Exclusive-Canada and US offered Uyghurs in Thailand asylum before deportation to China, sources say

By Panu Wongcha-um

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Canada and the United States offered to resettle 48 ethnic Uyghurs held in detention in Thailand over the past decade, sources told Reuters, but Bangkok took no action for fear of upsetting China, where they were covertly deported last week.

Thailand has defended the deportation, which came despite calls from United Nations human rights experts, saying that it acted in accordance to laws and human rights obligations.

Human rights groups accuse China of widespread abuses of Uyghurs, a mainly Muslim ethnic minority numbering about 10 million in its northwestern region of Xinjiang. Beijing denies any abuses.

Thai Deputy Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai said on Monday that no country made any concrete offer to resettle the 48 Uyghurs.

"We waited for more than 10 years, and I have spoken to many major countries, but no one told me for certain," he told reporters.

Phumtham was out of government from 2006 until mid-2023.

The United States offered to resettle the 48 Uyghurs, said an official from the U.S. State Department.

"The United States has worked with Thailand for years to avoid this situation, including by consistently and repeatedly offering to resettle the Uyghurs in other countries, including, at one point, the United States," the U.S. official said, asking not to be named.

Canada also offered asylum to the detained Uyghurs, said four sources, including diplomats and people with direct knowledge.

Two of these sources said another offer came from Australia.

These proposals, which the sources said were not taken forward by Thailand over fears of a fallout with China, have not been previously reported.

All the sources declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Thailand and China's foreign ministries did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Canada's immigration ministry said they would not comment on individual cases.

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade referred to a statement by Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who said on Friday the country "strongly disagrees" with Thailand's decision.

China's embassy in Bangkok said in a statement on Friday that 40 Chinese illegal migrants, who had not committed any serious crimes, had returned home to be reunited with their families after more than 10 years of separation.

Besides the 40 Uyghurs deported last week, five are currently in a Thai prison due to an ongoing criminal case, according to local officials. Reuters could not immediately confirm the whereabouts of the other three people.

ACCESS DENIED

Pisan Manawapat, a Thai ambassador to Canada and the U.S between 2013 and 2017 and a senator before he retired in 2024, said that at least three countries had approached Thailand with proposals to resettle the Uyghurs, but declined to name them.

"We didn't want to upset China," Pisan told Reuters, without providing further details. "So we did not make the decision at the political level to go through with this."

China is Thailand's biggest trade partner and the two countries have close business ties.

Deputy premier Phumtham said Thailand made the decision to deport the group to China last week after reassurances from Beijing that Thai officials would be allow to monitor the Uyghurs' well-being in the country following their return.

United Nations human rights experts had said the group would be at risk of torture, ill-treatment, and "irreparable harm" if returned to China, and their deportation has drawn widespread condemnation.

Following the deportation, the UN's refugee agency said in a statement that it was repeatedly denied access to the group by Thai authorities.

A source said the UN refugee agency's lack of access to the Uyghurs meant they could not be processed as asylum seekers, stalling their potential resettlement and leaving them stuck in detention.

(Reporting by Panu Wongcha-um, additional report by Panarat Thepgumpanat, Anna Mehler Paperny in TORONTO and Laurie Chen in BEIJING, Editing by Devjyot Ghoshal and Raju Gopalakrishnan)