Richard S. Ehrlich: China's Repression Hits Thailand

BANGKOK, Thailand -- China's harsh control over the ancient Silk Road across the Taklimakan Desert found a friendly and seemingly naive collaborator five weeks ago, when Thailand's coup-installed military junta forcibly deported 109 minority ethnic Uighur Muslim men and women back to Beijing.

Today however Thailand, China, Turkey, Malaysia, Bangladesh and other countries are grimly investigating how a group of Uighurs ("WEE-gurs"), allegedly traveling on Turkish and Chinese passports, enabled an unidentified man to explode a pipe bomb on August 17 at a Hindu shrine in Bangkok crowded with mostly ethnic Chinese visitors.

The evening blast killed 20 people, most of them ethnic Chinese visitors, and injured more than 100 others in the bloodiest bombing in Bangkok since World War II.

Uighurs and their supporters may have bombed the shrine as revenge for Bangkok's mass deportation in July, and Thailand's earlier crackdown on human smuggling routes which were helping China's distressed Uighurs and other refugees find sanctuary abroad.

"It was because Thai authorities destroyed the illegal businesses of a transnational human trafficking network. They were obstructed, so they were angry," Thailand's Police Chief Somyot Pumpanmuang told reporters on September 15.

"The other issue was the Thai authorities' decision to send 109 Uighurs back to China," Police Gen. Somyot said, echoing the conclusion of others.

Police have issued wanted posters for most of their nearly 30 suspects.

They are illustrated with closed-circuit TV (CCTV) photos, passport pictures, identikit portraits, photographs of people arriving or departing through Bangkok's international airport, and rough sketches based on witnesses' recollections.

Police also arrested a handful of people, and were hunting others here and abroad.

Their main suspects include:

-- An unidentified man wearing a distinctive yellow T-shirt.

He appears on CCTV video depositing a black backpack at the Erawan Shrine, walking away minutes before the explosion, and then disappearing as a passenger on a motorcycle taxi.

-- Yusufu Mieraili, apparently a Uighur from China's Xinjiang province, was arrested trying to cross Thailand's border into Cambodia days after the blast.

Under interrogation, he allegedly "confessed" to giving the bomb-laden backpack to the man in the yellow T-shirt on the day of the attack, and has been charged with possessing explosives.

Security forces said Mr. Mieraili confessed, after they presented evidence against him, because he wanted to be prosecuted in Thailand rather than China -- apparently fearing Beijing's punishment would be worse.

-- Zubair or Abdullah, a man sought for allegedly exploding a similar bomb across town the following day. CCTV showed a bomber harmlessly shoving his device into a canal, possibly aborting another planned assault.

-- Bilal Mohammed, who was reportedly born in China but living in Turkey for the past decade.

Mr. Mohammed denied charges of possessing the bomb-making components and forged Turkish passports found inside a Bangkok safe house where he was arrested on August 29.

According to his lawyer, Mr. Mohammed was traveling on an obviously fake Turkish passport as Adem Karadag, arrived in Thailand on August 24 after the bombing, and was going to Malaysia to work as a driver.

-- Abdullah Abdulrahman, believed to be a Uighur from China's Xinjiang province, allegedly smuggled Mr. Mohammed and other Uighurs into Thailand before departing at the end of August.

Mr. Abdulrahman escaped by flying from Bangkok to Dhaka, Bangladesh, then to New Delhi, India, and onward to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates before arriving in Turkey, according to Thai officials.

Turkey's government said it was not immediately able to confirm his arrival and asked Thailand for details.

-- Other suspects in Turkey include a Thai Muslim woman, Wanna Suansan, and her Turkish husband Emrah Davutoglu who allegedly rented out cheap rooms in Bangkok to some suspects.

She denied the charge before disappearing.

Some people in Turkey allegedly helped arrange Turkish entry visas for China's Uighurs or transferred thousands of dollars to their network's members in Thailand.

-- Thai security forces also detained a handful of Thai men and women for allegedly providing transportation and other help to various suspects in Thailand.

The five-week-long investigation by police and military officials appeared to be haphazard and intentionally deceptive at times.

Thailand's unpopular Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha seized power as army chief in a 2014 coup and tried to cloak the investigation and public announcements in a controversial form of censorship.

