MEHMET TOHTI

Uyghurs Land in Switzerland

2010-03-24T00:17:00.000-04:00

Uyghurs Land in Switzerland

2010-03-23
After 8-1/2 years in custoday at Guantanamo Bay, two men are freed.

AFP
Swiss Federal Councillor and Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf (R) at a news conference in Bern, Feb. 3, 2010.
WASHINGTON—Two ethnic Uyghur detainees, both Chinese nationals, have arrived in Switzerland after 8-1/2 years in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, a knowledgeable source said Tuesday.
Switzerland agreed to resettle Bahtiyar Mahnut and Arkin Mahmud despite pressure from the Chinese government amidst ongoing negotiations over a free trade agreement.
The two brothers were captured in Afghanistan in October 2001 by U.S. troops. They reached their new flat in Jura, Switzerland, on Tuesday, according to the source, who asked not to be named.

The Swiss lower house National Security Commission voted Jan. 12—with 15 votes to 10—against taking in the two men, natives of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwestern China.
According to a statement by the Swiss government, the two Uyghurs were considered for resettlement because they were granted that right by the U.S. government in 2005 after no evidence could be found connecting them to terrorist groups.
The statement added that the Federal Council had agreed on Dec. 16 to allow an Uzbek national from the camp to resettle in the Swiss Canton of Geneva.
The Canton of Jura then voted on Jan. 27 to admit the two Uyghurs, pending approval by the Federal Council. Jura is one of 26 Swiss cantons, with a population of about 70,000.

China opposed any countries accepting the two men, claiming they are members of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, which China, the United Nations, and the United States regard as a terrorist organization.
The U.S. government has refused to return Uyghurs held at Guantanamo to China, saying they would face persecution there. But Washington has also been reluctant to resettle the Uyghurs in the United States.
The Uyghur men were among a larger group of 22 Uyghurs captured in Pakistan and Afghanistan and sold for bounty to U.S. forces following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Six were transferred to Palau in October, four to Bermuda in June, and five to Albania in 2006. One man in the last group has since resettled in Sweden.
Palau initially invited 12 of 13 remaining Uyghurs at Guantanamo to resettle on the tiny Pacific island, but it did not offer to take in Arkin Mahmud, 45, because he has developed mental health problems.
His brother Bahtiyar Mahnut opted to stay at Guantanamo to take care of his older brother, The Washington Post reported at the time.
Three others turned down Palau's offer for other reasons.
All say they were living as refugees in Afghanistan, having faced religious persecution in China.
Terror allegations
The United States maintained that the men had attended terror-training camps, and they were flown to Guantanamo Bay in June 2002. They were eventually cleared of terrorist links but remained in custody while Washington tried to find a country willing to take them in.
Millions of Uyghurs—a distinct, Turkic minority who are predominantly Muslim—populate Central Asia and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of northwestern China.
Ethnic tensions between Uyghurs and majority Han Chinese settlers have simmered for years, and erupted in rioting in July that left some 200 people dead, according to the Chinese government’s tally.
Uyghurs say they have long suffered ethnic discrimination, oppressive religious controls, and continued poverty and joblessness despite China's ambitious plans to develop its vast northwestern frontier.
Chinese authorities blame Uyghur separatists for a series of deadly attacks in recent years and accuse one group in particular of maintaining links to the al-Qaeda terrorist network.
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Harper says trade won't stifle human rights talk

2009-12-05T00:18:00.000-05:00

Harper says trade won't stifle human rights talk
Last Updated: Friday, December 4, 2009 | 10:38 PM ET
CBC News

Stephen Harper makes a speech to business leaders in Shanghai on Friday. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday his government would not let the pursuit of expanded economic ties with China lead to silence on human rights issues.

In his first and only major speech during his four-day visit to China, Harper told a crowd of business leaders gathered in Shanghai that building a stronger trade relationship is not incompatible with an open discussion of human rights.

