The death of a 49-year-old Uyghur asylum-seeker in Thailand has prompted pleas from rights groups to find a humane solution to the plight of around 50 Uyghur men who have been detained for nine years. Aziz Abdullah died after he collapsed in the Immigration Detention Centre in Bangkok where he was being held. He was part of a wave of more than 350 Uyghur asylum-seekers who fled from Xinjiang in western China in 2013, and were detained in Thailand.
China denies committing crimes against humanity against Uyghur Muslims and other minorities in Xinjiang, where human rights groups believe more than a million people have been held in a vast network of what the state calls "re-education camps" in recent years.
Aziz Abdullah had been an Islamic leader in a remote part of south-western Xinjiang, and arrived in Thailand with his pregnant wife, his brother and seven children sometime in late 2013.
