By Sarah Teich, January 20, 2024
While the world watches Trump’s inauguration, Israel-Gaza developments, and wildfires in California, China is taking advantage of a distracted international community by ramping up pressure on the Thai government to deport 48 Uyghur men. The Thai government appears to be caving to the pressure. Deportations back to China seem imminent.
The Uyghurs, a predominantly-Muslim minority group primarily residing in the Xinjiang region of China, are enduring genocide, with millions held in detention camps where torture, including sexual violence, is widespread. Many Uyghurs fled China – particularly in the early days of the genocide when leaving the country was still possible – and ended up in various countries along China’s borders, including Khazakstan, Kyrgystan, Laos, and Thailand.
This group of 48 Uyghur men have been held in immigration detention in Thailand for over a decade. There were originally 300 detainees: Thailand sent some of them back to China in 2015, while others died in custody.
China claims that these individuals are illegal immigrants and has sought their return to face legal proceedings. However, deporting these Uyghurs to the hands of a regime that is inflicting genocide on their people is tantamount to signing their death certificates.
Deporting the men would put Thailand in violation of numerous international laws. According to Article 3 of the Convention Against Torture, states are prohibited from expelling, returning, or extraditing a person to a jurisdiction “where there are substantial grounds for believing that [they] would be in danger of being subjected to torture”. Thailand is a state party to the Convention, and this principle of non-refoulement has reached the status of customary international law, meaning that it is binding on all states and applies to any form of removal or transfer of individuals, regardless of their legal or migration status.
Further, deporting Uyghurs to China would likely put Thailand in breach of its obligations under the international laws of genocide. The International Law Commission in Article 16 of its Articles on State Responsibility determined that a state can be held responsible for assisting another state in the commission of an internationally wrongful act, and the International Court of Justice has adopted this understanding to determine whether a state is responsible for complicity in genocide under the Genocide Convention. Even though Thailand is also not a party the Genocide convention, the ICJ has held that Article 16 reflects a customary rule, and it is widely accepted that the prohibition against genocide is likewise binding on all states as a fundamental international legal norm.
In forcibly returning Uyghurs to China, Thailand would provide China the means to commit genocide. Just because the Uyghurs won’t be harmed within Thailand’s borders won’t make Thailand any less guilty in the crime against these men.
By returning Uyghurs to China, Thailand would provide the Chinese government access to the very individuals it seeks to destroy. Using the language of the international criminal tribunals, this is practical assistance in the genocidal project of the Chinese government that has a substantial effect on the commission of the crime.
Rights-respecting countries, including Canada, should react strongly against these deportation attempts by Thailand. Canada should make it clear to Thailand that it agrees with the UNHCR that such deportations would constitute a breach of international law; that these deportations would constitute both a breach of Thailand’s legal obligations under the Convention Against Torture and a breach of the fundamental norms prohibiting genocide.
Canada, along with other rights-respecting countries, should communicate to the Thai government that such breaches of international law may make them the subject of formal complaints, including before the International Court of Justice.
Clear communication to the Thai authorities could shift the balance of pressure, emboldening Thailand with the knowledge that China’s request are illegal on multiple fronts, and encouraging the Thai government to stand strong against Chinese efforts to destroy the Uyghurs. Forty-eight lives hang in the balance.
Sarah Teich is an international human rights lawyer, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and co-founder and president of Human Rights Action Group.
