With tears rolling down his cheeks, detained Chinese political exile Zhou Junyi struggles to make his voice heard over dozens of families visiting Bangkok's main immigration detention centre.

Zhou's China Democracy Party, an exile group, organised a commemoration on June 4 in Kanchanaburi, west of Bangkok, for the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing.

"Chinese people still feel in their hearts the need for democracy," said Zhou. "Even if they cannot express it or say it openly, it is there."

Thai police arrested the 53-year-old at his home in the capital eight days after the ceremony, ostensibly for visa offences.

He now faces deportation -- for which he blames Beijing.

"I'm anxious, I've lost hope," he told AFP.

Zhou fears immediate arrest, torture and a long prison sentence if he is sent back to China, which he fled 10 years ago after attending a pro-democracy conference in the United States.

UN figures show that around 200 Chinese exiles have sought refuge in Thailand in recent years, but activists say pressure from Beijing is raising the risk of forced deportation.

Alongside Zhou at the detention centre, Tan Yixiang shouted across a metre-wide space between two wire mesh fences.

A vocal advocate for Tibetan and Uyghur rights, Tan is a UN-recognised refugee but has been........

© International Business Times