In April 2018, Cambodia and Thailand’s cooperation was formalized with a bilateral
agreement that allows for the exchange of “foreign fugitives” who have crossed the border
between the two countries. The details of the agreement were not made public, but it was
signed in the context of an increasing crackdown on civil society in both countries.
Following a coup in 2014, the Thai government pursued a violent crackdown on media
outlets and large-scale detention of dissidents. In Cambodia, the civil and political rights
environment was deteriorating rapidly following the arrest of political opposition leader
Kem Sokha in 2017 and dozens of other opposition and civil society leaders. Bilateral
extradition agreements such as this one make it easier for governments to abuse
extradition and use it for politically motivated reasons, such as targeting critics. Given the
increasing crackdown by both governments, the agreement facilitates transnational
repression by putting dissidents living in exile at risk of harm. Following the deal, several
Cambodian activists and journalists were extradited from Thailand to Cambodia.
In December 2018, Rath Rott Mony, a filmmaker who worked on a documentary that
uncovered child sex trafficking in Cambodia, was arrested in Bangkok outside the
Netherlands Embassy where he was seeking a visa. He was then extradited from Thailand
to Cambodia, at the request of the Cambodian government, on the basis of charges of
“incitement to discriminate.” In June 2019, a Cambodian court, which is not independent
from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, convicted him and sent him to prison for
two years.
In November 2021, two UNHCR-registered Cambodian refugees, Veourn Vesna and Voeung
Samnang, were forcibly returned to Cambodia from Thailand by the Thai authorities. Both
men had links to the Cambodian opposition party and fled to Thailand from Cambodia,
where they faced politically motivated charges, following the Cambodian government’s
crackdown on political opponents. Their removals appear to have been facilitated by the
bilateral agreement between Cambodia and Thailand, and are consistent with the
Cambodian government’s persecution of its political opponents abroad.
China
For many years, the Chinese government has repressed and violated the human rights of
Uyghurs, an ethnic Turkic population who are predominantly Muslim and live in the
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China. Human Rights Watch and others
“WE WILL FIND YOU”
10