Two Chinese Uyghur men held in Thailand have received royal pardons and are awaiting deportation to China or another country.
BANGKOK: Two Chinese Uyghur men detained in Thailand have received royal pardons and are awaiting deportation, a Thai official and an activist said on Thursday, though it was not yet clear where they will go.
The men are among the last of more than 300 members of the Muslim minority group held in Thailand in 2014, according to Kannavee Suebsang, a former Thai MP who was working for the UN Refugee Agency at the time and now runs an NGO. Almost all have been deported.
Around 170 women and children were sent to Turkey in 2015, while two other groups were deported to China in 2015 and 2025, despite international condemnation of the treatment of the Uyghurs in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang.
The two men were pardoned and on Wednesday transferred to Bangkok’s Immigration Detention Centre, according to Thanit Thaiwatcharamat, deputy commander of Thailand’s immigration bureau.
They will be deported to China or another country, pending the Thai government’s decision, he told AFP.
The men arrived in Thailand in 2014 and were among five who tried to escape from immigration detention in 2020, Kannavee said.
Amnesty International said last year the men “described oppressive conditions of detention, including crowding and damp”, as a reason for their escape.
They were subsequently convicted for the escape bid and jailed. The convictions ruled them out of previous deportations, Kannavee told AFP, adding that Thailand’s National Security Council will now decide their future.
“They will have to consider different factors. For example, if another country is offering to host these men as well as China, this is the decision that needs to be made,” he said.
Under Thai law, imprisoned foreign nationals can only be deported once their sentences are complete.
The remaining three men jailed for their 2020 escape attempt — whose situation has been highlighted by Amnesty International — are still in prison, the Thai official said.
Rights groups and Uyghurs overseas allege that China has detained more than a million Muslims, mostly Uyghurs, in a network of facilities in Xinjiang that are rife with violence, torture, forced labour, political indoctrination and other abuses.
Beijing vehemently denies the accusations, saying its policies in Xinjiang have eradicated extremism and boosted development, and that the facilities were voluntarily attended training centres that closed years ago after attendees “graduated”.