He also outlined the benefits of increasing trade and Chinese investment in Canada, highlighting Canada's falling tax rates, low government debt and abundant energy resources.

"But just as trade is a two-way street, so too is dialogue," he said.

"Our government believes and has always believed that a mutually beneficial economic relationship is not incompatible with a good and frank dialogue on fundamental values like freedom, human rights and the rule of law," he told the crowd of 500 business leaders.

"And so, in relations between China and Canada, we will continue to raise issues of freedom and human rights, be a vocal advocate and an effective partner for human rights reform, just as we pursue the mutually beneficial economic relationship desired by both our countries."

This section of the speech was greeted with silence from the crowd of businessmen, who had applauded previously statements focusing on trade and the removal of protectionist policies.

Harper's comments came a day after Canada and China issued a joint statement saying China would bestow the label of "preferred tourist destination" on Canada, a move that will make it easier for Chinese tourists to visit Canada.

Thursday's statement only briefly mentioned the issue of human rights, saying the two sides agreed they had "distinct points of view."

Harper chided for waiting too long to visit

It is Harper's first visit to China since forming his first government in 2006, a fact Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made note of several times during public statements on Thursday. A Canadian prime minister had not visited since Paul Martin did so in January 2005.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his wife, Laureen, visited the Forbidden City in Beijing on Friday before meeting with business leaders in Shanghai. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)"Five years is too long a time for China-Canada relations and that's why there are comments in the media that your visit is one that should have taken place earlier," Wen said Thursday.

Canada-China relations have been frosty since Harper became prime minister in 2006, particularly because of his past comments on China's human rights record and his public support of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader who has been living in exile since China annexed the region in 1958.

Chinese President Hu Jintao also had threatened to call off a meeting between the two leaders in Vietnam in 2006 after Harper criticized China over a case involving Huseyin Celil, a Canadian activist jailed in China for alleged terrorist links. Beijing continues to refuse to allow Canadian consular visits to Celil.

The Conservative government has backed off in the last year from publicly chiding China, opting instead for more quiet diplomacy, a recognition of China's growing importance as an economic power.

The government-run China Daily has characterized Harper's visit as a sign that relations between the two countries may "thaw," while another article described Harper's visit as "late" but "still welcome."

Earlier in the day, the prime minister visited the Forbidden City in the heart of Beijing and met with Wu Bangguo, chairman of the standing committee of the National People's Congress and one of the government's top figures.

Harper is scheduled to visit Hong Kong on Saturday and then concludes his Asian trip with a visit to South Korea, where he will address the National Assembly on Monday.

With files from The Canadian Press

Scoring in China – without prostituting ourselves

2009-12-05T00:12:00.002-05:00

John Ibbitson
Scoring in China – without prostituting ourselves

Despite his public mauling by the Chinese Premier, Stephen Harper's trip is a substantive success

Harper vows to promote human rights
Globe editorial: The tardy guest and the human touch

John Ibbitson
Published on Friday, Dec. 04, 2009 6:57PM EST
Last updated on Friday, Dec. 04, 2009 7:19PM EST
Stephen Harper has an unfailing ability to take a weak speech and make it even flatter through delivery, and his address to Chinese and Canadian business leaders Friday evening was no exception. But that's not the point.

The point is that, despite his mauling by Premier Wen Jiabao over the Conservative government's tardy and reluctant recognition of the importance of the China-Canada relationship, the Prime Minister's trip is substantively a success.

The Chinese granted Canada permission to market group tours of Chinese citizens to Canada – a privilege that other nations have long enjoyed, but that our country has been unsuccessfully seeking for a decade. Final agreement came late and was uncertain until the end, according to sources. Clearly, the Chinese knew that the Canadians needed deliverables, and were prepared to grant this one, though not without a good spanking first.

There were a few other accords as well, none of them earth-moving. In sum they appear to reflect a Chinese government willing to re-engage with Canada despite our years of self-imposed exile.

