04 January 2010 :

Cambodia deported a group of 20 Uighurs, including two small children, who fled China after the July riots and sought asylum with the United Nations High Commission on Refugees in Phnom Penh. Their role in the rioting remains unclear, but China called them criminals, and Cambodia said it was deporting them because they had entered the country illegally. "Some of them are suspected of the crimes of arson and illegally making explosives," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular news conference, without elaborating. Human rights groups have denounced their repatriation as a violation of international conventions on refugees and asylum seekers. The US, the UN and several rights groups urged Cambodia not to deport the group, which, according to Interior Ministry spokesman Lt. Gen. Khieu Sopheak, left Phnom Penh International Airport on a special plane sent from China. A spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said it had not finished evaluating the Uighurs for refugee status and that expelling them was a “grave breach of international refugee law.”