Dissidents fearful as Thailand, once a safe haven, strengthens ties with China

One night last month, Liu Xuehong stood weeping outside the gates of the United Nations headquarters in Bangkok, begging the guards to let her in. The Chinese dissident had received a threatening call from an anonymous Chinese official, and feared that she, like other asylum seekers in Thailand, would be snatched away by agents of China or deported by a Thai junta increasingly allied to it. The UN guards refused her entry. “I felt so frustrated,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “We still live in fear here.” READ MORE: Thai authorities investigating case of missing bookseller Gui Minhai after it emerges there is no record of him leaving Thailand Liu is one of hundreds of Chinese who have fled for Thailand, say human rights groups. It was long considered a refuge, but not anymore. Two Chinese dissidents recently disappeared from Thai soil, only to reappear a few weeks later in China in police custody. Thailand deported two others late last year despite a UN plan to resettle them in Canada. “Thailand is no longer a safe haven for Chinese dissidents,” said a senior Western diplomatic source based in Beijing. Western governments have expressed concern over China’s apparent extraterritorial reach, as President Xi Jinping intensifies a nationwide crackdown on human rights lawyers, journalists and labour activists. China considers many dissidents to be criminals, including those who flee abroad. Panitan Wattanayagorn, a top Thai government adviser, said police were “still checking” how the two Chinese dissidents had vanished from the country, and said it was possible one of them had “disappeared [by] himself.” As for the two deportations of Chinese refugees in November, Panitan said the Thai government would work more closely with the UNHCR “to prevent this kind of problem”. He said China had not applied any pressure. “Thailand decides on its own,” he said. Among those who disappeared in Thailand was Gui Minhai, one of five Hong Kong booksellers who have been missing since late last year. China’s foreign ministry declined to comment on the disappearances, but has said its law enforcement officials would never do anything illegal, especially overseas. It said the November deportations were handled “in accordance with the law”. The Thai junta’s seizure of power in 2014 strained ties with the West. As the US and other countries downgraded political and military ties, the generals forged closer ties with Beijing. China and Thailand held their first joint air force exercise in November. The following month, the two countries agreed to build a US$13 billion railway line from the Thai-Laos border to Bangkok. A record 7.9 million Chinese visited Thailand last year, or more than a quarter of the total number of tourists. Last July, Thailand deported 109 Uighur Muslims to China in what the UN called “a flagrant violation of international law”. Dissidents like Liu say the disappearances and deportations are part of a diplomatic and security squeeze by China to flush them out. Aiding them in Thailand, she believes, are Chinese agents posing as asylum-seekers. Liu, 55, was jailed for a month in Beijing in 2014 for “disturbing social order”, a catch-all charge often used to suppress human rights activists. But she continued her work until last June, just weeks before the Chinese authorities began arresting hundreds of lawyers, legal assistants and activists in a nationwide crackdown. “Almost all the people around me in China have been arrested,” she said. Liu flew to Thailand, where she is now a UN-registered refugee awaiting resettlement. She can still be arrested and deported for illegally entering Thailand, which officially doesn’t recognise refugee status. “We have no protection here,” said Liu, adding that men in cars often follow her through Bangkok. Liu arrived in Thailand by plane. But other Chinese, too fearful to use their passports, travel overland through poorly policed borders from neighbouring countries with the help of human smugglers. Song Zhiyu, 43, from Hebei Province, is a member of Falun Gong, a religious group banned as a cult in China. He left China on a smuggler’s motorbike until reaching the Myanmar town of Mongla. In Mongla, Song telephoned a Thai man known only as “the tour leader” who, in return for Ұ20,000 (US$3,000), drove him towards the Thai border. Then Song was spirited across a river into Thailand and hidden in the luggage hold of a Bangkok bound bus. He spent the next 10 hours bent double. “I thought I would die,” he said. READ MORE: Timeline: Hong Kong’s missing booksellers and what we know so far About 160 Falun Gong refugees and asylum-seekers are in Thailand, Song said, and in the past, authorities had rarely bothered them. But more than 29 practitioners have been arrested on immigration charges under the military junta, he said. “The Thai and Chinese governments now have a very close relationship,” he said. “We are all afraid. Every day is dangerous for us.”