Thailand defends deportation decision as US says it will impose visa restrictions on official complicit in the deportations.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced sanctions against an unidentified number of officials in Thailand for deporting at least 40 Uighurs to China last month, despite apprehensions they could be persecuted.

Rubio said in a statement on Friday that he was immediately imposing visa restrictions on current and former officials responsible for or complicit in the deportations. No Thai official has been named.

For years, rights groups have been accusing China of widespread abuses, including the mass detention of Uighurs, a mainly Muslim ethnic minority of about 10 million people in the western region of Xinjiang. Beijing rejects those claims.

“We are committed to combating China’s efforts to pressure governments to forcibly return Uyghurs and other groups to China, where they are subject to torture and enforced disappearances,” Rubio said.

Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Saturday said it had clarified multiple times with countries that have conveyed their concerns over the safety of the men that China assured that they would be unharmed, and that Thailand would follow up on their wellbeing.

“Thailand has always upheld a long tradition of humanitarianism, particularly in providing assistance to displaced persons from various countries for more than half a century and will continue to do so,” the ministry said in a statement.

Thailand’s ministers of defence and justice said they scheduled a trip to visit the men in China next week. A number of Thai journalists were invited to join them.

More than 300 Uighurs fleeing China were detained in 2014 by Thai authorities. By February, 48 Uighurs remained in Thai detention when authorities prepared to send them back to China, despite calls from Thai lawmakers and international officials not to do so.

Rubio condemned the return “in the strongest possible terms”, saying “Uyghurs have faced persecution, forced labor, and torture” in China.

In Facebook posts, the Chinese embassy in Bangkok said 40 Chinese nationals who had been “smuggled” were repatriated to Xinjiang on a chartered flight and they had “all returned home and reunited with their families after more than 10 years”.

Rubio has been a longtime critic of Beijing, and he was twice sanctioned by the Chinese government in 2020 over his support for the rights of Uighurs and people in Hong Kong.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies