Thai police detain 220 Uighur migrants on Malaysian border – © Phuchiss Pirunla-Ong, EPA
Kuala Lumpur (dpa) – The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Wednesday said it would seek more information about 155 undocumented Chinese ethnic minority Uighurs arrested in Kuala Lumpur last week.
“We will be contacting the relevant authorities to seek further information and clarification,” Yante Ismail, spokeswoman of UNHCR in Malaysia, said.
The Uighurs are being held in Kuala Lumpur, according to an immigration official.
“We are still in the process of gathering more information about the undocumented migrants,” he said.
A Malaysian lawyer’s group expressed concern about the arrests, which included 76 children, and urged the government to allow UNHCR to have access to them.
“In order to assess whether the Uighurs are refugees fleeing persecution, our immigration authorities must grant them immediate access to UNHCR so that they may seek asylum and have refugee status determined,” the Lawyers for Liberty said.
Uighurs come from China’s predominantly Muslim western Xinjiang region that has seen an upsurge in violence since 2012, resulting in deaths of hundreds of people.
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