Activists and dissidents seeking refuge in Thailand are being subjected to harassment, surveillance and physical violence, often with the cooperation of Thai authorities, Human Rights Watch said.
The New York-based rights group said there had been a surge in repression directed at foreign nationals in the kingdom in the past decade, with authorities trading foreign dissidents for critics of the Thai government abroad.
The governments responsible include China, Bahrain and member countries of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) regional bloc, HRW said.
The report said that, in a number of cases, Thai officials arrested asylum seekers and refugees and deported them to their home countries without due process.
“Thai authorities have increasingly engaged in a ‘swap mart’ with neighbouring governments to unlawfully exchange each others’ dissidents,” said Elaine Pearson, the Asia director at HRW.
She urged Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin to immediately order a full and transparent investigation into “arbitrary arrests, violent assaults, and forced returns of refugees and political dissidents”.
The organisation said dissidents from Vietnam have been tracked down and abducted, Laotian democracy advocates have been forcibly disappeared or killed, and a Malaysian LGBTQ rights influencer was targeted for repatriation in Thailand.
Authorities have also detained and unlawfully deported Chinese dissidents and refugees.
At the same time, a number of Thai activists have been killed or disappeared in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.
The group said in a report in February that “transnational repression” was having a “chilling effect” on political criticism and called on countries and international organisations to take action. — AFP
