'Hell on earth': Deportation looms for Uyghurs held in Thailand

Uyghur refugee, Nilupa, says she has been living in pain. For the past decade, she has been hoping her husband could join her and their three sons in Turkey, where they currently reside. In 2014, the family was detained in Thailand after fleeing increasing oppression in their home region of Xinjiang, China. A year later, she and her children were allowed to leave Thailand, but her husband and 47 other Uyghur men remained in detention.

Nilupa (not her real name) now fears she and her children may never see him again. Ten days ago, she learned that Thai officials had tried to persuade the detainees to sign forms agreeing to be sent back to China. When they realised what the forms were, they refused to sign. The Thai government denies any immediate plans to send them back, but human rights groups believe they could be deported at any time.

"I don't know how to explain it to my sons," Nilupa told the BBC via video call from Turkey. She said her sons keep asking about their father. The youngest has never met him. "I don't know how to digest all this. I live in constant pain, constantly worried that at any moment I could get the news from Thailand that my husband has been deported."

The last time Thailand deported Uyghur asylum seekers was in July 2015. Without any warning, Thailand put 109 people on a plane to China, prompting outrage from governments and human rights organisations. A few published photos showed them hooded, handcuffed and guarded by large numbers of Chinese police. Little is known about what happened to them after their return. Other deported Uyghurs have been given long prison sentences in secret trials.

The incoming Trump administration's nominee for Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has pledged to urge Thailand not to send the remaining Uyghurs back to China. One human rights defender described their living conditions as "hell on earth." They are all being held at the Immigration Detention Centre (IDC) in central Bangkok, which houses most people accused of immigration violations in Thailand. Some only stay there briefly, awaiting deportation; others remain there for much longer.

Driving along the narrow, congested Soi Suan Plu, it's easy to miss the nondescript complex of concrete buildings, and hard to believe that it houses some 900 detainees - the Thai authorities don't give an exact number. The IDC is known to be hot, overcrowded and unsanitary. Journalists are not allowed in. Lawyers often warn their clients to avoid being sent there if at all possible. There are 43 Uyghurs there, and another five held in a Bangkok prison for trying to escape. They are the last remaining part of a group of around 350 who fled China in 2013 and 2014.

They are kept separate from other prisoners and are rarely allowed visits from outsiders or lawyers. They have little opportunity for exercise or even to see daylight. They have not been charged with any crime, other than entering Thailand without visas. Five Uyghurs have already died in detention. "The conditions there are appalling," says Chalida Tajaroensuk, director of the People's Empowerment Foundation, an NGO that tries to help the Uyghurs. "The food is inadequate - mostly just soup made with cucumber and chicken bones. It's very crowded. The water they drink and wash with is dirty. Only basic medicines are provided, and not enough of those. If someone gets sick, it takes a long time to get an appointment with a doctor. Many Uyghurs get rashes or other skin problems because of the dirty water, the heat and the poor ventilation."

But those who have experienced it say the worst part of their detention is not knowing how long they will be imprisoned in Thailand, and the constant fear of being sent back to China. Nilupa says there are always rumours about deportations, but it's difficult to find out more. Escape is difficult, because they have children. "It was terrible. We were always scared," Nilupa recalls. "When we think about being sent back to China, we would rather die in Thailand."

The UN and human rights groups have fully documented China's oppression of Muslim Uyghurs. It's believed that up to a million Uyghurs are being held in re-education camps, in what human rights advocates say is a state-led campaign to eradicate Uyghur identity and culture. There are many allegations of torture and enforced disappearances, which China denies. China says it has been operating "vocational centres" focused on de-radicalising Uyghurs. Nilupa says she and her husband faced hostility from Chinese state officials because of their religious beliefs - her husband was a keen reader of religious texts.

