On February 28, Thailand extradited 40 Uyghur men to China. The men were part of a larger group that fled to Thailand in 2014 to escape increasing repression in China. They had been in detention for over a decade as Bangkok tried to avoid angering either China, which demanded the Uyghurs’ repatriation, or other members of the international community, which urged Bangkok to allow the Uyghurs to resettle in a third country. Anthropologist and Uyghur interpreter Rune Steenberg considers the causes and implications of the sudden extradition.
Last month, after months of advocacy and legal battles, Thailand’s government extradited 40 Uyghur men to China.
This decision was widely condemned by human rights organizations, experts, and Western politicians, including new U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Since early January, when rumors of impending extradition surfaced around the Bangkok Immigration Detention Centre Suan Phlu, where 43 Uyghur men were being held, rights groups had warned that the men risked persecution, wrongful detention, and torture if repatriated to China. Thai government spokespeople, including Thai Defense Minister Phumtham Wechayachai, repeatedly guaranteed that the men would not be sent back and that efforts were being made to resettle them to a third country. Turkey, Canada, Sweden, Australia, and the U.S. were among several that declared their willingness to receive them. Why this did not materialize is not entirely known, but according to Thai government and media workers, Chinese government pressure was the decisive factor.
Conflicting narratives
After backtracking on its promise not to extradite the Uyghurs, the Thai government has now argued that the extradition happened according to international law and human-rights protocols and that it was for the best for the Uyghurs, who now could be reunited with their families as they had wanted to be. The Thai authorities have stated that China guaranteed that the Uyghurs would not be persecuted and that Thailand would be given access to visit the men in China to assure themselves of their well-being.
The Chinese and Thai depictions of what happened are both false and misleading. At this point, there is no way to determine the exact fate awaiting the Uyghurs in China and whether it is really worse than their continued detention in Thailand (a very low bar, given the circumstances they were being held under). That remains to be seen. It is certain, though, that they would have been better off in Turkey or one of the other countries that offered to take them. Indeed, this was what they wanted and called for, while returning to China was something they deeply dreaded.
Most of the men have relatives in China, but their wives and children live in Turkey. Turkey and the West was where they originally were fleeing, and China the place they undertook arduous and dangerous journeys to escape. The notion that returning to this place that they so desperately sought to get away from is what they wanted is ridiculous and can only be argued if the entire context is ignored, the men’s and other Uyghurs’ voices muted. The men repeatedly and unambiguously stated that they did not want to return to China. They wrote several notes calling for help to avoid this extradition and even collectively undertook a hunger strike to protest such plans.
A political tug of war
Why, then, were the Uyghurs deported? From a larger political perspective, their deportation can be seen as the conclusion of a tug of war between China on the one side and rights organizations, Uyghur diaspora organizations, and to a degree Western governments on the other. China won. The Thai government chose its side. As the tug of war had been going on for many years already, what was the factor that sparked this development now?
The Uyghur men in Thai detention were warned of a much heightened risk of extradition in early January 2025. They began their hunger strike against it on January 10. A leaked note from the Chinese embassy to the Thai authorities requesting the men’s extradition is dated January 7. During Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra’s visit to China on February 5-8, 2025, rights groups and Uyghur activists were on high alert. It was to be another three weeks before the Uyghurs were actually extradited, but the decision may very well have been solidified during this trip.
Still, why were these efforts made just now, and why did they succeed now and not years ago? Recent publications and activism about the Uyghurs in Thailand may have spurred Chinese officials’ interest. Coverage of Uyghur fighters’ contributions to freeing Syria from Bashar al-Assad’s regime could have added to their determination not to allow the Uyghur men, who were first denied a passport by the Chinese and were then kept in detention by Thailand for years, to go abroad. Even so, the heightened attention could have gone both ways, and in January both relatives and activists had hope that the Uyghurs would soon be reunited with their wives and children in Turkey. That it went differently must have other reasons.
The new U.S. administration’s effect
It is difficult not to see a connection to the recent shift in the U.S. administration and presidency, and accordingly the very significant change in U.S. foreign policy that has followed from it. Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term on January 20, 2025. The effects of this have been felt from Greenland to Mexico and Canada, and from Gaza to Kiev.
Previous U.S. administrations played an important role in preventing the extradition of the Uyghurs in Thailand before 2025. Much hope was pinned on incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has before championed the Uyghur cause and expressed harsh rhetoric towards China. Rubio did indeed address the plight of the Uyghurs in Thailand and the risk of their extradition at his confirmation hearing before Congress on January 15.
A few weeks later, the detainees had been extradited. What happened? Was Rubio limited by the new inward-looking administration he came to serve? Have his preferences or values changed? Does neither he nor the U.S. administration have the power to stand up to the Chinese? Or do they lack the will to fight for Uyghurs or against China?