And the past few days demonstrate emphatically that Mr. Harper fully recognizes the vital importance to Canada's economic and geopolitical future of fully engaging with China, at every level, all the time.

“As economic power and human prosperity spreads from West to East, Canada's trade orientation is shifting also,” Mr. Harper said in his speech. “It is clear that in the 21st century, trans-Pacific trade will increasingly fuel our economic growth.”

So it will. But it is easier and more morally satisfying to trade with like-minded democracies such as the United States and Europe. China is not a democracy. It imprisons people for what they say; its judiciary is not to be trusted; it is corrupt.

The challenge for Canadians is to engage with China while not prostituting ourselves. Mr. Harper thought he could chastise the Chinese on human rights while simultaneously fostering trade. But the Chinese government had no intention of playing that game, which is why the diplomatic equivalent of corporal punishment was the price of readmission to the regime's good graces.

How to balance trade and human rights on the China file has baffled every Canadian government. Most just caved, shoving the issue aside. Mr. Harper believes he can promote both.

“Our government believes, and has always believed, that a mutually beneficial economic relationship is not incompatible with a good and frank dialogue on fundamental values like freedom, human rights and the rule of law,” Mr. Harper said in his speech.

“…We will continue to raise issues of freedom and human rights, be a vocal advocate and an effective partner for human-rights reform, just as we pursue the mutually beneficial economic relationship desired by both our countries.”

Properly handled, this is the approach that all the Western democracies should be taking. The equilibrium of this century depends on helping China manage its growth, as laissez faire capitalism pits staggering urban wealth against grinding rural poverty; as the Middle Kingdom takes its place at the forefront of nations without, as yet, the mechanisms to ensure peace and justice within its borders and without.

Thus far, Mr. Harper has stumbled repeatedly as he seeks his own equilibrium in dealing with the China Question. But he is an intelligent and pragmatic man. He is able to learn.

How well he learns could help determine our prosperity and, in Canada's own quiet way, contribute to peace in the coming time.

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Related Information

Harper vows to promote human rights Friday, Dec. 04, 2009 09:17AM EST
Globe editorial: The tardy guest and the human touch Thursday, Dec. 03, 2009 11:39PM EST
Norman Spector: Harper’s not for kowtowing Friday, Dec. 04, 2009 08:53AM EST
Analysis: Public scolding likely long-planned Friday, Dec. 04, 2009 12:02AM EST
Latest Comments

ProudCanadian123

12/5/2009 12:10:34 AM
Harper cares about human right ? Since when ?

'Harper Knew About Torture In Afghanistan' - NATO Official

http://buckdogpolitics.blogspot.com/2009/11/harper-knew-about-torture-in.html
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ProudCanadian123

12/5/2009 12:08:06 AM
Harper Personally Directed Torture Cover-Up

http://mikewatkins.ca/2009/11/22/harper-personally-directed-torture-cover-up/
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bhodg

12/5/2009 12:05:32 AM
Harper would do well to mention specific human-rights issues rather than simply saying, "We will raise human-rights issues." For example, he could encourage the Chinese to allow greater freedom of speech, one of the basic freedoms that is in only the earliest stages of development in China. No doubt the Chinese government with its pseudo-newspapers/government-mouthpieces sees this as a fundamental weakness of Western democracies, seeing how they take their cues (e.g. critisism of Harper for "alienating Canada from China") from the CBC, Globe etc. in their own comments and criticisms of Harper. Which is an interesting contrast: Harper can only communicate to Chinese officials, whereas their communication is as much to Canadians and the Canadian media as to Harper, since these have the power in our democracy!

