Thai Human Rights Commission: Uyghur deportation unlawful
On February 27, 2025, Thailand returned 40 Uyghur refugees to China despite staggering amounts of evidence indicating they were at high risk of torture, enforced disappearance, and other inhuman treatment. Now, Thailand’s National Human Rights Commission found that the Thai Government, National Security Council and Immigration Office violated both international and Thai law, and undermined international confidence in Thailand, affecting Thailand’s global economic and trade relations and its standing among Muslim-majority countries.
In 2014, a group of Uyghur refugees managed to escape the CCP’s “Strike Hard Campaign”, which swept up 27,164 individuals in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region – a more than 95% increase in formal arrests from 2013, according to China’s Party-state media.
The murkiness of charges, opacity of trials, and the arrest of notable non-violent scholars such as Ilham Tohti showed a targeted campaign against Uyghurs as a people, rather than the propagated “crackdown on terrorism”.
However, for many of the escapees, the nightmare was far from over. Over 300 refugees were apprehended by Thai immigration authorities in 2014. 173 among them were resettled in Turkey, 109 were deported to China and at least five individuals died while in detention, including a newborn and child.
For more than 10 years, 48 of them remained in the permanent limbo of a Thai immigration detention center, stuck between pending UNHCR refugee status, offers of resettlement by third countries, and PRC pressure to send them back to China.
Despite the staggering amount of evidence on ongoing crimes against humanity and genocide in the Uyghur Region emerged, including the 2022 assessment by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights which formally called on all UN Member States to refrain from sending any Uyghurs back to China under the international principle of non-refoulement, Thai authorities continuously refused to release the 48 individuals and allow for their resettlement.
Then, things went from bad to worse.
In late Fall 2024, the UN, democratic Governments and lawmakers, and NGOs protested the signaling that Thailand would deport 40 individuals to China.
In January 2025, UN experts issued a statement outlining the risk:
“The treatment of the Uyghur minority in China is well-documented,” the experts said. “We are concerned they are at risk of suffering irreparable harm, in violation of the international prohibition on refoulement to torture.”
And yet – and yet. On February 27, 2025, Thailand gave into the PRC’s demands and deported 40 of the Uyghur detainees to a country where genocide against their people has been recognized.
In an op-ed on the deportation, Professor Jeffrey Wasserstrom of UC Irvine compared the situation in Thailand to a decade earlier, and noted that the deportation served as a reminder of an hindrance to progress in Thailand on human rights – the linkage between the elite and China:
“On the side of disturbing patterns from the past, there is the deportation of the Uyghurs. This is a sign that the new civilian government in Bangkok, like the junta that came before it, is willing to take familiar kinds of actions against not just domestic critics, but also those seeking safety from the government of the powerful, autocratic neighbor to the north, whose favor Thailand's ruling elite, in each of its recent configurations, has shown itself eager to court.”
But in November 2025, the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand (NHRCT) announced that it had received four separate complaints regarding the deportation of the 40 Uyghurs to China.
The complaints were filed against the Thai government, the National Security Council, and the Immigration Office. The complaints alleged that the deportation took place “despite credible evidence indicating that they were at high risk of torture, enforced disappearance, and other inhuman treatment.”
The Commission conducted a fact-finding investigation and found “no evidence that the respondents ensured the Uyghurs’ safety or protection from torture upon return.”
Further, the Commission noted that the Thai government, National Security Council, and Immigration Office had “relied solely on diplomatic assurances from China and did not provide any verifiable evidence of their deportation process or proof of the Uyghurs’ voluntary consent.”
The Commission also noted that independent monitoring to ensure those deported is inadequate and determined:
“Thus, the NHRCT concluded that the three respondents either acted or failed to act in ways that constituted human rights violations. The deportation contravened the principle of non-refoulement, international human rights treaties, and the 2022 Act on Torture and Enforced Disappearance. It also undermined international confidence in Thailand, particularly following its election to the UN Human Rights Council (2025–2027). The incident additionally affected Thailand’s global economic and trade relations and its standing among Muslim-majority countries.”
*The full press NHRCT release is available in Thai – and a translated copy in English here.
