BANGKOK: Two Chinese Uyghur men detained in Thailand have received royal pardons and are awaiting deportation, a Thai official and an activist said on Thursday, though it was not yet clear where they will go.
The men are among the last of more than 300 members of the Muslim minority group held in Thailand in 2014, according to Kannavee Suebsang, a former Thai MP who was working for the UN Refugee Agency at the time and now runs an NGO. Almost all have been deported.
Around 170 women and children were sent to Turkiye in 2015, while two other groups were deported to China in 2015 and 2025, despite international condemnation of the treatment of the Uyghurs in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang.
