China and Cambodia are both signatories to the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Under this treaty, a refugee is defined as a person who “owing to wellfounded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.” No country that has signed the treaty “shall expel or return” a refugee to the country where the refugee fears persecution. But a person doesn’t qualify as a refugee if there are “serious reasons for considering that” he has committed a “serious” crime. A country that has signed the treaty is supposed to make individual determinations regarding whether a person unwilling to return to his or her country is a refugee and is supposed to give the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) access to the asylum-seekers.
In this case, under pressure from China, the Cambodian government deported the Uighurs without determining whether they qualified as refugees. Cambodian officials allegedly evaded UNHCR employees who tried to interview the Uighurs at the Phnom Penh airport.
It’s not clear whether UNHCR would have deterimined that the Uighurs qualify as refugees. First, the UNHCR would have needed to consider any evidence that the Uighurs committed crimes related to the riots. If there were reason to believe they committed serious crimes, they wouldn’t qualify as refugees. Second, a distinction needs to be drawn between lawful prosecution and illegal persecution. If they sought asylum because they feared persecution by the Chinese government due to their Uighur ethnicity or the political opinions the expressed related to the riots, then they might have qualified as refugees. But they wouldn’t have qualified if what they feared was lawful prosecution for their role in the riots.
In conclusion, it appears that China used the investment deals to pressure Cambodia to violate its international legal obligations. This is a part of a disturbing pattern in which China has repeatedly violated its own legal obligations towards asylum seekers from North Korea and Myanmar.
Chinese are rightly proud of the evolving “rule of law” in the country. China’s treatment of asylum seekers is a sign of how far China still has to go.
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