March 2, 2025: Allowing politics in the Uyghur affair is like letting your cat play with a yarn ball and naively expecting the object to remain in the nice original shape afterwards.
We have had America condemn Thailand while turning a blind eye to Israel. (The whole scenario is comparable to a mother crab trying to lecture her children on how to walk straight.) Now, someone has dug up previous UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) internal documents which practically said that potential Chinese wrath should be taken into consideration in the treatment of Uyghurs detained by Bangkok.
According to the New Humanitarian, an independent, non-profit newsroom that has earned a lot of credibility in reports about humanitarian crises around the world, the UNHCR rebuffed requests from the Thai government to assist 48 Uyghur asylum seekers from China who have been detained in poor conditions in Thailand. The New Humanitarian strongly criticised Thailand in its report, but also was critical of how high-level politics in other places was affecting the detainees’ fate.
For years, UNHCR had bemoaned alleged “lack of access” to the detainees. However, the internal UNHCR documents, which date back to 2020, revealed that the Thai government began informally petitioning UNHCR a few years earlier to play a more active role in resolving the Uyghurs’ indefinite detention, and that agency staff advised against doing this.
UNHCR, the New Humanitarian said, has provided life-saving assistance to millions of asylum seekers around the world, but according to a 2023 report by the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP), China’s growing influence over some host countries undermines “any political or humanitarian will to recognise and duly protect Uyghur refugees”. The internal documents suggested that China’s influence also extended to the UN’s refugee agency.
This is just the Chinese “influence”, mind you. Add other global political influences and the yarn ball can never be restored to its original nobility.
“The documents show that UNHCR has failed to uphold its mandate to protect Uyghur refugees,” one senior human rights activist was quoted as saying. “UNHCR leadership does not seem to be proactively trying to find solutions for the Uyghur refugees who are spending years in detention.”
What one gets from over-reliance on "democracy"
March 1, 2025: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has learned it the hard way. Relying on democracy is great, as long as it doesn’t cause a swing that is too extreme. When a political upheaval happens in America, it seriously affects his embattled country, to the point of Ukrainians being unable to decide who they should fear more _ Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump.
Joe Biden’s America backed Ukraine to the hilt. Trump’s America is practically branding Zelensky ungrateful and all but angrily chasing him out of Washington. CNN describes the situation as “the most consequential moment in the war since Russia’s invasion.”
From relying heavily on US financial support and hardware _ which was so overwhelming that it enraged American taxpayers themselves _ Zelensky is staring at the real possibility of losing them all and Europe is looking like a bewildered and unsure sidekick of the United States.
Zelensky’s meeting with Trump and Vice President JD Vance at the Whilte House hours ago exploded in a way the diplomatic world had never witnessed before. The heated exchanges came right out of Gladiator movies or films about Roman tyranny when the emperors berated the Senate.
It’s all because of America’s November “democratic” votes that neutralised the Democrats and reinstalled Trump as president. If this is good, praise democracy. If this is bad, blame democracy.
Daily updates of local and global events by Tulsathit Taptim
