On October 5, 2022, Mr. Adiyaa (shown as “Wu Guoxing” on his Chinese passport), a Southern Mongolian activist in exile who has already obtained refugee status from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, was arrested by the Thai immigration authorities at his rented residency in suburban Bangkok. 

Immediately after the arrest, Adiyaa was forced to meet with Chinese embassy officials on multiple occasions in a small cell at the Bangkok Immigration Detention Center, without any Thai personnel present. Embassy personnel accused Adiyaa of “breaking Chinese relevant laws,” including “illegally occupying other’s property,” and asked him to sign a letter of “admittance to guilt and willingness to return to China.” Adiyaa refused to sign.

 

On October 19, four Chinese State Security agents in uniform visited the Detention Center where Adiyaa is being held. One agent identified himself as an officer dispatched by the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Public Security Bureau. As Adiyaa consistently refused to sign the letter, the four agents took turns repeatedly beating him until he capitulated to signing all the papers the agents had prepared. 

 

“It is all too clear that the Thai Immigration Bureau is ganging up with the Chinese State Security authorities, disregarding the United Nations conventions on refugees and human rights,” Adiyaa’s sister Turgowaa told the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center over the phone. “My brother was already given the UNHCR refugee identification card and relevant papers, but both the Chinese Embassy and the Thai authorities told him that the deportation process is actively being worked out.”

 

Adiyaa, 34 years old, is a native Mongolian born in eastern Southern Mongolia’s Horchin Right Middle Banner. Escaping persecution from China, he arrived in Thailand in February 2021, crossing the border from Cambodia along with seven other family members. 

 

Until four months before his escape, Adiyaa had run a Mongolian language training center in Hohhot, the capital of Southern Mongolia. There, he taught Mongolian students the Mongolian language and software programming. 

 

In September 2020, Adiyaa actively participated in the region-wide mass protest over the Chinese Government’s so-called “Second Generation Bilingual Education Policy.” The policy aims to completely erase the Mongolian language from all educational systems and social life in Southern Mongolia. 

 

On October 10, 2020, Adiyaa’s training center was shut down as an “illegal business.”

 

“Since then, all members of our family have been subjected to constant harassment by the local police and State Security authorities. Even I as a PhD student researching Mongolian traditional arts also had to abandon my studies to leave China,” Turgowaa told SMHRIC over the phone from an undisclosed location in Bangkok. 

 

According to Turgowaa, the case of Adiyaa was brought to the attention of the UNHCR office in Bangkok.

 

“UNHCR officials visited my brother in the Detention Center. Yet my brother is still under detention. We all can be deported back to China at any moment,” Turgowaa added.