BANGKOK
Chinese officials in Thailand's south have identified "dozens" of people found in a human smuggling camp in March as "Uighur" from China's northwestern province of Xinjiang.
Chinese state newspaper The Global Times reported that its consulate in Songkla province had discovered "dozens" of the men - who are presently interned at Thai immigration jails - to be members of the Muslim ethnic group who speak a Turkic language.
The men were part of a group discovered by Thai immigration police in a southern Thai rubber plantation and subsequently declared illegal immigrants.
They claimed to be Turkish nationals, but it had been suspected that they were actually Uighur.
"Once we confirm that they are Chinese, they would be sent back to China," a Chinese diplomat told the Times on Friday.
Ahmet Akay, the deputy chief of mission from the Turkish Embassy in Bangkok, had told The Anadolu Agency in Songkhla after the discovery of the group that he had been sent to help with their identification.
"I have been instructed to establish their identity. My findings will be passed to my headquarters. They don't have documentations, as far as I know," he told AA.
On Thursday, Thailand's human rights commission said it was investigating the disappearance of more than 100 women and children from the group.
In the months following their discovery, authorities had separated the women and children from the men and started a nationality verification process. Of the women and children, 169 were placed in a government run social shelter in Songkhla, while the men were detained at several immigration police jails.
Of those 169, 137 subsequently escaped.
The Global Times quoted the consulate as saying that it had still not ascertained the nationality of the women and children.
Human rights commissioner Niran Pitakwachara, who has travelled to Songkhla to investigate, said Thursday that he suspected that those who had escaped had attempted to cross the nearby border into Malaysia.
He added that officials in charge of the shelter will be summoned by the Human rights commission to explain how so many could escape.
Uighur live primarily in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in China, where they are officially recognized as one of the 56 ethnic minorities. Smaller communities, however, exist in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Canada, the United States, and Turkey.
Human rights organizations, activists and analysts have said that they have been subject to religious, cultural and language restrictions, which have led them to flee China and helped fuel their demands for a separate state.
They have frequently fallen victim to people smugglers as they seek a better life.
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