Human rights group urges Thai government to stop repatriation of dissidents

• Human Rights Watch has urged Thailand to stop forcing dissidents to return to dangerous countries of origin, citing violations of international law.
• One report documented cases of Thai authorities expelling dissidents awaiting resettlement, often among them Cambodians.
• The Thai government allegedly collaborated with neighboring countries to spy on dissidents.

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.

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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. The military and military-backed government lasted 10 years, until an elected civilian government led by Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin took power last year.

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

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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 governments in Latin America reached agreements to work together to eliminate their 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.