‘Hell on Earth’: Deportation looms for Uyghurs detained in Thailand

Even the Uyghurs who manage to go to Turkey have to deal with their uncertain status there and the severing of all ties with their families in Xinjiang.

“I haven’t heard my mother’s voice for 10 years,” says Uighur refugee Hasan Imam, who is currently working as a truck driver in Turkey.

He was in the same group as Niluper, who was caught at the Malaysian border in 2014.

He recalls that the following year the Thai authorities deceived them about a plan to deport some of them to China. He says they were told some of the men would be moved to another facility because their facility was overcrowded.

This was after several women and children were sent to Turkey and, unusually, the men in the camp were also allowed to talk to their wives and children in Turkey on the phone.

“We were all happy and full of hope,” Hasan says. “They were chosen one by one. At that time, they did not know that they would be sent back to China. Only later we found out that they were deported from Turkey through the illegal phone we had.”

This filled the remaining prisoners with despair, Hasan recalls, and when they were temporarily transferred to another prison camp two years later, he and 19 others remarkable runusing a nail to make a hole in a collapsed wall.

11 people were recaptured, but Hasan was able to cross the forested border into Malaysia and from there to Turkey.

“I don’t know what my parents’ situation is, but the situation is worse for those who are still in prison in Thailand,” he says.

They are afraid of being sent back to China and being imprisoned, and fear that this will mean more severe punishment for their families, he explains.

“The mental strain for them is unbearable.”