They could no longer tolerate the bad food, disease, lack of clothing and threats, one escapee says. <\/p>\n
2014-11-17<\/p>\n
Poor conditions at a government social shelter in southern Thailand have forced more than 100 Uyghurs to escape after nearly eight months of detention in the Southeast Asian nation to which they had fled from northwestern China\u2019s restive Xinjiang region, an escapee said.<\/p>\n
The mostly women and children who escaped in early November were part of more than 300 Uyghurs discovered during a raid on a suspected people-smuggling camp in a rubber plantation in Thailand\u2019s Songkhla province near the border with Malaysia.<\/p>\n
When Thai immigration authorities discovered the group in March, they suspected them to be Uyghurs fleeing northwestern China and declared them to be illegal immigrants, although reports said some of them claimed to be Turkish.<\/p>\n
Nearly 170 woman and children were placed in a government-run shelter in Songkhla, while the men were held in immigration detention centers in various locations until their nationalities could be verified, according to the reports.<\/p>\n
About 20 of those who fled had been recaptured, according to a source.<\/p>\n
\u2018Life is hard\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cLife is so hard [there],\u201d one of the women who escaped from the shelter told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. \u201cThe food is bad, and [portions are] reduced day by day. There was no one who didn\u2019t get scabies there. They [camp authorities] did not take us to the hospitals.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were always Chinese agents coming there and threatening to take us back, so we were scared. We decided that instead of returning to China and risking our lives there, we would escape.<\/p>\n \u201cWe thought it was better to die than to be sent back to China. We climbed over the walls and sneaked out the door\u2026Nobody, no country, is showing an interest in our situation or is concerned about us, so if we were deported to China, they [Chinese authorities] would eat us alive.\u201d<\/p>\n Most of the more than 100 who escaped were women and children, including only five or six men, said the woman who declined to give her name or location.<\/p>\n Recaptured<\/strong><\/p>\n Authorities fear that some of the escapees have fallen victim to a human-trafficking ring, according to reports.<\/p>\n Of those who escaped, about 21 women and children have been captured, the woman said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey cannot go anywhere now,\u201d she said. \u201cThey are living under worse conditions [than before].\u201d<\/p>\n Rights groups accuse the Chinese authorities of heavy-handed rule in Xinjiang, including violent police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, forcing many to flee overseas.<\/p>\n A spike in violence in the Xinjiang region, home to millions of mostly Muslim Uyghurs, has left hundreds dead during the last two years. China has blamed the violence on terrorists and Islamist insurgents seeking to establish an independent state.<\/p>\n Many Uyghurs who were repatriated back home from various countries they had fled to had been punished.<\/p>\n U.S.-based Human Rights Watch has pointed out that the Chinese government frequently accuses Uyghurs, especially those seeking asylum, of being terrorists or separatists without substantial proof.<\/p>\n The woman who spoke to RFA said those detained in Thailand had been told that a Muslim community was helping out by providing food, but they never received it.<\/p>\n Sek Wannametee, director-general of Thailand\u2019s Department of Information, said Monday that no decision had yet been made whether to return the Uyghurs to China, the Bangkok Post<\/em> reported.<\/p>\n The Uyghurs first had to undergo several immigration procedures, including nationality verification, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe nationality verification is ongoing,\u201d he was quoted as saying. \u201cThailand insists on respecting human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n Unconfirmed nationality<\/strong><\/p>\n When the refugees were apprehended, their nationality could not be confirmed. But U.S.-based Uyghur activists identified them as Uyghurs, a Turkic-speaking, mostly Muslim minority group from China\u2019s Xinjiang region, according to a report.<\/p>\n Thailand\u2019s Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon said he believed that Chinese authorities would not mistreat them if they were repatriated, the Bangkok Post<\/em> reported.<\/p>\n Qin Jian, China\u2019s consul in Songkhla, said the refugees had not cooperated with Chinese authorities, including the verification of their nationality. As long as the Uyghurs did not have a criminal record, China would not prosecute them, he said, according to reports.<\/p>\n The Uyghur American Association in Washington, D.C. has urged the Thai government to allow the Uyghurs access to the United Nations\u2019 refugee agency to submit asylum requests.<\/p>\n Reported by Rukiye Turdush of RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Translated by Mamatjan Juma. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" They could no longer tolerate the bad food, disease, lack of clothing and threats, one escapee says. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-1407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1407"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=1407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}