Suspected Xinjiang Migrants Detained in Thailand
The Wall Street Journal, 16 March 2014
Thai and Turkish officials said they are checking the nationalities of about 200 people detained in southern Thailand whom local police suspect to be illegal migrants from China’s troubled region of Xinjiang.
Thai officials said over the weekend that the suspected migrants, who were discovered early Thursday hiding in a rubber plantation, indicated to police that they were from Turkey. The officials said the group would be deported as soon their nationality is determined and that they are seeking assistance from Turkey and China to do so.
If they are found to be illegal migrants from Xinjiang’s Uighur ethnic group, Beijing is likely to demand their deportation from Thailand, which has close economic and diplomatic ties with China. Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia have previously repatriated Uighurs, despite objections from human rights groups.
Rights activists urged Thailand not to send the group to China. The Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking mainly Muslim ethnic group, and some have criticized Chinese rule over Xinjiang, saying that an influx of people from China’s ethnic Han majority into the region and restrictions on religion have marginalized Uighurs in what they see as their homeland.
China accuses the Uighur separatist movement of having links to al Qaeda and carrying out multiple terrorist attacks, including a mass knife assault that left 33 people dead at a train station in southwest China this month.
There has been no suggestion from Thai, Turkish or Chinese officials of a link between the suspected migrants in Thailand and the recent attacks on China.
Still, if confirmed to be illegal Uighur migrants, they would be one of the largest such groups to come to light in Southeast Asia, raising fresh questions about the illicit movement of people and goods across China’s southern border.
Uighurs have come to Thailand in the past, using it as a stopping point before moving on to a third country, said Sunai Pasuk, a Bangkok-based researcher for Human Rights Watch. This group, he said, includes old and young, men and women, and dozens of toddlers—unlike previous groups of Uighurs, which were mainly comprised of 10 or so men with a history of political activism.
Human Rights Watch has asked Thai authorities to give temporary protection to the group until it could be determined if they qualified as refugees, said Mr. Sunai. “We don’t want China to take them,” he said. “We are very concerned that their lives will be in danger. Previous records showed that China treated Uighurs very badly especially after they tried to escape.”
Thai immigration police said they discovered the group during a raid on hilly rubber plantation in Songkhla province, near the border with Malaysia, that they believe was being used by illegal migrants from the Muslim Rohingya ethnic group from Myanmar.
The Rohingyas escaped before the raid, but the police discovered the suspected Uighurs hiding nearby, Police Major General Thatchai Pitaneelabut, chief of the immigration police division in charge of southern Thailand, said on Friday.
Thai police said they had been unable to establish how the detainees entered the country as they had refused to communicate, other than saying “Turkish.”
Mr. Sunai of Human Rights Watch said some spoke broken English and said the words: “Turkey. Istanbul.” Police found a Turkish interpreter, but the group appeared not to speak Turkish well either, he said.
Police Lieutenant General Pharnu Kerdlarpphon, chief of Thailand’s Immigration Bureau, said Sunday that representatives from the Turkish Embassy in Bangkok talked to the group. Officials from the Chinese Embassy have contacted Thai authorities for information but haven’t talked to the group yet, Mr. Pharnu said.
Ahmet Idem Akay, First Counselor at the Turkish Embassy in Bangkok, said he visited the group over the weekend to try to establish their origin. “We have interviewed them and they said they are Turkish,” he said.
Calls to China’s Foreign Ministry and its embassy in Bangkok went unanswered Sunday. Asked about the group at a regular briefing Friday, Hong Lei, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, said he was unaware of the matter.
All in the group were taken to a court in Songkhla Saturday morning and charged with illegal immigration, Thai officials said.
The men in the group were being held at an immigration detention center along the Thailand-Malaysia border in Songkhla, said Mr. Thatchai, the police officer.
The women and children—who made up more than half the group—were being detained in a separate temporary shelter in Songkhla, according to Paveena Hongsakul, minister of social development and human security. She said one of the women was heavily pregnant.
The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said it had also sent a team to the area to assess the immediate humanitarian needs of the group and was working with Thai authorities to ensure the group could remain until the case is assessed.
—Wilawan Watcharasakwet in Bangkok and Laurie Burkitt in Beijing contributed to this article.