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China's rigged trials against Uyghurs merits more attention from world community

2009-10-25T22:20:00.000-04:00

China's rigged trials against Uyghurs merits more attention from world community
6:19 PM ET

Memet Tohti [Former Vice President, World Uyghur Congress]: "A recent report released by Human Rights Watch over the inadequacy and unfairness of the trials of Urumqi protestors has brought our memory back to the July 5 massacre committed by the Chinese military and government backed Han Chinese mobsters. Mass arrests and manhunts started as early as the evening of July 5 after the suppression order issued by Wang Lequan, Communist party chief in the Uyghur Autonomous region, employed the rarely used word of "zhenya" which translated roughly to “kill to clean” or “complete suppression” in comparison to “ping xi” (to silence)that was used for the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and the Tibetan uprising of March 2008. When the Chinese military receives an order with “zhenya” usually there will be no limits to their actions. That’s what “zhenya” means and that is why it has rarely been used. This is a key word that could reflect the scale of suppression directed against Uyghurs that resulted in an unknown number of killings, arrests and disappearances that still question our minds.

The Chinese government's complete blockage of communications in East Turkistan since July 5 has caused grave concerns and raised serious questions for many experts as to whether China is hiding something from the outside world. This blockage has been harshly enforced by the government and includes the shutdown of landline telephone services, wireless telephone, and Internet and text messaging. The initial government excuse of "shutting down communication to prevent further spread of riots across the region" is no longer a valid one. And what could be the excuse for government keeping the entire Uyghur region in a state of complete communication blackout until today? Is it something to do with hiding the truth from outside and fearing exposure by the victims' families?

In addition to the communication shutdown, authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region passed a law during the first week of October that bans people from saying anything that "damages national Unity, incites separatism, or harms social stability." This vaguely worded bill has been implemented throughout East Turkistan to silence the outspoken parents, widows and family members of Uyghurs who have gone missing since July 5, 2009. In Kashgar, Hoten and other areas, local authorities even banned talk of the July 5 events themselves and have arrested violators.

Today Uyghur family members are constantly threatened, harassed and even prosecuted for inquiring about the location of loved ones, as we seen in the recent example of two Uyghurs who were arrested on charges of "State Secrete leakage" for reporting the death of one Uyghur man under police custody after his detention under an alleged July 5 connection. His father revealed that his son was killed by police torture and armed military personnel surrounded his house and actually forced the burial of his son without any traditional ceremony for fear of possible public exposure of this news.

Brad Adams, Asia Director at Human Rights Watch, is absolutely right when he said that "the cases documented are likely just the tip of the iceberg." In my previous Hotline comment, I mentioned the more than 1000 deaths and subsequent arrest of as many as 10,000 Uyghurs on the basis of eyewitness testimonies. Recently one of my friends in mainland China told me that the small city of Artush alone received more than 179 dead bodies of Uyghurs from Urumqi in mid-July. Further, Canadian student Sakine Zulang has described her horrible experiences in the streets of Urumqi.

The Chinese government and official media also have given conflicting accounts of the total number of arrests made after the Urumqi massacre without mentioning the total Uyghur death toll. An official Xinhua News report on July 7, 2009, put the number of arrests as many as 1434 while the other day same Xinhua News Agency was quoted by Communist Party officials giving a much smaller number of more than 700 arrests. Meanwhile, at the outset the government denied the military employed violence against Uyghur protestors, but later on the puppet governor of the Uyghur Autonomous region disclosed twelve deaths by gunfire.

Ekrem (his full name remains undisclosed out of fear of retaliation), recently arrived in Toronto from Urumqi and told me that starting at 10pm on July 5, electricity in the Uyghur area of Urumqi city was suddenly switched off and nonstop gunfire continued until dawn. In the early morning firefighter trucks washed out all the neighborhood streets. The Uyghur area of Urumqi city used to be very active with thousands of Uyghur vendors, sellers, shoe shiners and small business owners from morning to evening. It is now deserted and in a state of absolute silence. Another area called Horse Race Square, (Sai ma chang in Chinese), the place where Uyghur women took to the streets on July 7 to demand the release of their arrested husbands, has now also became empty as the government forced all women to return their hometowns.

