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  1. #1
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
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    Two Chinese Dissidents Detained in Thailand Amid Sweep on Asylum-Seekers

    Police in Thailand have detained two Chinese dissidents who have been registered as U.N. refugees in what is believed to be as part of sweep on asylum seekers, mostly hill tribe ethnic minorities in Vietnam and Cambodia.

    Human rights groups have expressed alarm at the detentions.

    Married Chinese couple Yang Chong and Wu Yuhua, who is also known by her nickname Ai Wu, were detained by police in Bangkok on Wednesday, and locked up in an immigration detention center while awaiting resettlement in a third country.

    According to an audio message sent out by Wu following their arrest, the Thai police are in contact with the Chinese Embassy in Thailand.

    Wu, who fled China to escape political repercussions after she started a support group for disappeared rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, said in the recording that she fears the pair will soon be forcibly repatriated to China.

    New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Thai authorities had also arrested 181 ethnic minority refugees and asylum seekers, most with UN refugee status and mostly from the Montagnard population in Vietnam and Cambodia. They were rounded up Tuesday on the outskirts of Bangkok.

    “Thailand’s frequent claims about improving refugee rights ring hollow when officials detain dozens of families who are protected under the mandate of the UN refugee agency,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at HRW. “These Montagnards face harsh persecution if they are returned to Cambodia and Vietnam, which Thailand should not do under any circumstances.”

    The district chief of Bang Yai district in Nonthaburi province, north of Bangkok, led a team of Ministry of Interior security officers, police, immigration police, and army soldiers to arrest the Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees and asylum seekers—including over 50 children—at their rented homes in Nonthaburi province, HRW said.

    Sun Nattadej Kungsukul, the chief of Bang Yai district, told reporters that a joint security team detained the 172 migrants following a tip-off from local residents.

    “We suspected they are connected with human trafficking rings ... Some of them work illegally,” Sun said.

    He however did not mention about the status of the two Chinese dissidents.

    “The authorities do not recognize their [U.N. refugee] status and have not released them,” said Puttanee Kangkun, a staffer with Fortify Rights group, which assisted the migrants at the district office Thursday.

    She, too, was unable to provide information about the two Chinese dissidents.

    Many Montagnards have fled Vietnam to Cambodia and Thailand in recent years to escape religious and political persecution. Cambodia’s ethnic Jarai population, many of whom are Christian, have faced land confiscation and intensifying government pressure after Vietnamese Jarai fled into Cambodia’s Ratanakiri province.


    Three detained

    Wu and Yang were detained along with He Weiyi outside the New Zealand Embassy in Bangkok, where they had intended to deliver a petition along with Duan Jinggang and other Chinese exiles.

    Eyewitnesses said He Weiyi, a missionary with legal immigration status in Thailand, was released soon after, but Wu and Yang couldn't produce any legal documents proving their right to be in Thailand, and were taken to an immigration detention center.

    According to Thailand-based refugee Yu Yanhua, Wu, Yang and He had hoped to petition the New Zealand authorities for resettlement.

    "We wrote and signed a petition calling on embassies from [different] countries to ... accept us as refugees as soon as possible, to ensure our safety and security," Yu told RFA on Thursday.

    "He Weiyi has been released, but Yang Chong and Ai Wu haven't," she said.

    Yu, the original recipient of Wu's recorded message, said she had asked people to come out in support of the couple, should there be "no further news."

    "A blue-uniformed police officer has already been on the phone with the Chinese Embassy, asking them to come and take us away," Wu said in her message.

    Yang and Wu were initially targeted by Chinese police after taking part in the press freedom protests in the southern city of Guangzhou in January 2013.

    They fled the country in February 2015, and made their way to Thailand.

    Since then, they have been eking an existence without papers in the country's Pattaya region.

    They were approved as political refugees by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Bangkok in 2017, but had yet to be accepted for resettlement in a third country amid a global tightening of national immigration policies.


    Activists jailed

    Last month, authorities in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing jailed two rights activists sent home from Thailand as they were awaiting resettlement as political refugees, prompting an international outcry.

    Dong Guangping and Jiang Yefei fled with their families to Thailand in 2015, and were granted refugee status by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees office in Bangkok.

    But as they awaited resettlement in a third country, they were handed over to China by the Thai police, in a move that drew strong criticism from the U.N.

    Dong and Jiang were both found guilty of "incitement to subvert state power" and "illegally crossing a national border" by a court in Chongqing.

    Jiang received a six-and-a-half-year jail term, while Dong was sentenced to three-and-a-half years, their relatives said, citing phone calls with police and online reports.

    Dong had been a prominent rights activist before his initial detention in May 2014, after he participated in memorials for late ousted premier Zhao Ziyang, late reformist premier Hu Yaobang, and the People's Liberation Army
    (PLA) massacre of civilians that put an end to weeks of student protest on Tiananmen Square in June 1989.

