The Chinese regime has issued arrest warrants for five Uyghurs who fled to Thailand from China more than a decade ago, a senior Thai official said on Nov. 4.

Global human rights groups are issuing warnings about potential torture the Uyghurs might face if returned to China.

The Uyghurs, detained in Thailand since 2014, have the right to appoint a lawyer to challenge Beijing’s extradition request, Chaipruak Doungprapat, secretary-general of the Thailand National Security Council, told reporters on Nov. 4, according to Thailand’s public broadcaster TPBS. 

Their fates will be decided in court, Doungprapat said.

The five were among more than 300 Uyghurs fleeing China who were arrested by Thai police near the Malaysian border in 2014.

Thai authorities deported more than 170—mostly women and children—to Turkey in 2015. Nearly 100 of the remaining Uyghurs were sent to China in 2015, while another group was deported in 2025.

At least five Uyghurs died in Thai custody while seeking refuge. 

Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups are subjected to mass detention in the far-western Chinese region of Xinjiang, where survivors have recounted high-pressure indoctrination, forced labor, and other forms of abuse.

The Chinese regime linked its repression to counterterrorism, but the United States and other Western democracies have labeled such actions a “genocide.”

Doungprapat said the case of five Uyghurs was unlike that of the 40 Uyghurs who were deported to China last year at Beijing’s request—a move that drew global criticism and U.S. sanctions. 

The five were jailed in Thailand for escaping detention attempts, according to Doungprapat. While three still have a year left to serve, two completed their sentences last month.

If Beijing wants to have the two who have completed their jail terms back, it must follow formal extradition procedures, Doungprapat said. 

If the court rules against them, they will be handed to China under an extradition treaty, Doungprapat said. But if they win, they could resettle in a third country.

Asked at a Nov. 4 briefing whether Beijing had submitted an extradition request, China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning sidestepped the question.

She said that the cooperation between Beijing and Bangkok in combating cross-border crimes, including illegal immigration, was in line with the two countries’ laws as well as international law and international practice.

Trucks with black tape covering the windows leave a detention center in Bangkok, Thailand, on Feb. 27, 2025. (Nuttaphol Meksobhon/Prachatai via AP)

Former Thai lawmaker Kannavee Suebsang questioned China’s claims that Uyghurs held in Thailand were subject to arrest warrants by Beijing. One of the Uyghur detainees, he said, was only 15 when he fled China and was detained by Thai authorities in 2014.

In a letter dated July 2022 and made public by Suebsang earlier this month, a Uyghur detainee expressed fears that he and his parents might receive the death penalty if taken back to China. 

“The Uyghur people have no human rights and are treated lower than animals,” the man wrote in English.

International human rights organizations have called on Bangkok not to send the Uyghurs to China, warning they might face torture and abuses upon their return.

“No amount of diplomatic assurance from China can override Thailand’s obligations not to return anyone to a real risk of torture or other serious human rights violations,” Agnes Callamard, secretary general at Amnesty International, said in a Nov. 4 statement.

“After more than a decade in detention, these men must be released and given the chance to rebuild their lives in safety and freedom.”

Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, urged Thailand to protect Uyghurs from repression instead of “returning them to harm’s way.”

“Previous Thai governments have kept Uyghurs in inhumane detention for years and then complied with Beijing’s demands to send them to China, where they were forcibly disappeared,” Pearson said in a statement on Nov. 4.