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 The discovery is further evidence that human smugglers in southern
Thailand — already a notorious trafficking hub for Rohingya boat
people from Myanmar — are exploiting well-oiled networks to
transport other nationalities in large numbers, despite an ongoing
crackdown by Thai police.
"The human smugglers are expanding their product range," said Police
Major General Thatchai Pitaneelaboot, a U.S.-educated commander who
has launched a series of raids on trafficking camps in southern
Thailand, including the 200 suspected Uighurs rescued on Wednesday .
Two police raids in January freed a total of 636 people. At least
200 of them were Bangladeshis — an "unprecedented" number, said
Thatchai.
The rest were Rohingya, mostly stateless Muslims from western
Myanmar, where deadly clashes with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in 2012
killed at least 192 people and left 140,000 homeless. Since then,
tens of thousands of Rohingya have fled from Myanmar by boat, many
of them coming ashore in southwest Thailand.
On December 5, Reuters reported that Rohingya were held hostage in
illegal camps hidden near the border with Malaysia until relatives
paid ransoms to release them. Some were beaten and killed. The
Reuters investigation also found that Thai authorities had adopted a
covert policy to push Rohingya detainees out to sea — and back into
the hands of human traffickers — because police immigration
detention camps were overwhelmed with new arrivals.
CLAIM TO BE TURKISH
The suspected Uighurs were discovered on Wednesday night in a hilly
rubber plantation in an area where the Reuters report identified at
least three camps used by Rohingya smugglers last year. The camp
guards fled as police approached, Thatchai said.
Those rescued included at least 100 children, most of them toddlers
or still breastfeeding, and a pregnant woman. They now sit on
plastic mats in a parking lot at the regional immigration
headquarters — the nearest police detention center is too full of
Rohingya and Bangladeshis to accommodate them. Police say the
group claims they are Turkish, although they have no documents to
prove that.
The group in Hat Yai shows strong similarities to Turkic-speaking
Uighur asylum-seekers who have been detained in Bangkok, police
sources say.
In a possibly related incident, Malaysian police arrested 62 people
who had illegally crossed the porous border between Thailand and
Malaysia on Thursday, the New Straits Times newspaper reported. They
also claimed to be Turkish, although it is highly unusual for Turks
to seek asylum in this way.
Unrest in China's Xinjiang province has killed more than 100 people
in the past year, prompting a crackdown by Chinese authorities. Many
Uighurs resent restrictions on their culture and religion, and
complain they are denied economic opportunities amid an influx of
Han Chinese into the province. Many Uyghurs refer to Xinjiang as
East Turkestan. The region came under Chinese control following two
short-lived East Turkestan republics in the 1930s and 1940s.
KEEPING SILENT
Thai Police are struggling to officially identify the group detained
in Hat Yai. So far, none of them has spoken more than a few words of
Arabic, even to local Thai Muslims who have arrived to offer help.
Their silence is only broken by the mewling of children. They all
have fair, Caucasian features, and the women wear headscarves that
leave only the eyes uncovered.
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"These people will refuse to acknowledge Chinese citizenship to
avoid being forcibly repatriated," said Kayum Masimov, president of
the Montreal-based Uyghur Canadian Society. "They will simply refuse
to talk. They fear for their safety."
Masimov spoke by telephone to the man identified by police as the
group's leader and said he understood Uighur, a Turkic language. The
leader gestured toward men not to talk when Reuters approached them.
"The leader says who can talk and who cannot talk," said Thatchai,
the police major-general.
The 200 people in Thailand were part of what Masimov called an
"unprecedented" exodus of Uighurs from western China in recent
years. "We have never had so many people leaving our homeland," he
said.
A Chinese diplomat had arrived to assess the situation, while
Turkish officials were en route from Bangkok, police said.
FEARING DEPORTATIONS
Thatchai said he planned to move the women and children into a
meeting room inside the headquarters. Many of the suspected Uighurs
were growing impatient. "They're under pressure," he said. "They
want to go somewhere but they don't want to go back to China."
In 2009, 20 Uighurs were deported from Cambodia to China despite the
objections of the United Nations and human rights groups, who said
they faced lengthy jail terms upon their return..
New York-based Human Rights Watch also criticized Malaysia for
deporting six Uighurs to China last December.
At least 100 Uighur men, women and children are being held at an
immigration detention centre in Bangkok, part of a small but growing
number arrested for illegally entering Thailand, most likely
overland through Laos from southwest China.
The United Nations refugee agency would not confirm the identity of
the people detained in Hat Yai.
"We understand a large group of people were rescued after a
smuggler's camp was raided (in Thailand)," said Babar Baloch, a
spokesman for the UNHCR. "We have a team there to assess their
urgent humanitarian and any protection needs."
Malaysia, a Muslim-majority nation with a chronic shortage of
labour, is often the ultimate destination for growing numbers of
Asian migrants and asylum-seekers who are falling prey to human
trafficking rings.
On March 6 Reuters reported that human traffickers had held hundreds
of Rohingya Muslims for ransom in houses in northern Malaysia. Their
graphic accounts of abuse suggested that trafficking gangs had
shifted their operations into Malaysia as Thai authorities cracked
down on jungle camps on their side of the border.
(Reporting by Andrew R.C. Marshall; editing by Bill Tarrant)
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