Fears for more than 100 suspected Uygurs who fled Thai detention
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 13 November, 2014, 4:14am
UPDATED : Thursday, 13 November, 2014, 4:43am
Agence France-Presse in Bangkok
Thailand has held dozens of the migrants since March. Photo: Reuters
More than 100 migrants thought to be from China's Uygur minority have escaped from shelters in Thailand, with authorities fearing they have fallen into the hands of a human trafficking ring, an official said yesterday.
Thailand has held dozens of the migrants since March, when they were discovered during a raid on a suspected people-smuggling camp in the kingdom's deep south and sentenced for illegal entry.
Police had said they were waiting to identify the nationalities of the group before deciding their fate.
The migrants claimed they were Turkish, but US-based Uygur activists identified them as Uygurs - a Turkic-speaking, predominantly Muslim group from the Xinjiang region.
"Only 40 of around 160 women and children remain at the two shelters. They ran away together at night between November 1 and 5," Jaras Chumpan, chief of the social development and human security office in southern Songkhla province said.
"I am concerned that they might have been trafficked," he added.
"They want to go to Turkey - they do not want to go back to China."
Thailand has long been a hub for people-trafficking, with thousands of Rohingya, a Muslim minority group from neighbouring Myanmar, believed to have passed through the kingdom in recent years.
Songkhla immigration police chief Thatchai Pitaneelaboot confirmed authorities were searching for the missing women and children, adding that police were still trying to determine their nationalities.
Under pressure from Beijing, countries including Cambodia, Malaysia and Pakistan have all in recent years forcibly returned Uygurs to China.