He repeatedly rejected clues and speculation linking the attack to Uighurs, China, Turkey, international terrorism, or revenge for his deportation order, which was condemned by the U.S. State Department, the United Nations, and human rights organizations.

As a result, the regime's statements were frequently contradicted hours later, and some facts officially denied until different officials leaked the information or confirmed key details.

Most of China's Uighurs live in western Xinjiang province in and around the rugged Takliman Desert, along the ancient Silk Road caravan route which Marco Polo wandered in the 13th century when it connected China and the Mediterranean Sea.

During the 1930s, both Beijing and London feared Moscow wanted to seize Xinjiang, which Russia's political supporters were infiltrating.

Since then, Beijing moved millions of atheist ethnic Han Chinese into Xinjiang to form a majority against the Muslims there, and exploit the zone's minerals, petroleum and other natural resources.

Several Muslim non-Chinese ethnic groups live in Xinjiang.

Most speak Turkic languages and use Arabic script on signs and in publications.

They include Kazakhs, also known as Cossacks, plus Kyrgyz, Tajiks, Tatars and some anti-communist "White Russians" who fled purges in their homeland.

Uighurs are the most numerous, and traditionally farmed oasis fields amid bleak, unlivable desert, or bred horses and camels.

Suffering under China's discriminatory regulations and treatment -- forbidding long beards on men or face veils on women -- many Uighurs aspire to escape to Turkey or other Turkic-speaking communities.

Many simply want to find work because Xinjiang's job market prefers Han Chinese.

Other Uighurs allegedly join Islamist guerrillas in the Middle East for training and then return to Xinjiang to fight, which may explain who inspired or carried out the Bangkok attack.

Some Uighurs are inspired by a tiny East Turkestan Islamic Movement whose sometimes violent strategy is to create a seemingly impossible pan-Turkic nation across Central Asia including Uighurs, Azeris, Kazakhs and others.

During the past few years, hundreds of Uighurs illegally escaped China, mostly by sneaking across the mountainous southeast border into Vietnam before traveling through Laos and Cambodia into Buddhist-majority Thailand.

Cambodia deported some Uighurs to China several months ago, prompting an outcry but no violent backlash.

Last year, hundreds of China's Uighurs crossed from Laos and Cambodia into Thailand on real or fake passports, sometimes bribing Thai border officials.

Uighurs were welcomed in safe houses in a Bangkok Muslim neighborhood and transported south, either to promised jobs in Muslim-majority Malaysia or to apply for refugee status, visas and flights to Muslim-majority Turkey.

That route, and its profits for human traffickers, disappeared when about 350 Uighurs were caught in southern Thailand near the Malaysian border last year.

They were detained for several months while China, Turkey, the U.N. and human rights groups pleaded with Bangkok to give them authorization to decide their fate.

Squeezed on all sides, Mr. Prayuth tried to satisfy Turkey but especially China, Thailand's centuries-old partner.

He allowed 180 Uighurs, mostly women and children, to fly to Istanbul before forcibly deporting 109 men and women to Beijing.

Unfortunately for Mr. Prayuth, China broadcast their fate on China Central Television.

Those pictures were published worldwide and went viral on social media.

They showed Chinese security forces had encased the 109 Uighurs' heads in black bags during their flight from Bangkok and frogmarched them, handcuffed, onto the tarmac in China toward detention.

China charged more than a dozen of them with "terrorist activities" but did not publicly provide evidence.

"If we don't do this, what else are we going to do?" Mr. Prayuth said to reporters on July 9 amid an international outcry against his decision.

"Do you want to feed them until they breed litters of offspring?" he said, prompting more dismay.

Richard S. Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist from San Francisco, California, reporting news from Asia since 1978, and recipient of Columbia University's Foreign Correspondent's Award. He is a co-author of three non-fiction books about Thailand, including "Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews; 60 Stories of Royal Lineage; and Chronicle of Thailand: Headline News Since 1946. Mr. Ehrlich also contributed to the final chapter, "Ceremonies and Regalia," in a book titled King Bhumibol Adulyadej, A Life's Work: Thailand's Monarchy in Perspective.

His websites are

http://asia-correspondent.tumblr.com

http://www.flickr.com/photos/animists/sets

https://gumroad.com/l/RHwa

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