The Court of Appeal has granted bail to two Chinese dissidents, who face charges of violating Thai immigration law despite holding United Nations documents describing them as refugees.
Wu Yuhua was detained by police in Bangkok with her husband Yang Chong on Aug 29 and locked up in an immigration detention centre.
The couple had lodged a bail application last week in a bid to stall attempts to repatriate them to China, where they fear political reprisals at the hands of the Communist Party.
In a ruling read out at the Pathumwan Municipal Court on Friday, the appeal court said that the pair deserved bail because of “the nature of the relatively lenient charges and the good behaviour of the couple”, according to a reporter for BenarNews, an online news service affiliated with Radio Free Asia.
The bail for each was set at 300,000 baht but the couple are not allowed to leave the country without court approval.
Clad in a prison uniform and a surgical mask, Ms Wu looked sickly in court but brightened when a translator informed her of the bail ruling. Mr Yang, jailed in Bangkok Remand Prison, appeared healthier but was chained at the ankles during the court appearance.
Lawyers from the Center for Asylum Protection, an advocacy group, posted bail for Ms Wu on Friday afternoon and she was subsequently released from the Central Women’s Correction Institute.
However, Mr Yang’s supporters were still trying to raise funds to make his bail.
Speaking to the RFA Mandarin Service following her release, Ms Wu said conditions in detention had damaged her health.
“Because the sanitation there is so bad, I now have some gynecological problems. I also have some problems with my stomach, and a sore throat that I had has now developed into bronchitis,” she said.
“My husband is still detained by the police. We did not have enough money to pay his bail. But our case will be heard in court next Wednesday, and if we are charged in court, he will be put into an immigration jail and he will lose all hope of being bailed out.”
Ms Wu and Mr Yang were initially targeted by Chinese police after taking part in press freedom protests in Guangzhou in January 2013.
They fled the country in February 2015 and made their way to Thailand after Ms Wu started a support group for disappeared rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng. In Thailand, they eked out an existence without papers in Pattaya.
They were approved as political refugees by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Bangkok in 2017, but had yet to be accepted for resettlement in a third country amid a global tightening of national immigration policies.
A senior officer at Lumpini police station said that police would charge Ms Wu with illegal entry and Mr Yang Chong with overstaying a visa next Wednesday. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of two years in jail.
The couple were detained on Aug 29 for “making a disturbance” along with another Chinese national outside the New Zealand Embassy in Bangkok, where they had hoped to persuade New Zealand officials to consider them for resettlement.
The police say the pair had violated Thai immigration laws, regardless of their UNHCR status.
They say Mr Yang entered the country legally with a tourist visa at Suvarnabhumi Airport but the visa expired three years ago. They say no records exist to show that Ms Wu entered the country legally.
