One significant dimension of the Chinese government’s transnational repression against Uyghurs is deportations. Recent longform pieces have detailed the journeys of Uyghurs who managed to escape Xinjiang and flee abroad, only to find their new host countries’ governments willing to hand them over to Chinese authorities—despite the well-documented evidence of Uyghurs facing torture in China. This phenomenon highlights the Chinese government’s strong influence over international legal practices, and the vulnerable positions of Uyghurs in exile. The most recent example comes from Thailand, where last week authorities reportedly coerced dozens of detained Uyghurs to sign paperwork preparing their deportation to China. The detainees began a hunger strike in protest. Dake Kang and Huizhong Wu from the AP provided more information on the Uyghurs’ resistance and imminent risk of deportation:
In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, 43 Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation.
“We could be imprisoned, and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from this tragic fate before it is too late.”
[…] Advocates and relatives describe harsh conditions in immigration detention. They say the men are fed poorly, kept in overcrowded concrete cells with few toilets, denied sanitary goods like toothbrushes or razors, and are forbidden contact with relatives, lawyers, and international organizations. The Thai government’s treatment of the detainees may constitute a violation of international law, according to a February 2024 letter sent to the Thai government by United Nations human rights experts.
[…] Two [AP sources in touch with Thai authorities] said that Thai officials pushing for the deportations are choosing to do so now because this year is the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Thailand and China, and because of the perception that backlash from Washington will be muted as the U.S. prepares for a presidential transition in less than two weeks. [Source]
Uyghurs with first-hand experience of the Chinese government’s crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, as described by numerous governmental and human rights organizations, are particularly vulnerable in the face of deportation attempts. This was the case of Abdureqip Rahman, whose story was investigated by Shibani Mahtani at The Washington Post last month. Rahman worked in the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau and was tasked with monitoring Uyghur detainees as they underwent their “re-education.” He then served eight months in prison after being sentenced for being a “double-faced person.” But his subsequent escape to Cambodia and even assurances of safety from U.N. personnel did not prevent his secret deportation to China:
Rahman, 23, had told officials and activists that he had worked in the massive and brutal penal system that China built in the region of Xinjiang to suppress the Uyghur Muslim population there, and then was detained after he left his job. After he fled China, his WeChat accounts and bank accounts were frozen, he said. Authorities in Xinjiang told his family they were looking for him.
A Washington Post investigation found that after his removal from the compound here on Jan. 13 [2024], Rahman was held by the Cambodian authorities and then returned to China. He has not been heard from since Jan. 30 [2024].
Rahman’s secret repatriation is a starkly chilling example of how China increasingly exerts its will extrajudicially outside its borders, not only over Southeast Asian countries such as Cambodia, but also international bodies — including the United Nations, whose systems were designed to protect the world’s most vulnerable. Under international law, no one should be returned to a country where they would face torture or other inhumane treatment. The United States says there is an ongoing genocide against the Uyghur Muslim population, and in 2022, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said China may be responsible for crimes against humanity against the minority group.
[…Central and Southeast Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East] are all places where Beijing has significant economic sway and where it is often not politically expedient to push back against China’s demands, watchdog groups say. Such deportations are rarely publicized and often bypass formal extradition agreements, The Post found. [Source]
In November, Nyrola Elimä and Ben Mauk published a long piece in the New York Times Magazine that traced the harrowing journey of Hasan Imam, a Uyghur whose escape from Xinjiang took him in and out of detention in Thailand, Malaysia, and Turkey, with the constant threat of deportation hanging over his head. Using Imam as a case study, the authors described the scale of the Uyghur exodus from Xinjiang, the collusion of host governments, and the impotence of the international community:
Chinese authorities branded all such migration as “hijrah terrorism” and demanded that other countries arrest and repatriate Uyghur asylum seekers. Their demands have become increasingly difficult to refuse. In the years since the exodus began, China’s influence in Southeast Asia — in the form of investments, aid and military agreements — has grown considerably, and with it the ability to pursue Uyghurs wherever they may go. As a result, more than a decade after leaving home, many have found neither safety nor refuge. Hundreds have been forcibly returned to China, and hundreds more have been imprisoned or detained for years. They believe the world has abandoned them.
[…] No one knows how many people have fled Xinjiang over the past 15 years. In the course of our reporting, we obtained an internal Chinese government document that suggests the scale of the exodus: a spreadsheet created sometime before 2018, titled “High-Risk Individuals From Xinjiang Suspected of Crossing the Border Illegally,” containing the names and personal details of 17,743 Uyghurs — including many of our interviewees and more than two dozen of the men currently detained at Suan Plu [a detention center in Bangkok, Thailand].
In their decade-long search for a safe haven outside China, tens of thousands of asylum seekers have been met with cruelty and indifference. Far from protecting them from refoulement, host countries have, in hundreds of cases, bent to China’s demands to repatriate them. Thousands more have been subjected to local imprisonment, intimidation and other forms of transnational repression. There is no population in the world subject to such aggressive tactics of surveillance and pursuit on a global scale.
[…] Our investigation also reveals that Thai authorities worked closely with China over months to arrange to send the Uyghurs back. Documents we obtained from a public-security bureau in Xinjiang show that Thai authorities sent mug shots of 306 Uyghur adults and 71 children to authorities in China in efforts to identify them, and that Chinese authorities subsequently ordered police units to identify and collect blood samples from detainees’ relatives to compare with samples taken from those in Thailand. Even after Turkey’s resettlement offer was made public, Thai and Chinese representatives held secret meetings and reached a preliminary agreement “to repatriate 306 Uyghurs to China,” suggesting an even larger deportation was planned. These documents, which reveal the extent of the collaboration between Thai and Chinese authorities, are described here for the first time. [Source]
Meanwhile, the Chinese government continues to whitewash its human rights abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang through its powerful propaganda apparatus. China Media Project reported last week that Xinjiang’s branch of the Cyberspace Administration of China recently launched the Xinjiang International Communication Center (ICC), which will help Party media, according to a piece in the Xinjiang Daily, build “a matrix of foreign propaganda products.” This follows reportedly subsidized visits to Xinjiang by Western tour groups who then parroted CCP talking points denying reports of abuses against Uyghurs.