Some argue that Rubio dropped the ball in a phase of transition. Some see in it the reflection of a U.S. in decline, with Thailand betting more strongly on the Chinese horse. It certainly seems as though Thai leaders have deemed the inevitable condemnation they now face from the West and international human rights organizations, including the United Nations, to be the lesser evil when compared to risking the consequences of continuing to deny Chinese requests for extradition of the Uyghurs.
February clearly showed that the Uyghurs were not a priority for those who had the power to facilitate their release. But had they been before? If so, why did the men spend more than ten years in detention in Thailand?
In order to understand why they have for so long been so neglected, let us take a look at their story.
The story of Uyghurs in Thailand
In 2014, several hundred Uyghurs were captured by Thai police in a forest outside Bangkok. They were refugees, fleeing Chinese persecution in their native Xinjiang (aka East Turkestan). Unable to secure a passport from the state they were citizens of, they had employed the services of human smugglers to take them and thousands of others across China and into Southeast Asia, with the goal of eventually reaching Turkey. When caught, they were charged with illegal border crossing and sentenced to pay fines of around 100 USD each. They did. Then they waited for their fate to be decided. This was still 2014.
Turkey soon signalled their willingness to accept all the Uyghurs in Thai detention and in 2015, 173 Uyghur women and children were freed and now live in Turkey. But their fathers and husbands were not allowed to join them.
Shortly after, still in 2015, more than 100 Uyghur men were deported to China, where they have not been heard from since. There is reason to believe that they may have been arrested, tortured, detained and even disappeared.
Around 70 Uyghur men remained in the Thai detention center, ten years ago.
Interviewing Hasan
On Monday, January 13, 2025, I interpreted an interview given by Hasan Imam to the BBC. Hasan had been among the 70 Uyghurs left in Thailand in 2015. He described the paralyzing fear that the extradition of their fellow travellers had triggered in them. It was as if his body had become only a hollow shell, he said, and had his religion not forbidden it, he would have thought of ending his own life. Grief and dread became constant companions, even worse than the difficult conditions they endured.
In various detention centers, they slept on cement floors in packed facilities. The food was so inadequate that many suffered serious malnutrition and health issues that were not properly treated, resulting in two going blind in one eye, one becoming paralyzed, and five dying in detention. In his desperation, Hasan decided to flee. Digging through the wall with a nail he had found and hidden, and exploiting a gate opened for repair work, Hasan and ten other Uyghurs managed to disappear into the jungle, from which they made their way to Malaysia. They today live decent lives in Turkey, but Hasan thinks of those still detained every day—one of them his own father-in-law—and vividly remembers the dread that they live under.
A decade of wrongful incarceration
On Sunday, January 19, I interpreted a second interview for Hasan, the first one he gave to Thai media. Journalists Thapanee Eadsrichai and Suthichai Yoon from The Reporters TV and Suthichai Live asked him why the Uyghur men had been held for more than a decade. Suthichai seemed in disbelief over this, repeating to make sure he had heard correctly. Yes, over ten years.
Thapanee asked what had compelled the Thai authorities to keep them this long. What had they been charged with in Thailand? Maybe with terrorism, she suggested. Hasan calmly explained that they had not. These men had not spent the past decade in a prison, he pointed out, but in an immigration detention center with no formal charge.
Suthichai picked up the lead. He asked what the Chinese government had accused them of—again suggesting that it was likely terrorism. Hasan opened his answer with a disclaimer. Of course, he could not know what the Chinese government may have secretly told the Thai government, but no formal accusations had been brought. He further insisted that it was unlikely that even secret communication between the two countries would have included the charge of terrorism and most certainly no evidence would have been presented for this—or indeed for any other crime. Had the contrary been the case, they would have been extradited a long time ago according to international law and binding binational agreements.
We should not only be shocked and disgusted about their extradition now, but also about the more than ten years they spent in detention.
A hellish limbo
There are no reasons why these men were kept for so long, other than neglect. The wrongful assumption that they may have been charged with—or indeed actually been involved with—terrorism is not based on any evidence or even accusations. The leaked Chinese Embassy note to the Thai authorities explicitly states that the “Chinese citizens” in question (i.e., the 40 Uyghurs) have not been accused of anything but illegal border crossing.
According to Thai journalists and political commentators I spoke to in my function as an interpreter and researcher of Uyghur issues, the reason these Uyghurs were not allowed to join their wives and children in Turkey is pressure from the Chinese state.
Pressure from the Chinese government prevented them from being freed to Turkey, while fear of international condemnation prevented them from being extradited to China. For a decade, these Uyghurs were caught in a geo-political game between China and the West—primarily the United States. The beginning of a second Trump Administration seems to have disturbed this stalemate, and China seems to have won, or the Uyghurs may have been bargained away.
At the same time, these 48 men are not pawns in a game. They are human beings who have been stuck in a hellish limbo for no apparent reason, with wives and children who have been waiting and hoping in vain for over ten years.
They are by far not the only ones, but this tragic example must give pause and make us reflect on the entire system, not just a shift in power balance or a change in administration.
