A 40-year-old ethnic Uyghur man has died in a Bangkok immigration center where he had been held since 2014.
Mattohti Mattursun died last week of liver failure at the Suan Phlu Immigration Detention Center, a facility that holds hundreds of foreign nationals including entire families out of sight in a trendy Bangkok neighborhood. Held since 2014 for entering the country illegally, Mattursun’s death has reignited calls for the government to investigate and end the indefinite detention of asylum seekers.
“Thai authorities are putting people seeking refugee protection at grave risk by keeping them for years in awful conditions in immigration detention centers,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Mattohti Mattursun’s death should sound the alarm to end this abusive policy of incarcerating asylum seekers and refugees for prolonged periods.”
Many Uyghurs have sought to escape persecution in their native province of Xinjiang, China. They face possible harm if returned to China, and many have sought refuge in or passage through Thailand. In 2015, the Thai government forcibly returned 109 Uyghur men and boys to China, where they were never heard from again. Months later, a Uyghur nationalist group was linked to the largest terrorist attack in modern Thai history, which killed 20 and injured 125 people in Bangkok. While 170 Uyghur women and children were allowed to travel to Turkey, around 50 men have been detained in squalid conditions in immigration detention centers.
Thailand considers all undocumented migrants, even those recognized by UN refugee agency UNHCR, as criminals subject to arrest and detention. Many of Thailand’s immigration detention centers are severely overcrowded, poorly ventilated, and provide inadequate food, medical services, and necessities.
In 2019, immigration authorities said they would end the practice of jailing children.
Mattursun was the second Uyghur to die in detention this year following the February death of Aziz Abdullah, reportedly due to pneumonia.
Similar calls were issued in 2017 after 39-year-old Pakistani Christian Ijaz Masih died in immigration custody following a heart attack.
Thailand is not a signatory to international refugee conventions and does not recognize refugee status.
Since 2016, the Chinese government of Xi Jinping has dramatically escalated repression in Xinjiang, where the predominantly Muslim Turkic-speaking Uyghurs make up the majority. The government has implemented a range of policies including mass internment, forced labor, pervasive surveillance, political indoctrination, and suppression of religious and cultural expression. These actions have been accompanied by reports of torture, sexual violence, and extrajudicial killings, prompting international condemnation and accusations of crimes against humanity.
Reader Interactions