Then on July 7, the Chinese secret service organized nearly 10,000 ethnic Han mobsters armed with axes, iron bars and other tools to "show their teeth" to Uyghurs in Urumqi. Exact numbers of the death toll has never been reported.

It seems to me that the Chinese government wants to be certain it has cut off and silenced all voices from the victim families before they attempt to reopen communications in East Turkistan. Thus the international community has a responsibility to put pressure on the Chinese government to open the communication service for Uyghurs and launch serious inquiries about the tragic outcome of the July 5 massacre because it is no less significant than the Gaza incursion or other such human rights tragedies."

China's Minority Problem--And Ours

2009-10-02T14:47:00.000-04:00

China's Minority Problem--And Ours
By Christina Larson, New America Foundation
Foreign Policy | September 30, 2009

The key principle underlying China's minority policy -- the idea that the Communist Party and the country's political elite are capable of judging for minorities what is in their best interests -- hasn't changed since Mao. Examining that assumption could lead to deeper systemic questioning, which Beijing dearly wants to avoid.
Learn More About:
Christina Larson

The Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program

About These Icons
On October 1, the People's Republic of China will mark its 60th anniversary with the largest military parade in its history. The ruling Communist Party is not commemorating 60 years of ideological stability and continuity, however, but a period of speedy change and dramatic reversals.
Most of the major ideas that animate Beijing today are the opposite of those found in Chairman Mao's Little Red Book: Communism as guiding economic doctrine is out. Getting rich is glorious. Western decadence is not threatening, but useful as an engine of China's export economy. And instead of railing against the established powers of the developed world, China now wants to join them.
Still, there is one way in which China's governance philosophy and architecture remain largely unchanged from what Mao Zedong envisioned in the 1950s: minority affairs. And recent bloody riots in Xinjiang and Tibet are a wake-up call that the system is fraying badly. Today Beijing should be encouraging a dialogue about the sources of growing discontent, not placing further bans on local media and minority religious observance, as it is doing now. Rising unrest in China's western borderlands is an ominous sign, not just for Beijing but for all of Asia.
Mao foresaw the challenge of managing minority concerns in western China, but the solution he cooked up was no great leap forward. During China's civil war in the 1940s, he lured China's ethnic minorities -- Tibetans, Uighurs, and Hui Muslims, among others -- into fighting for the Red Army with promises of independence if he prevailed. But once the war ended, Mao retreated from talk of "independence" to talk of "autonomy," borrowing an experimental concept from his northern neighbor, Joseph Stalin.
Today, China's main minority regions, including Xinjiang and Tibet, are technically known as "autonomous regions." These regions, where historically the population has been ethnically and culturally distinct from China's Han majority, have been given the semblance of local stewardship. But decisions are still made centrally, with the assumption that Beijing knows best -- similar to the Soviet system of local satraps who took their orders from Moscow. As Drew Thompson, director of China studies at the Nixon Center in Washington, says, "The phrase 'autonomous regions' rings a little hollow."
With the USSR, of course, the system worked until it didn't: When Mikhail Gorbachev finally took the lid off, it revealed the extent to which Soviet policies had deepened regional and ethnic divisions -- failing at the goal of forging a shared national identity. There's no sign that China will see a happier outcome. "In the long term, this is not a very stable arrangement for China," says the Hudson Institute's Richard Weitz.
It's also not a stable arrangement for any country with a security interest in Central Asia -- which is to say, much of the world. As Weitz explains: "China's two most sensitive ethnic areas are also its two most significant regions for geopolitical reasons: Xinjiang is a Muslim region, and it's very important as China's gateway to Central Asia. And Tibet is a buffer zone for China's tense relationship with India."
Territorial disintegration is the last thing Beijing wants. The leadership is forever wary of the cyclical nature of Chinese history: a millennia-long drama in which political dynasties have risen and amassed territory, until emperors lose the "mandate from heaven" and tumble precipitously -- while the map of China fractures into shards like a shattered vase.
Yet, despite this looming risk, the key principle underlying China's minority policy -- the idea that the Communist Party and the country's political elite are capable of judging for minorities what is in their best interests -- hasn't changed since Mao. Examining that assumption could lead to deeper systemic questioning, which Beijing dearly wants to avoid.
"A fundamental tenet of China's governing philosophy is that the Communist Party leaders are supposed to represent the interests of the country as a whole, without distinction," says Gardner Bovingdon, professor of East Asian and Eurasian studies at Indiana University. "The idea that there could be legitimate sectarian interests, which may have different or even conflicting objectives, is one that the Communist Party does not want to touch."
