BANGKOK, Thailand -- Chinese security forces wrapped black bags over
the heads of handcuffed "jihad" Uighur passengers onboard their forced
flight from Bangkok, and frogmarched them onto the tarmac in China
toward detention after Thailand's coup leader said he expelled the 109
refugees because they would breed like animals if allowed to stay.

"A total of 109 illegal immigrants, who were repatriated from Thailand
to China on Thursday (July 9), had been on their way to Turkey, Syria
or Iraq to join jihad, the Ministry of Public Security confirmed,"
China's official Xinhua news agency reported.

"Several recruitment gangs were uncovered in Turkey by a Chinese
police investigation, which also discovered that Turkish diplomats in
some Southeast Asian countries had facilitated the illegal movement of
people," it said.

"Of the 109 individuals returned to China this week, 13 had fled China
after being implicated in terrorist activities, and another two had
escaped detention," Xinhua said, quoting the Public Security Ministry.

China is expected to harshly punish any renditioned Uighurs
(pronounced: "WEE-gurs") deemed guilty of involvement in terrorism.

Minutes after the Uighurs were forced onto the China Southern Airlines
commercial passenger plane in Bangkok, Chinese security forces
handcuffed them and draped each refugee's head in a large black bag,
and allowed China Central Television (CCTV) to broadcast their fate.

Each hooded Uighur wore a large sign around their neck with a big
number written in red, while sitting next to Chinese guards whose
uniforms were labeled: "SWAT".

Upon arrival in China, the Uighurs -- still hooded with hands cuffed
behind them -- were frogmarched down the steps from the airplane onto
the tarmac with guards keeping each person's head shoved down and body
bent-double forward, a position used in China for decades to keep
prisoners under control while walking.

CCTV showed each SWAT officer wearing a white cloth mask with circular
air filters, plus white latex gloves, apparently fearing possible
disease from the Uighurs.

New York-based Human Rights Watch's China Director, Sophie Richardson,
tweeted to CCTV which posted photographs of the airplane's hooded
passengers:  "@cctvnews Thanks for providing helpful photos of a gross
human rights violation in action."

Thailand's military junta leader Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha violated
international agreements against torture and other protections when he
sent the 109 minority ethnic Uighur Muslims back to China, according
to the U.S. State Department, the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees, Human Rights Watch, London's Amnesty International and
others.

"The deportation of this group to China would amount to refoulement,
and put them at risk of being tortured or subjected to other cruel,
inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," UN High Commissioner
for Human Rights spokesman Rupert Colville said in Geneva on July 10.

Thailand is a signatory to the Convention Against Torture and Other
Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Mr. Colville
said.

Gen. Prayuth, who rules with absolute power and also as prime minister
after his May 2014 coup, expelled the Uighurs to China and angrily
told journalists on July 9:

"If we don't do this, what else are we going to do? Or do you want to
feed them until they breed litters of offspring?"

That Thai-language phrase -- "breed litters" -- is normally used "to
describe dogs and other animals," reported Bangkok Post's respected
columnist Kong Rithdee.

"In the original Thai, the prime minister used the word 'krok,' a
rougher, throatier and much more derogatory term than the English
equivalent. Krok gives the image of animal lust.

"It signifies a large number of puppies crawling from the belly of a
bitch. It's not the term any mother would want to be heard describing
their children," Mr. Kong wrote.

About 340 Uighur men, women and children were caught in scattered
raids across Thailand during the past year, presumably fleeing China
directly by air or sea, or overland through Vietnam, Laos or
elsewhere.

Most denied understanding any Mandarin Chinese language or that they
were from China where Beijing discriminates against Uighurs and
forbids some of their Muslim traditions including long beards on men
and face-covering veils on women.

Turkey said it would accept all the Uighur refugees, reigniting past
complaints by China that Turkey supports their independence movement.

"What do you think I am going to do? Destroy investments with Turkey
or ruin Thai-Chinese ties?" an exasperated Gen. Prayuth asked
journalists.

Apparently hoping to satisfy both countries, Gen. Prayuth allowed 180
of them to fly to Turkey and forced the other group to China.

"It is not like all of a sudden China asks for Uighurs and we just
give them back. China asked for all Uighur Muslims in Thailand to be
sent back, but we said we could not do it," Thailand's deputy
government spokesman Col. Weerachon Sukhondhapatipak told journalists.

Most Uighurs in China live in the impoverished western province of
Xinjiang and consider themselves Turkmen, an ethnic group who also
live in Turkmenistan, Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey, and speak the
Turkic language.

Some have struggled for decades for a region-wide independent "East
Turkestan" which would include Xinjiang.

Beijing describes that demand as a terrorist plot fueled by the tiny
East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) based in Pakistan which has
links to Kashgar, Xinjiang's historic desert city near northern
Pakistan on the ancient Silk Road.

Two ETIM top leaders were shot dead in Pakistan in 2003 and 2010.

China's Ministry of Public Security said many of the 109 renditioned
Uighurs "had been radicalized by materials released by the
[German-based] World Uyghur Congress and the East Turkistan Islamic
Movement."

In 2002, the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Counterterrorism placed
ETIM on its list of
"Individuals and Entities Designated by the State Department Under
Executive Order 13224."

In a separate "Foreign Terrorist Organization" list, the State Department said:

"It is the most militant of the ethnic Uighur separatist groups
pursuing an independent 'Eastern Turkistan,' an area that would
include Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China.

"ETIM is linked to al Qaeda and the international mujahideen
movement," the State Department said.

The U.S. imprisoned several ETIM suspects in Guantanamo Bay.

"The fact that most Uighur detainees from Guantanamo have been
released, suggests that the U.S. has determined that they were not
members of any terrorist organization or combatants," Uighur expert
Dru Gladney, a University of Hawaii in Manoa anthropology professor,
told Voice of America in 2011.