Cambodia deports Uighurs despite criticism

Cambodia has deported back to China 20 Muslim Uighurs who fled the country after deadly ethnic violence this year, a government official said on Sunday, despite concerns they will face persecution by Beijing. The Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim ethnic group involved in rioting in western China that killed nearly 200 people in July, were smuggled into Cambodia in recent weeks and applied for asylum at the United Nations refugee agency office in Phnom Penh. Human rights groups say they fear for the lives of the Uighurs if they are deported to China. They were deported late on Saturday, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong. ”We were implimenting the immigration laws of the country. They came to Cambodia illegally. We had to apply our immigration law,” he added. The deportation coincides with a visit to Camobida on Sunday by Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping, who is expected to sign 14 agreements related to infrastructure construction, grants and loans. The Washington-based Uighur American Association said the group will likely face torture and possible execution if returned, citing the case of Shaheer Ali, a Uighur political activist who fled to Nepal in 2000 and was granted refugee status by the United Nations. He was forcibly returned to China from Nepal in 2002 and executed a year later, according to state media. The United Nations refugee agency office condemned the deportation. ”The forced return of asylum-seekers without a full examination of their asylum claims is a serious breach of international refugee law,” the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office said in a statement. The US embassy in Phnom Penh has said it was ”deeply disturbed” the Uighurs may be forcibly returned. Beijing has called the asylum seekers ”criminals”, although it has offered no evidence to back up the allegations. China is Cambodia’s biggest investor, having poured more than 1 billion dollar in foreign direct investment into the country. Rights groups say Cambodia is flouting a 1951 convention on refugees in which it pledged not to return asylum seekers to countries where they will face persecution. Cambodia is one of two Southeast Asian nations to have signed the convention. The July 5 riots, which began with protests against attacks on Uighur workers in south China, killed 197 people, most of them Han Chinese. More than 1,600 were injured, official figures show. At least eight people have been sentenced to death for murder and other crimes during the rioting, and nine other people have been executed, Chinese state media have reported.