Unfortunately, Beijing may not have the option of plugging its ears to minority dissatisfaction for much longer.
In particular, the influx of Han settlers into China's ethnically diverse western regions is creating a volatile dynamic not present in China's eastern megacities, where the population is more homogenous. Western urbanization has thrust new groups together, but not made new neighbors into friends. Mutual distrust is the norm, and there are racially charged insult matches in Internet chat rooms and in the streets. Han Chinese claim the minorities are living better than before, with access to new roads, hospitals, and other infrastructure -- which is true. Minorities meanwhile claim that recent Han arrivals are living much better than they are, while inequality is growing fast -- also true. (According to the Asian Development Bank, Xinjinag exhibits the greatest level of inequality of any region in China.)
In Urumqi and Lhasa, where the two most bloody riots in China's recent history have occurred in the past 18 months, one of the most striking features is the absolute separateness with which the minority populations and the recent Han arrivals coexist -- and the obvious economic disparity. A common reference point for the situation is the American South prior to the Civil Rights movement. "In some of these large western cities, the situation looks a lot like the American segregated South -- people living alongside each other in radically different conditions, not really communicating," says Charles Freeman, a China scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Tensions are easy to kindle."
Moreover, the political system is not set up to protect minorities from abuse. By law, the governor of these autonomous regions must be a member of the relevant minority group. But the person who fills that position is selected by the political establishment -- and so owes his career and primary allegiance to the powers that be. As Bovington observes, "Most minority officials rise by association with powerful Han counterparts; they are clearly selected for their early appreciation of the Communist Party." It's little surprise that minority cadres produced by this system have not become champions for minority interests, but risk-averse politicians.
(Beijing has even taken it upon itself to appoint a loyal Tibetan to be the 11th incarnation of the Panchen Lama, which of course fails entirely to satisfy the religious preconditions of the position. As one Tibetan monk at a monastery in Yunnan told me, "Of course he's a fake. How can the government know what is in his heart? You can't 'hire' a lama.")
With no effective watchdog for minority interests, policies that might, in theory, advance minority interests instead get mangled in the execution -- bungled affirmative action hiring schemes, boondoggle "minority-themed" construction projects, street signs in Uighur script that are illegible to Uighurs.
Overzealous Han security forces frequently take advantage of the lax oversight to bully ethnic minorities. As one Uighur told me after our visit to a village mosque in southwest Xinjiang was interrupted by an unannounced inspection by two Han police officers (my Uighur friend, intimidated, insisted we leave in a hurry), "I don't like police. They are always rude and rough."
Another Uighur, a schoolteacher in Kashgar, told me: "Our schools need to improve, and we need government support. But bribery skims off the top of any money devoted to minorities. Let's say Hu Jintao says that 10 million renminbi should be given to us. Then, at every layer, the leader takes some, and then the next leader takes some. So in the end we get only 1 million. No one watches the money or makes sure we get our due."
With economic disparity and discrimination on the rise in the autonomous regions, ethnic relations are becoming increasingly combustible. The inability of Beijing's policies to address these issues, as Thompson puts it, "is a governance problem. What kinds of bottom-up mechanisms exist for minorities to express themselves or exercise checks and balance? The answer is very few. ... Right now, violence is one of the few options." Beijing should be hoping that its ethnic minorities find other means of expressing their concerns. A peaceful movement for equality could be monumentally beneficial, both for minorities and for all of China. "To have a harmonious society, in my view, China should have a civil rights movement," said Cheng Li, a senior fellow at the Brooking Institution's John L. Thornton China Center.
But a movement needs leaders, and at the moment Beijing is doing its best to handicap or discredit any leaders who might be chosen by minorities to represent their own interests, such as the Dalai Lama or Rebiya Kadeer. "I do not see signs of a civil right movement emerging," says Li, "of leaders emerging who will think this way." The problem lies with the system, which is aimed at training a small class of minority elites to be loyal to the party, not cultivating voices who express a new point of view.
It's not a happy predicament -- either for minorities or the stability-obsessed government in Beijing. Hu Jintao may not relish the prospect of allowing the emergence of China's Martin Luther King Jr. But, given that ethnic tensions are only likely to grow worse under the current system, he might soon be facing something more explosive -- a reckoning with China's Malcolm X.
Copyright 2009, ForeignPolicy.com

THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA AT SIXTY: THE FEAR OF SELF-EXAMINATION

2009-10-02T14:44:00.000-04:00

THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA AT SIXTY: THE FEAR OF SELF-EXAMINATION

Huffington Post
Henryk Szadziewski
Manager, Uyghur Human Rights Project
Posted: October 1, 2009 10:48 AM

October 1, 2009 marks sixty years since Mao Zedong proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Beijing. China's capital has been readied for a parade of 200,000 people to honor the achievements of six decades of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) administration. It is a time for Party officials the length and breadth of the country to reflect on sixty years of rule which has brought China to the brink of superpower status.

October 1 also marks the 54th anniversary of the founding of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, an area also known as East Turkestan. The capital of the region, Urumchi, experienced a wave of unrest this summer and has been tense in the build up to October 1. In preparation, an estimated 130,000 additional troops have been deployed to the region to ensure that new unrest does not break out at this sensitive time. Despite the long-standing problems besetting the region, Party officials are unlikely to reflect on why six decades of CCP rule has driven such a profound wedge between the region's Uyghurs and Han Chinese.

An ethnically charged incident in Shaoguan, Guangdong on June 26, 2009 has been widely portrayed as the trigger for the recent unrest in Urumchi, which began on July 5, 2009. During the incident Han Chinese attacked Uyghur workers at a toy factory after the spread of unsubstantiated rumors concerning a rape by six Uyghur men of two Han Chinese women. The seriousness of the Shaoguan incident has been down played by Chinese criminal and judicial authorities. This has been illustrated by the Chinese official media's line that only two Uyghurs were killed in Shaoguan and by the indictments related to the case; but, as the Guardian newspaper has reported, eyewitnesses tell a different story. A Han Chinese man involved in the Shaoguan killings stated in the Guardian report that he personally "helped to kill seven or eight Uighurs, battering them until they stopped screaming."

Given the lack of clarity over the Shaoguan incident and the Chinese authorities' feet dragging on legal procedures, it should not have been surprising that Uyghurs in Urumchi took it upon themselves to organize a peaceful demonstration to spur Chinese officials into action. On July 5, 2009, the day of the Uyghur demonstration, and on the days that followed, a number of innocent Uyghurs and Han Chinese were killed as unrest in Urumchi spiraled out of control. The unrest not only revealed the profound schism between Uyghur and Han Chinese communities, but also exposed the disenfranchisement Uyghurs feel after sixty years of CCP administration.

From the purges of East Turkestan nationalists in the Anti-Rightist Campaign of the late fifties, to the starvation, exile and cultural destruction of the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), Uyghurs, along with millions of other victims in the PRC, were persecuted by the CCP. In addition, in the first three decades of CCP rule Uyghurs were the target of campaigns specifically aimed to dilute their distinct identity as a people. In the early sixties, the CCP administration instigated a forced resettlement policy with the aims of dispersing concentrations of Uyghurs and of isolating Uyghurs from their communities.

