‘Hell on earth’: Deportation looms for Uyghurs held in Thailand

Even those Uyghurs who have managed to get to Turkey must then deal with their uncertain status there, and with the severance of all communications with their families in Xinjiang.

“I have not heard my mother’s voice for 10 years,” says Hasan Imam, an Uyghur refugee who now works as a lorry driver in Turkey.

He was in the same group as Niluper caught by the Malaysian border in 2014.

He remembers how the following year the Thai authorities deceived them about their plan to deport some of them to China. He says they were told some men would be moved to a different facility, because the one they were in was too crowded.

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

“We were all happy, and full of hope,” Hassan says. “They selected them, one by one. At this point they had no idea they would be sent back to China. It was only later, through an illicit phone we had, that we found out from Turkey that they had been deported.”

This filled the remaining detainees with despair, recalls Hasan, and two years later, when he was moved temporarily to another holding camp, he and 19 others made a remarkable escape, using a nail to make a hole in a crumbling wall.

Eleven were recaptured, but Hasan managed to cross the forested border into Malaysia, and from there reached Turkey.

“I do not know what condition my parents are in but for those still detained in Thailand it is even worse,” he says.

They fear being sent back and imprisoned in China – and they also fear that it would mean more severe punishment for their families, he explains.

“The mental strain for them is unbearable.”