Marco Rubio’s failings
The greatest blame for the fate of these Uyghurs must clearly be placed with the Thai authorities and Chinese government officials, but other actors, too, carry part of the responsibility. This includes the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, a number of NGOs, and Western governments, such as that of the U.S., to whom pleas have been directed for many years. It also includes global media and the so-called informed public, which have for ten years remained conspicuously silent on the topic.
In January, the case received more coverage. The impending danger of the men’s extradition to China opened up a window of opportunity for advocates and activists, as well as the detained men’s wives and relatives, to push not just for hindering the extradition but also to secure their release and resettlement to a third country.
I have closely followed the work of several groups fighting to help free the Uyghurs in Thailand. The way these groups chose or were advised to approach the issue is instructive.
One of their main aims was to secure the personal commitment of a powerful—preferably American—politician to this case. Many were looking with some hope to incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio. In 2021, Rubio had co-sponsored the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and was known to be “tough on China.”
His predecessor-once-removed, Mike Pompeo, secretary of state in the first Trump Administration, designated the suppression of Uyghurs in China a genocide, and Western recognition of the Uyghur plight has dedicated funds to Uyghur activism and made it easier for Uyghurs to secure asylum. Also, arguably Western pressure played an essential role in pressuring the Chinese government to close most of the so-called re-education camps in Xinjiang, the Uyghur homelands, and somewhat ease surveillance and racially targeted police violence against Uyghurs.
Skeptics pointed out, though, that Rubio’s bill was meant to strengthen U.S. market control rather than helping vulnerable groups, and that he has at other points shown dedication to keeping Muslims out and bombing them rather than to protecting their rights. Also, rumors circulate in the Uyghur diaspora about Rubio telling a Christian Uyghur activist to make sure the Muslims wouldn’t take over when they got their own country.
During his Senate confirmation hearing on January 15, Rubio committed himself to fighting to prevent extradition of the Uyghur detainees—but not for their release—and in the end he was unable or unwilling to effect either.
“Of no strategic significance”
Obviously such an important case involving the life and well-being of entire families should not be left to the questionable motives of individual politicians. Yet, to everyone involved it seemed evident that the momentum could only be utilized if someone in charge, with real power, would commit to it personally.
The protection of these men and their families did not follow logically from any international law or practice of global legal justice. To succeed, it would have required personal political patronage by an influential politician from a global power. Without this, the press coverage, public outcry and the insistence of rights organizations were of very limited effect.
International laws protecting human rights, even when ratified by states and upheld by international courts, seemingly have no actual power to right wrongs. Their implementation remains a choice of powerful governments and thus ends up at the mercy of powerful self-interested individuals, more often than not wilfully oblivious to the suffering of those who most need protection.
I believe that the Uyghurs in Thailand were abandoned to a decade of horror because of three main factors in combination:
First, the 48 Uyghurs are Muslims, non-white, and lower class. This leads to a set of untrue assumptions that dampen empathy and invite the acceptance and sometimes tacit legitimizing of their pain.
Second, they are a minority with no state of their own. We like to assume that states are legitimate, even when they continuously violate the very human rights they have themselves ratified. More importantly, in the current political world system, states and their governments are the main actors offering or denying protection of people and their rights.
The wrongful assumption that the men may have been charged with—or indeed actually been involved with—terrorism is not based on any facts or even accusations. It derives only from their identity and position as Muslim, non-white, lower-class, and without any state to represent them.
Third, and maybe most crucially in this case, these 48 Uyghurs seem to be, as a U.S. official put it to me, “of no strategic significance” for any of the major global geopolitical players or any influential politicians personally.
Reflections of an interpreter
I have been an interpreter for Uyghurs suffering repression and indifference for almost as long as these men have been in Thai detention and an anthropologist researching Uyghur customs and kinship for longer. I have witnessed many efforts to secure Uyghurs’ human rights, including some that succeeded. The thing that frustrates me the most about this is how often such success hinges on the personal priorities of politicians in powerful positions—usually men and often white.
That these Uyghurs and their families are also human beings like you and I and innocent of any serious wrongdoing obviously does not guarantee their rights or freedom.
No NGO, nor the UN nor any rights group, had any real means to help the detainees beyond delivering food and medical aid. Nor do they have any effective sanctioning power to punish those who violate them. These powers lie only with states and their governing politicians. International laws protecting human rights, even when ratified by states and upheld by international courts, have no actual power. Their implementation remains at the mercy of powerful self-interested individuals, more often than not voluntarily oblivious to the suffering of those who most need protection.
As imperfect and badly funded as the UN is, I currently cannot help but wish for a global governing body protecting human rights and international law that has real sanctioning power and is able to enforce its resolutions to protect civilians, refugees, and other vulnerable groups without providing veto rights against such justice to the perpetrators or their powerful allies.
As things stand today, powerful countries bomb, kill, detain, and extradite with impunity, and rights are at the mercy of individual politicians and their personal strategic interests, which essentially places patronage over justice. Despite lofty rhetoric, this seems to be so accepted by NGOs and activists that they focus their campaigns around it.