BANGKOK, Thailand: Activists and dissidents seeking refuge in Thailand face harassment, surveillance and physical violence, often in collaboration with Thai authorities, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.
The New York-based rights group said the state has seen an increase in crackdowns on foreign nationals over the past decade, with authorities swapping foreign dissidents for critics of the Thai government living abroad.
The governments responsible include China, Bahrain and member countries of the Association of Southeast 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 are increasingly engaging in ‘swap mart’ with neighbouring governments to illegally exchange dissidents with each other,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at HRW.
She called on Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin to immediately order a full and transparent investigation into the “arbitrary arrests, violent attacks and forced returns of refugees and political dissidents”.
The organization said it analyzed 25 cases that took place in Thailand between 2014 and 2023 and conducted 18 interviews with victims, family members and witnesses.
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She said dissidents from Vietnam have been tracked down and kidnapped, Lao democracy advocates have been forcibly disappeared or killed, and a Malaysian LGBTQ rights activist has been targeted for repatriation in Thailand in recent years.
Thai authorities have also detained and illegally deported Chinese dissidents and refugees, HRW said.
At the same time, a number of Thai activists were killed or disappeared in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.
The group said in a February report that “transnational repression” had a “chilling effect” on political criticism and called on countries and international organizations to take action.
It pointed to 75 cases of governments in more than two dozen countries – including Belarus and Cambodia – carrying out “human rights abuses … to silence or discourage dissent” over the past 15 years.
Methods included killings, kidnappings, illegal expulsions, abuse of consular services, targeting and collective punishment of relatives, and digital attacks.
He said some governments have also misused Interpol’s red notices, which trigger a global alert that allows law enforcement to arrest a person before possible extradition.