    After his release on bail, pending trial, Dong fled China in September 2015, only to be sent back to China with Jiang the following November.

    https://www.rfa.org/english/news/chi...018175754.html

  2. #2
    R.I.P. Luigi's Avatar
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    What happened to those Uighers that Thailand sent back?

  3. #3
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
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    Chinese Dissidents to be Resettled in Canada, Thai Lawyer Says

    HOME | NEWS | CHINA

    Chinese Dissidents to be Resettled in Canada, Thai Lawyer Says




    A dissident couple who fled China four years ago over fears of alleged political reprisals will be resettled in Canada from Thailand in the coming months, a lawyer said Tuesday.

    Last year, Thai authorities arrested the couple and charged them with immigration violations, although U.N. agency UNHCR gave them refugee status the previous year.

    Wu Yuhua and her husband, Yang Chong, arrived in the Southeast Asian country in February 2015, claiming Chinese police were targeting them because they had joined press freedom protests in southern Guangzhou city in 2013.

    UNHCR recently informed Wu Yuhua that she and her husband were cleared for Canadian resettlement, attorney Warissara Rungthong told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

    “It is apparent that they may be able to fly to Canada soon, expectedly in March,” said Warissara, a lawyer with the People Serving People foundation. “There are sponsors in Canada who helped them out.”

    After receiving their refugee status in 2017, the couple started looking for resettlement in a third country, their lawyer said.

    “I feel very happy when I heard that we could move to Canada,” Yang Chong said in a text message to BenarNews. “Lately, I’m in a good health but my wife is having some stress.”

    Thai authorities arrested the couple in August 2018, along with another Chinese national, outside the New Zealand Embassy in Bangkok, while they were applying for asylum.

    They were locked up in an immigration detention center in Bangkok. In December, a court acquitted Wu of charges that she entered the Buddhist-majority country without proper documents.

    Meanwhile, Yang was tried and found guilty in November of staying in Thailand after his visa had expired. He was sentenced to six months and a fine of 10,000 baht (U.S. $303).

    But he was allowed to walk free on a one-year probation because he had no criminal record, court officials said.

    Others sent back

    Thailand has a record of sending refugees from China back home.

    In July 2018, authorities in southwestern China’s Chongqing city sent rights activist Dong Guangping and political cartoonist Jiang Yefei to prison after they were repatriated from Thailand, where they were awaiting resettlement as political refugees.

    Amnesty International said Dong was just five days away from freedom and was set to leave Thailand to start a new life with his wife and daughter in Canada when Thai authorities forcibly returned him to China in November 2015.

    He has since been detained without trial, Amnesty said in a statement in April last year.

    Jiang, who was also granted refugee status by the UNHCR in Bangkok, was preparing to move to Canada, too, at the time of his arrest.

    A court in Chongqing tried him in secret after he was sent back from Thailand in 2015, sentencing him to six and a half years in jail for “inciting subversion of state power,” and "illegally crossing a national border,” according to the Hong Kong Free Press.

    “Thailand is failing to protect people at risk of serious human rights violations once returned to the countries they left,” Amnesty said.

    In the last four years, the Thai government has forcibly returned more than 100 political refugees to China, Cambodia, and Bahrain, according to estimates from the London-based rights watchdog.




    https://www.rfa.org/english/news/chi...019133059.html

  4. #4
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    There's hope for that Bahraini footballer yet then.

  5. #5
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    And what do you know, the Thais desperately trying to find ways to dump it on someone else's plate...


    Diplomacy has wandered into the testy situation between Bahrain, Australia and Thailand in the case of jailed Bahraini footballer Hakeem al-Arabi. He remains in detention awaiting an extradition hearing in a Thai court.


    In a move to move the attention away from Thailand, Thai Foreign Minister Don Paramudvinai says Australia and Bahrain should hold talks to resolve the case by having him sent to a third country instead of extraditing him to Bahrain to face imprisonment or by sending him to his requested country of asylum, Australia.

    He said he had already proposed the option to both Bahrain and Australia, noting that it would be less complicated and would help resolve the problem, adding that Thailand was willing to help facilitate the talks.



    Mr. Don said yesterday that it was Australian Interpol which first alerted their Thai counterparts of Bahrain’s arrest warrant against al-Arabi as Bahraini authorities were asking Thai authorities to have the footballer apprehended.


    He maintained that the footballer’s case was now in the judicial process and a decision was at the discretion of the Thai courts.


    On Monday, the Criminal Court agreed to extend al-Arabi’s detention for 60 days until April 22 to allow his lawyers more time to fight his extradition to Bahrain.


    The jailed footballer’s case has attracted the attention of international human rights organisations, foreign media and international sports organisations, including FIFA, all of which have voiced their strong objection to his extradition to Bahrain to serve a ten year prison term for alleged vandalism of a police station during the ‘Arab Spring’ protests.


    The Thai government has also come under heavy criticism for its harsh treatment of the case and of the prisoner.
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