Fair Party MP Kannavee Suebsang on Tuesday insisted the three letters he claimed he received from Uyghurs detained in Thailand were genuine.
One of the letters suggested that they had begged Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra to send them to any third country but not back to China.
He was responding to the Department of Corrections' (DoC) dismissal Monday of his claim that the letters were from detained Uyghurs.
Citing an investigation by Klongprem Central Prison, the DoC said it found no evidence to confirm the authenticity of the letters, while Uyghur detainees denied writing the letters at the facility where they were detained last November, as claimed by Mr Kannavee.
Klongprem Central Prison officials have also compared the detainees' actual handwriting with those in the letters received by Mr Kannavee and found them to be completely different, according to the DoC.
Fair Party MP Kannavee Suebsang says the three letters he received from Uyghur detainees were genuine. (Photo: Kannavee Suebsang Facebook account)
Mr Kannavee on Friday released two of the letters allegedly written by the detainees, calling for help from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the international community to ensure they would not be handed back to China due to safety concerns. Another letter was purportedly written to the premier seeking her help to send them to be reunited with their families who were reportedly granted asylum in Turkey.
"I haven't said these letters were released properly by the DoC. I actually obtained them from some of the detainees at the Suan Phlu immigration detention centre in Bangkok," said Mr Kannavee.
The letters were from a group of seven detained Uyghurs, five of whom are still being detained there while the other two have already been deported back to China, he said.
They were written on sheets of paper bearing the DoC's official stamp, which are normally sold to detainees for one baht each, he said.
Government spokesperson Jirayu Houngsub, meanwhile, questioned why Mr Kannavee didn't pass the letter intended for the PM on to her in November when he claimed to have received it from the Uyghurs.
He further questioned Mr Kannavee's objective of sharing these letters on social media recently, despite having acquired them late last year.