The couple decided to flee when people they knew were being arrested or disappearing. The family was part of a group of 220 Uyghurs caught by Thai police in March 2014, trying to cross the border into Malaysia. Nilupa was held in an immigration detention centre near the border and later in Bangkok, until June 2015, when she and another 170 women and children were allowed to travel to Turkey, which often offers asylum to Uyghurs. But her husband remained at the Bangkok IDC. They were separated when they were detained, and she has not had contact with him since they were allowed a brief meeting in July 2014.

She says she was one of 18 pregnant women and 25 children who were crammed into a room measuring just four metres by eight metres. The food was "terrible, and never enough for all of us." "I was the last one to give birth in the bathroom at midnight. The next day, the guards saw that me and my baby were not well, so they sent us to the hospital." Nilupa was also separated from her eldest son, who was just two years old, and was held with his father - which she says traumatised him after he experienced "terrible conditions" and witnessed a guard beating a prisoner. She says when the guards brought him back to her, he didn't recognise her.

"He was very scared and screaming and crying. He didn't understand what was happening. He didn't want to talk to anyone." She says it took a long time for him to accept his mother, and after that, even when they arrived in Turkey, he wouldn't leave her side for a moment. "It took him a really long time to understand that he was finally in a safe place."

Thailand has never explained why it won't allow the remaining Uyghurs to be reunited with their families in Turkey, but it is almost certainly due to pressure from China. Unlike other prisoners at the IDC, the fate of the Uyghurs is not handled by the immigration authorities, but by the Thai National Security Council, which is chaired by the prime minister and where the military has a strong influence. China's influence has been steadily growing as that of the US - Thailand's oldest military ally - has waned. The current Thai government is keen to forge closer ties with China to help revive its faltering economy.

The UN Refugee Agency has been criticised for doing little to help the Uyghurs, but says it has no access to them and is therefore powerless. Thailand does not recognise refugee status. However, fulfilling China's desire for the Uyghurs to be returned is not without risk. Thailand has just won a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, for which it lobbied hard. Deporting 48 men who have already suffered more than a decade of imprisonment would badly damage the image the Thai government is trying to project.

Thailand will also be aware of what happened just a month after the last mass deportation in 2015. On 17 August that year, a powerful bomb exploded at a shrine in Bangkok popular with Chinese tourists. Twenty people died, in what was widely seen as a revenge attack by Uyghur militants, although the Thai authorities have tried to downplay the link. Two Uyghur men were charged with the bombing, but their trial has dragged on for nine years with no end in sight. Their lawyers say one of them is almost certainly innocent. The trial is shrouded in secrecy; the authorities seem unwilling to allow any of the hearings relating to the deportations to be made public.

Even those Uyghurs who have managed to reach Turkey have to deal with their precarious status there, and the fact that they have lost all contact with their families back in Xinjiang. "I haven't heard my mother's voice in 10 years," says Hassan Imam, an Uyghur refugee now working as a truck driver in Turkey. He was in the same group as Nilupa, caught at the Malaysian border in 2014. He remembers how the Thai authorities tricked them the following year into believing they were planning to send some of them back to China. He says they were told some of the men were being moved to another facility, as the one they were in was too crowded.

This was after some of the women and children had been sent to Turkey, and unusually, the men in the camp were also allowed to speak on the phone to their wives and children in Turkey. "We were all happy and full of hope," says Hassan. "They picked them out one by one. At this point they didn't know they were being sent back to China. It was only later, through an illegal phone we had, that we learned from Turkey that they had been deported." Hassan recalls that this left the remaining detainees in despair, and two years later, when he was temporarily moved to another detention camp, he and 19 others used a nail to make a hole in a crumbling wall and successfully escaped.

Eleven were caught, but Hassan managed to make it across the forested border into Malaysia, and from there to Turkey. "I don't know how my parents are, but it's worse for those who are still being detained in Thailand," he says. They fear being sent back to China and imprisoned - and they also fear it will mean harsher punishment for their families, he explains. "The mental pressure they are under is unbearable."