Human rights group urges Thailand to stop forcing dissidents to return home

BANGKOK– A leading international human rights organization on Thursday urged the Thai government to stop forcing political dissidents who fled to Thailand for safety to return to authoritarian countries, where they may face torture, persecution or death.

In a new report, Human Rights Watch said Thai authorities repeatedly violated international law by expelling dissidents, many of whom were registered with the United Nations as refugees and were awaiting resettlement in third countries.

The report, titled “We thought we were safe,” analyzed 25 cases that took place in Thailand between 2014 and 2023.

Many of the cases involved the forced repatriation of Cambodians, with the alleged involvement of Cambodian security personnel. But the group also listed cases in which dissidents from Vietnam, Laos and China were “located and kidnapped,” or “forcibly disappeared or killed.”

The report said that in exchange for locating and returning dissidents, the Thai government received cooperation from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam to spy on Thai dissidents who had fled their own homeland to escape political repression.

Human Rights Watch called this a quid-pro-quo form of transnational repression “in which foreign dissidents are effectively exchanged for critics of the Thai government living abroad.”

The group said such deals, known informally as “swap marts,” became increasingly frequent after the Thai military staged a coup in 2024 to overthrow an elected government. Military and military-backed rule lasted 10 years, until an elected civilian government led by Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin took office last year.

“The Srettha administration should launch an investigation into these allegations of harassment, surveillance and forced return of asylum seekers and refugees in Thailand. It should investigate the disappearance of Thai anti-junta activists in other Southeast Asian countries,” Elaine Pearson, Asia Division director at Human Rights Watch, told The Associated Press.

“I believe there is an opportunity to end this practice and for the Srettha administration to show that it is different from the previous military-led government,” he added.

He noted that the Thai government is currently seeking a seat on the UN Human Rights Council “and with that comes responsibilities to protect human rights.”

The report cites nine cases of Thai activists in Laos and Cambodia who were missing or killed under mysterious circumstances.

The mutilated bodies of two missing activists were found in late 2018 floating in the Mekong River. In 2020, a young Thai activist, Wanchalearm Satsaksit, was kidnapped from the street in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, and never heard from again.

Thai authorities have repeatedly denied any connection to such events.

Dr Francesca Lessa, associate professor of international relations at University College London, said there were some parallels with the way autocratic leaders in Latin America reached agreements to work together to eliminate political opponents in the territory of the another in the late 1970s and 1980s.

“Whether they follow left-wing or right-wing ideologies, these autocratic governments view opposition and dissent as a threat to their survival in power and must therefore be eliminated, by whatever means necessary,” he said. Lessa to the AP.

When asked about the Human Rights Watch report, Thai Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nikorndej Balankura said Thailand is committed to respecting and upholding humanitarian principles, including not forcing asylum seekers and refugees to return to their countries of origin, where they could face persecution or where their lives or freedom could be in danger.

Separately, the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Thursday that the country has completed the ratification process of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances, which will enter into force on June 13. Thailand has had its own law on Prevention and Suppression of Torture and Enforced Disappearance since 2003, the statement said.

The ministry said the ratification means Thailand will now be a party to eight of the nine core international human rights treaties.