A Thai court has sentenced two ethnic Uyghur men from the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang to death for a 2015 bombing at the Erawan Shrine in central Bangkok. The attack, which occurred in August 2015 in an area popular with foreign tourists, killed 20 people and injured 120 others. Among the dead were five individuals from mainland China, two from Hong Kong, and a Singaporean.
The court determined that the defendants' actions constituted multiple separate offenses, including premeditated murder. The two men have denied the charges but intend to appeal the sentence within a month. The case took more than 10 years to reach trial, as prosecutors collected evidence from hundreds of witnesses and struggled to find an appropriate interpreter for the suspects.
While no group claimed responsibility for the bombing, security experts suggested it was an act of retaliation against the forced deportation of more than 100 Uyghurs from Thailand the previous month. Uyghurs, who are mostly Muslim, often flee the Xinjiang region due to perceived restrictions on religious and cultural freedoms and persecution, though Beijing rejects these claims.
Further highlighting the tensions, Thailand deported another 40 Uyghurs back to China last year. This action defied calls from United Nations human rights experts, who warned that the returnees would be at risk of torture, ill-treatment, and irreparable harm.