On July 14, the Anutin cabinet approved in principle a draft Prime Minister's Office regulation on deportation. Officials claim the regulation will reduce redundancy and speed up the deportation process for cases involving illegal immigration, unauthorised employment, document fraud and serious criminal activity.
This intention appears sound. However, there is one important caveat. The regulation does not mention or provide any guidelines for officials and policymakers when dealing with asylum seekers, political activists or journalists who have fled repressive governments and sought refuge in Thailand.
These foreigners have escaped their governments and are using Thailand as a temporary shelter while seeking new homes through international organisations and third countries willing to help them relocate.
Rather than providing such guidelines, the draft regulation even describes "international organisations" and "foreign states" that offer these asylum seekers citizenship or assistance but have "failed to expedite the process" or "do not genuinely intend to receive the persons subjected to deportation".
It is shocking that the draft uses such strong language. More importantly, the question is: what will Thai authorities do with asylum seekers who are waiting for third countries to accept them?
Thai authorities are bound to comply with the international principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits states from returning individuals to countries where they face persecution, torture or other serious harm. The principle is reflected in the UN Convention Against Torture, to which Thailand is a party.
Above all, our own law — Section 13 of the Prevention and Suppression of Torture and Enforced Disappearance Act 2022 — prevents officials and state agencies from expelling, deporting, returning or extraditing a person to another state where there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would face a danger of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, or enforced disappearance.
Even so, governments have sent political activists and asylum seekers — including Uyghurs, Vietnamese dissidents, Montagnard asylum seekers and Cambodian opposition politicians — back to their countries despite clear and present threats awaiting them. Some of those deported had even received UNHCR asylum-seeker certificates and were in the process of resettling in third countries.
Thai governments have treated these deportations of political activists and journalists as diplomatic concessions. They are not.
Reports say that about four Chinese dissidents are being detained at a Thai immigration office. Three of the four are UNHCR-recognised refugees.
Among them is Zhang Xin Yan, a Hong Kong-based journalist who was detained by Thai immigration officials in May before her planned departure to Canada under a UNHCR-recognised resettlement programme. The government must follow Section 13 before making any decision.
The course of their futures will be a litmus test for Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, showing whether he will bow to diplomatic pressure or uphold the non-refoulement principle enshrined in Thai law and international human rights standards.
His predecessors, from the Prayut government to the civilian administration of Srettha Thavisin, failed to do so. We can only hope Mr Anutin will be different.
