‘Rules Were Followed, Allegations Are False’

The Spiral of Disinformation in Thailand’s Deportation of Uyghurs

Abstract

In February 2025, Thailand deported 40 Uyghur detainees to China under the cover of darkness, amid contradictory official statements, delayed disclosures, and staged displays of transparency. This article introduces the concept of a spiral of informational opacity to capture how competing narratives, selective visibility, and asymmetrical power relations erode the conditions of knowledge in multi-actor information environments, rendering verification structurally impossible. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, the article identifies three mechanisms: cumulative sedimentation, mutual delegitimization, and structural instrumentalization. It contributes to disinformation studies by shifting attention from false content to conditions of verifiability, and to migration studies by conceptualizing deportation as epistemic exclusion.