PHNOM PENH: A group of Muslims who fled China after deadly ethnic rioting and sought asylum in Cambodia were sent back home Saturday, even though rights groups fear they face persecution there.
Interior Ministry spokesman Lt. Gen. Khieu Sopheak said the 20 members of the Uighur minority had been put on a special plane sent from China that left Phnom Penh International Airport Saturday night. “They are going back to China,” he said.
Cambodia has been under intense pressure from China to deport the Uighurs, whom Beijing has called criminals after they fled the country with the help of a secret network of missionaries. The expulsion came a day before Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping visits Cambodia as part of a four-country tour.
The US, the United Nations and human rights groups had urged Cambodia to stop the deportation. A spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency said it had not finished evaluating the Uighurs, including two children, for refugee status.
The Uighurs were being deported because it was determined they entered the country illegally, Foreign Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong said earlier. He said two other Uighurs who had been with the group are missing.
Some countries have refused to send Uighurs — such as those released from US detention at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba — back to China over concerns about retribution and abuse.
“It is hugely concerning that Cambodian authorities are not giving this group an opportunity to seek asylum, or for authorities to assess their asylum case,” Brittis Edman, a Cambodia researcher with Amnesty International, said late Saturday before the group left. “This group will be particularly vulnerable to torture. Because of those concerns, Cambodia shouldn’t send them back.”
Uighurs say Beijing has long restricted their rights, particularly clamping down on their practice of Islam.
Tensions between majority Han Chinese and the Turkic Uighurs in their traditional homeland in far western China exploded into rioting in July, the country’s worst communal violence in decades. The Chinese government says nearly 200 people, mostly majority Han Chinese, died.
Exile groups say Uighurs have been rounded up in mass detentions since the rioting. China has handed down at least 17 death sentences — mostly to Uighurs — over the violence.
The Uighurs arrived in Cambodia in recent weeks and had initially been in joint custody of the UN refugee agency and Cambodian authorities. Khieu Sopheak said they had been shifted to the “sole protection” of the Cambodian government.
An evaluation of the Uighurs for possible refugee status had not yet been completed, said Kitty McKinsey, spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Bangkok. She said the agency had asked Cambodia not to deport the group.
