 Uyghurs were arrested crossing the border Vietnam illegally in 2014, alleged terrorists who planned to visit Islamist military training camps. "But the known cases of failed attempts to escape from China tell us a different story," Delius wrote. In October 2014, the Malaysian authorities arrested a group of 155 Uyghur refugees – with 76 children and 37 women. On December 17, 2014, an Uyghur got killed in an incident at the Vietnamese-Chinese border. 21 people were arrested, including 17 women and children. Due to the increasingly repressive laws and the increasing human rights violations, many Uyghurs have no more hope for a peaceful life in their home country.

Ulrich Delius, head of STP's Asia department, is available for further questions: Tel. 0551 49906 27 or asien@gfbv.de.

Header Photo: M M/Flickr