Uyghur asylum-seeker death heaps pressure on Thailand
The death of a 49-year-old Uyghur asylum-seeker in Thailand has prompted pleas from rights groups to find a humane solution to the plight of around 50 Uyghur men who have been detained for nine years.
Aziz Abdullah had been an Islamic leader in a remote part of south-western Xinjiang, and arrived in Thailand with his pregnant wife, his brother and seven children sometime in late 2013. He was finally taken to hospital after his collapse, but pronounced dead soon afterwards. The death certificate issued by the hospital specifies a lung infection as the cause of death.Thailand decided to repatriate 109 Uyghurs to China in 2015, despite pleas from the UN
The Thai government had also allowed Chinese embassy officials to visit and assess the asylum-seekers, and on 8 July 2015, in defiance of pleas from the UN's refugee agency UNHCR and several governments, Thailand forcibly repatriated at least 109 Uyghur men, putting them on a plane, handcuffed and hooded, back to China.
Two Uyghur men were detained and charged with the bombing, although one of them, who insists he is innocent, may just have been another asylum-seeker, caught when Thai police raided a house thought to have been used by the bomb-makers. "It is even worse than regular Thai prisons," says Chalida Tacharoensuk, from the People's Empowerment Foundation, which has been pushing for better treatment of the Uyghurs.
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