BANGKOK: Twenty ethnic Uighur Muslims from China broke out of a detention centre near the Thai-Malaysia border, officials said on Monday, after digging holes in the wall and using blankets as ladders.

The 20 were part of the last remaining group of more than 200 Uighurs who were detained in 2014.

Members of the group identified themselves as Turkish citizens and asked to be sent to Turkey but more than 100 were forcibly returned to China in July 2015, a move that sparked international condemnation, including from rights groups who feared they could face torture in China.

Hundreds of people have died in recent years in China’s troubled far-western region of Xinjiang due to violence between majority Han Chinese and Uighurs, who speak a Turkic language.

Over the years, hundreds, possibly thousands, of Uighurs have escaped unrest in Xinjiang by travelling clandestinely via Southeast Asia to Turkey.

Published in Dawn, November 21st, 2017