Thai authorities are assisting neighbouring governments to take unlawful actions against refugees and dissidents from abroad, making the country increasingly unsafe for those fleeing persecution, Human Rights Watch says in a report released this week.
Some targets of transnational repression have become caught up in a “swap mart” in which foreign dissidents in Thailand are effectively traded for critics of the Thai government living abroad, the group said.
The report, “‘We Thought We Were Safe’: Repression and Refoulement of Refugees in Thailand”, details an upsurge in repression directed at foreign nationals seeking refugee protection in Thailand.
Foreign governments have subjected exiled dissidents and activists living in Thailand to harassment, surveillance and physical violence, often with the cooperation and knowledge of Thai authorities, the report found.
In a number of cases, it said, Thai officials arrested asylum seekers and refugees and deported them without due process to their home countries.
“Thai authorities have increasing engaged in a ‘swap mart’ with neighbouring governments to unlawfully exchange each other’s dissidents,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch (HRW).
“Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin should break with this practice and prosecute Thai officials wrongfully collaborating with foreign governments acting on Thai soil.”
HRW said it analysed 25 cases that took place in Thailand between 2014 and 2023 and conducted 18 interviews with victims, their family members, and witnesses to abuses, along with representatives of local and international nongovernmental organisations.
The governments responsible include member countries of Asean as well as China and Bahrain, among others.
In one case, it said a Cambodian dissident who had fled to Thailand in July 2022 said he started receiving letters from Cambodian officials urging him to defect from the main Cambodian opposition party.
After he had received these letters for months, unidentified men attacked him in August 2023. “They did not say anything to me, they just came out and started beating me,” the dissident said.
In recent years in Thailand, dissidents from Vietnam have been tracked down and abducted, Lao democracy advocates have been forcibly disappeared or killed, and a Malaysian LGBTI rights influencer was targeted for repatriation.
Thai authorities have detained and unlawfully deported Chinese dissidents and refugees, seemingly at the request of the Chinese government. Thai authorities also detained a visiting professional football player from Bahrain with Australian refugee status, and nearly returned him to Bahrain.
At the same time, a number of Thai activists have been killed or disappeared in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. The mutilated bodies of two missing activists were later found floating in the Mekong River.
“Swap mart” arrangements increased under the military government that came to power after the May 2014 coup and continued under the post-2019 government of Prime Minister Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha.
In addition to facilitating assaults, abductions, enforced disappearances and other abuses, HRW said, Thai authorities repeatedly violated the principle of non-refoulement: the prohibition on returning anyone to a place where they would face a real risk of persecution, torture or other threats to life.
Thai authorities have also arrested and summarily deported exiled critics and dissidents, even those with refugee status determined by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
“Prime Minister Srettha should act to restore Thailand’s deserved reputation as a country that is a safe haven for dissidents from abroad,” Ms Pearson said.
“He should immediately order a full and transparent investigation into arbitrary arrests, violent assaults, and forced returns of refugees and political dissidents.”