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Thailand on Thursday deported 40 Uyghur asylum seekers<\/a> back to China, drawing a sharp rebuke from U.N. officials and activists who had long warned that the men would possibly face torture and long-term imprisonment upon their return.<\/p>\n The deportations, which Thai officials said were carried out at Beijing\u2019s request, are a major victory for China, showcasing its growing clout in the region in contrast to the United States, which has alienated allies and partners under the new Trump administration. Just three weeks earlier, Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra of Thailand had met with China\u2019s leader, Xi Jinping, in Beijing to discuss a railway project and ways to increase Chinese tourism.<\/p>\n The United Nations\u2019 refugee agency and Volker T\u00fcrk, the U.N. human rights chief, called the deportations a clear violation of international law. Uyghur activists abroad deplored the decision.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m deeply saddened, worried and terrified about what\u2019s going to happen to them next,\u201d said Tahir Imin, a U.S.-based Uyghur activist who was previously imprisoned in China. \u201cThey will get unimaginable punishment. Torture, death and long-term imprisonment is guaranteed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n China has used its power and influence to silence its critics abroad and pressure governments to repatriate citizens fleeing persecution. The Uyghurs will have likely been returned to the region of Xinjiang, where the authorities maintain a tight grip. In recent years the government has detained as many as one million Uyghurs and others<\/a> in internment camps and prisons, stepped up birth control measures for Muslim women<\/a> and placed Muslim children in boarding schools<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Uyghurs, who had been detained in Bangkok for over a decade, were part of a wave of more than 300 people who fled China in 2014, hoping to use Thailand as a transit point to get to Turkey, which is home to a sizable Uyghur community. Last month, some of the detainees, who are all men, went on a hunger strike<\/a> amid fears of being returned to China.<\/p>\n Mr. T\u00fcrk said the asylum seekers had been held in poor conditions in Thailand, with five dying in custody and eight believed to remain in detention.<\/p>\n The plight of the detainees had drawn scrutiny from governments, including the United States, Canada and Japan. During his confirmation hearing for secretary of state last month, Marco Rubio said he would lobby Thailand not to send the Uyghurs back to China.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The concern initially prompted the Thai authorities to pledge that they would not send the Uyghurs back. Yet rights activists who had been monitoring the situation began reporting in the early hours of Thursday that there were signs the Uyghurs were being prepared for deportation.<\/p>\n In downtown Bangkok around 2 a.m., a reporter witnessed six trucks that had their windows covered with black cloth leaving an immigrant detention center where the detained Uyghurs had been held. Several police cars accompanied the trucks, cordoning off traffic around them.<\/p>\n A few hours later, an unscheduled China Southern Airlines flight took off from Bangkok to Kashgar in Xinjiang, the native homeland of Uyghurs, according to FlightRadar24, which tracks flights around the world. It landed just after noon local time.<\/p>\n The decision to suddenly deport the Uyghurs was a stark reminder of the strengths of China\u2019s diplomatic clout. It comes as Beijing has sought the repatriation of Chinese nationals from scam centers in Myanmar<\/a> by taking them across the border to Thailand and putting them on planes back to China. Some analysts saw it as a direct exertion of China\u2019s security policy in Thailand.<\/p>\n \u201cThis recent pattern of Thailand catering to the Chinese government without due process will stand Thailand in bad stead with the United States when Washington is very aggressive,\u201d said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political science professor at Chulalongkorn University. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t generate good-will in the Muslim world, and worst of all, the Uyghurs will suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Relations between the United States and Thailand, one of two U.S. allies in Southeast Asia, have been strained after a near-decade-long military rule. Part of Thailand\u2019s apparent caving to Beijing could also reflect the shifting balance of power in Asia where the United States under President Trump, unlike the Biden administration, has shown less interest in highlighting human rights and democracy.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems to be that under the Biden administration, Bangkok came under U.S. pressure or influence not to yield, but this is no longer the case under the Trump administration,\u201d said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a significant setback for human rights,\u201d Mr. Tsang added. \u201cIt also goes further to show that the old image of the U.S. being the shining house on the hill is being changed to something else, something increasingly indistinguishable from what China under Xi represents.\u201d<\/p>\n Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday said in a statement that he condemned Thailand\u2019s actions in the \u201cstrongest possible terms,\u201d adding that the country could be violating \u201cits international obligations under the U.N. Convention Against Torture and the International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.\u201d <\/p>\n