By Robert Potter
The move, condemned by the UN, reflects an increasing alignment.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees recently challenged Thailand’s repatriations of Uyghurs to China. This act, under international law could be termed refoulement, the return of a victim to their persecutor. Why would Thailand do this? The answer reflects both a long-term reality and a new political commonality.
Firstly, the long-term trend. Uyghurs are generally Muslim. In Thailand, Islam is a minority faith but one that sits within an explicit political context. Although only around 6 percent of the population identifies as Muslim, an insurgency in southern Thailand has run for 55 years. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha was revealing when he said, “do you want us to keep them here for ages until they have children for three generations.” The decision to send the Uyghurs back to China was driven at least in part of Thailand’s fear of its own Islamic population.
The narrative taken by The Atlantic’s Matt Schiavenza focuses on the economic relationship between China and Thailand as an explanation for the decision to return Uyghur refugees to China. On this view, Thailand is essentially without leverage and China gets what it wants essentially through economic compulsion. There is more than a hint of truth to this, and Prayut certainly spoke to it when he said of his decision “we do not want to destroy the relationship between Thailand and China.” This conclusion is compelling, but it is not the whole story. The long-term shared reality of ethnographic tensions between majority populations and minorities on the periphery also played a part.
Read the full story at The Diplomat