Thai PM meets Xi in China amid fears for Uyghurs in Thailand

Chinese president Xi Jinping met Thai premier curate Paetongtarn Shinawatra successful Beijing connected Thursday amid fears of deportation for the 48 Uyghurs successful custody successful Thailand.

The Thai leader's authoritative sojourn to China this week marks the 50th day of diplomatic ties betwixt the 2 countries. Rights groups and experts fearfulness during the three-day sojourn to Beijing, the Chinese authorities volition propulsion the Thai premier curate to accelerate the deportation of the Uyghurs backmost to China.

The 48 detainees were portion of a overmuch larger radical of astir 350 Uyghur refugees who fled to Thailand pursuing persecution successful the northwest Chinese portion of Xinjiang successful 2014. The detainees person been held successful migration detention for much than a decade.

According to a New York Times report, the detained Uyghurs are forbidden interaction with relatives, lawyers, oregon different advocates and are allegedly subjected to a antithetic modular of attraction than different detainees. Thailand is not a enactment to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, which leaves asylum seekers susceptible to apprehension and detention arsenic “illegal migrants”.

The Chinese authorities has been accused of committing "crimes against humanity" against Uyghurs and Hui Muslims implicit the past decennary done alleged wide abuses and arbitrary detentions, an allegation that Beijing routinely denies arsenic the “lie of the century”.

The UN says China has detained much than a cardinal number Muslims, mostly taste Uyghurs, since a melodramatic escalation of counter-terrorism policies successful the outpouring of 2017. China initially denied the beingness of immoderate Uyghur detention centres earlier defending them arsenic “re-education centres”.

Last month, the UN quality rights experts urged the Thai authorities to not nonstop the Uyghurs back, informing they are astatine hazard of torture, ill-treatment, and irreparable harm if returned.

The detainees "must beryllium provided with entree to asylum procedures and different humanitarian assistance", the peculiar rapporteurs said successful a statement, adding fractional of the radical had superior wellness conditions.

"We are informed that 23 of the 48 individuals endure from superior wellness conditions, including diabetes, kidney dysfunction, paralysis of the little body, tegument diseases, gastrointestinal illnesses, and bosom and lung conditions,” they said. “It is indispensable they beryllium provided with the indispensable and due aesculapian care.”

The connection was released days aft quality rights groups and immoderate Thai lawmakers raised concerns that the transportation to China of the Uyghurs was imminent. The Thai government, however, said it has nary specified plans.

At slightest 172 women and children person since been sent to Turkey and 109 were forcibly returned to China, whose whereabouts were chartless to the rights groups.

During Thursday's meeting, Mr Xi cited projects specified arsenic a high-speed railway acceptable to nexus Bangkok with southwestern China's Kunming, adding that integer system and electrical vehicles were further areas for greater cooperation.

"In the look of unprecedented changes not seen for a 100 years, China and Thailand should deepen communal spot implicit strategical interests and firmly enactment each other," authorities broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) quoted Mr Xi arsenic saying.