The 20 were part of the last remaining group of more than 200 Uighurs who were detained in 2014. Over the years, hundreds, possibly thousands, of Uighurs have escaped unrest in Xinjiang by travelling clandestinely via Southeast Asia to Turkey. Twenty-five Uighurs dug through their cell wall using broken tiles and then used blankets to climb out of the cell to make their dramatic escape from the detention centre in Thailand’s southern Songkhla province, immigration officials said. “Twenty are still at large,” Police Captain Prasit Timmakarn, sub-inspector of the detention centre, told Reuters, adding: “Heavy rain helped to mask the loud escape noises.”Prasit said authorities have set up checkpoints along the border. The Chinese government has blamed much of the Xinjiang unrest on separatist Islamist militants, though rights groups and exiles say that anger over tightening Chinese controls on the religion and culture of Uighurs is more to blame.

Source: New Strait Times November 20, 2017 07:30 UTC