|
 Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha also held out the
possibility of shutting the Thai embassy in Turkey after protesters
attacked the honorary consulate in Istanbul, smashing windows and
ransacking parts of the building, over the expulsion of the Uighurs
back to China.
China's treatment of its Turkic language-speaking Uighur minority is
a sensitive issue in Turkey and has strained bilateral ties ahead of
a planned visit to Beijing this month by President Tayyip Erdogan.
Many Turks see themselves as sharing a common cultural and religious
heritage with their Uighur "brothers" and Turkey is home to a large
Uighur diaspora.
"I ask that we look after the safety of the embassy staff first,"
Prayuth told reporters. "But if the situation gets worse then we
might temporarily have to close the embassy in Turkey."
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of Uighurs keen to escape the unrest
have traveled clandestinely via Southeast Asia to Turkey. China is
home to about 20 million Muslims spread across its vast territory,
only a portion of whom are Uighurs.
"Thailand sent around 100 Uighurs back to China yesterday. Thailand
has worked with China and Turkey to solve the Uighur Muslim problem.
We have sent them back to China after verifying their nationality,"
Colonel Weerachon Sukhondhapatipak, deputy government spokesman,
told reporters on Thursday.
A group of more than 170 Uighurs were identified as Turkish citizens
and sent to Turkey, and nearly 100 were identified as Chinese and
sent back to China. Fifty others still need to have their
citizenship verified.
"If we send them (the Uighurs) back and there is a problem that is
not our fault," said Prayuth, the general who led a coup against an
elected government last May.
Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China's foreign ministry, would not
confirm whether the Uighurs had been deported to China but spoke in
general terms about the issue at a daily news briefing in Beijing on
Thursday, saying the Uighurs were "firstly Chinese".
Beijing denies restricting the Uighurs' religious freedoms and
blames Islamist militants for a rise in violent attacks in its
western Xinjiang region in the past three years in which hundreds
have died.
ANGER IN TURKEY
The Istanbul protesters, using wooden planks and stones, smashed
windows and broke into the Thai consulate late on Wednesday,
throwing folders and personal belongings on the floor, pictures and
video footage published by local media showed.
[to top of second column] |
It was the latest in a series of attacks in Istanbul in recent days,
mostly by a youth group linked to the national opposition MHP, in
protest at Chinese treatment of Uighurs.
A Chinese restaurant, its owner Turkish and its cook ironically
Uighur, was vandalized last week, while a group of Korean tourists
was mistakenly attacked in Istanbul's historic Sultanahmet district,
according to the Hurriyet newspaper.
Turkey has vowed to keep its doors open to Uighur migrants fleeing
persecution in China, exacerbating a row with Beijing. Around 170
Uighur women and children arrived in Istanbul last week from
Thailand, where they had been held for more than a year for illegal
entry.
"It is very shocking and disturbing that Thailand caved in to
pressure from Beijing," Sunai Phasuk, Thailand researcher at Human
Rights Watch, told Reuters. "In China they can face serious abuses
including torture and disappearance."
The UN refugee agency said it was alarmed by Thailand's decision to
deport the Uighurs. "We are shocked by this deportation of some 100
people and consider it a flagrant violation of international law,"
said Volker Turk, UNHCR's Assistant High Commissioner for
Protection.
Rights groups have long criticized Thailand for its treatment of
migrants from Myanmar, including Rohingya Muslims, a mostly
stateless group from western Myanmar. Thousands arrive every year in
predominantly Buddhist Thailand, brought by smugglers.
(Additional reporting by Panarat Thepgumpanat and Pracha
Hariraksapitak in BANGKOK and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by
Jeremy Laurence)
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