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A group of four independent UN human rights experts urged Morocco on December 16 to reconsider its decision to deport Uyghur activist and asylum seeker Idris Hasan to China.
If returned to China, the experts said, the activist is likely to face arbitrary detention, forced disappearance, torture, or other inhumane and degrading treatment.
The Chinese ogvernment accused Hasan of being a member of a terrorist organization, East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), and asked Interpol to issue a read notice for his arrest.
Hasan was subsequently arrested at Casablanca’s Mohammed V Airport on July 19, after leaving Turkey to reach Europe via Morocco, and Beijing urged Rabat to extradite the activist. Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and MENA Rights have since mobilized to plead with Morocco not to hand the activist over to Chinese authorities.
In expressing their concern over the “decision by the Moroccan Court of Cassation allowing the extradition of Mr. Aishan to China,” the experts cited some “credible risk of grave violations of his human rights, both for his membership of an ethnic and religious minority and for his alleged affiliation with a terrorist organisation.”
Any state that has “strong reasons” to believe that a person is in danger of torture is barred from expelling the person in question, they stated, arguing that Hassan’s case and other similar incidents in recent months put the limelight on he existence of a pattern of egregious, blatant, or mass abuses of human rights in China.
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“This extradition process is happening without any form of individual examination and assessment of risks,” the experts warned, adding that the process “blatantly violates the absolute prohibition of refoulement under international human rights and refugee law.”
The UN group also clarified that “bilateral agreement on extradition, or diplomatic assurances” do not discharge any state from “obligations under international human rights and refugee law, in particular the principle of non-refoulement.”
As a signatory of international conventions on human rights, and the rights of refugees in particular, they argued, Morocco is under the obligation of abiding with its international commitments regardless of its diplomatic relations with China.
The call from the UN experts is a continuation of a dialogue that started in August, when they raised their concerns about this case to the Moroccan Government.
In their latest statement, the UN experts pledged to continue dialogue with Moroccan authorities to “ensure full compliance with the absolute prohibition of refoulement under international human rights and refugee law.”