The current situation facing Uyghurs can hardly be said to be an improvement, and intensifying Uyghur repression has correlated with the growth of China's economic and political power on the world stage. China's interest in the region stems from the valuable natural resources, namely oil, on which it sits and from the strategic importance attached to the region's proximity to Russia, South Asia and Central Asia. The Chinese government's thirst for energy to fuel economic growth in eastern China and its increasing dominance in global affairs has put the long neglected region onto the CCP's radar and turned the Uyghur presence in the region into a question of assimilation into the Chinese fold.

The Chinese government has employed long-term and short-term measures to achieve the assimilation of the land and the people. These measures have impacted every area of Uyghur society, including its politics, economics, and culture. The long term measures include the forced transfer of young Uyghur women to eastern China while encouraging mass Han Chinese migration into the region, the demolition of Uyghur cultural heritage in Kashgar, a monolingual language-planning policy, discriminatory hiring practices, and curbs on freedom of religion. The short-term measures, such as torture and execution on political charges, ensure that a climate of fear pervades among Uyghurs so that the gradual erosion of the Uyghur identity can carry on unabated. All these measures spell out a clear, but stark outcome for Uyghurs: eventual disappearance as a distinct people.

Since 1949, repressive Chinese government policies in the region have only served to divide Uyghurs from Han Chinese and have pushed the prospect of a genuine solution to Uyghur grievances further away. As CCP officials in Beijing and Urumchi celebrate on October 1 by witnessing a parade of China's military and economic success, they would be wise to consider those citizens who have been the losers in the sixty years of CCP administration. A future with peace, security and prosperity for the Uyghur people, and indeed all people in the region, lies in a bold move from the Chinese government. Just as Deng Xiaoping made a bold move to take China into an era of economic reform; Hu Jintao will have to make a bold move, by talking with dissenters, such as World Uyghur Congress President, Rebiya Kadeer, to take China into an era of meaningful political reform.

60 years after revolution, ethnic tension still plagues China

2009-09-21T15:25:00.001-04:00

60 years after revolution, ethnic tension still plagues China

By Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers
URUMQI, China — China's leadership says it has calmed this city after almost 200 people were stabbed, bludgeoned or beaten to death in July riots and more violent protests this month forced the removal of top officials.

Despite the assurances from Beijing, however, Urumqi remains on edge less than two weeks before the 60th anniversary celebration of China's communist regime. The region's main ethnic groups, Han Chinese and Uighurs — Turkic-speaking Muslims — are locked in a cycle of violence in this enclave of more than 2.3 million people near China's western border.

Hundreds of soldiers with automatic rifles and riot shields are stationed on street corners. Pickups zoom through the streets blaring propaganda from loudspeakers, exalting the government and demanding cooperation.

Urumqi (pronounced urum-CHEE) is supposed to be a testament to China's unstoppable progress, the ability to take an ancient trading post of more than a dozen ethnic communities and erect over them a modern city of glittering towers dedicated to commerce and tourism.

Beneath the large red banners that blanket the city with slogans such as "Ethnic unity is a blessing and ethnic separatism is a curse," though, relations between Uighurs and Hans are in tatters.

"It's a mess here," said Su Xiaomei, a Han woman who owns a small restaurant in central Urumqi. "Many Uighurs used to come to my restaurant, and I felt fine about that, but now I feel angry when I see them. . . . We try to stay as far away from them as possible."

Uighurs complain that a police crackdown is targeting them with detention sweeps and intimidation.

"The police and military have arrested many Uighurs, especially young men with beards," said a Uighur man named Qassim, a community elder who like all Uighurs interviewed for this story asked that only his first name be used because he fears police retaliation. "The local officials have told us not to talk with outsiders; they say if we do, we will be arrested."

A Uighur protest in July, sparked by reports of Hans killing Uighurs in a southern province, grew into a standoff with police and then a rampage that left the bodies of innocent Han civilians slumped and pouring blood in the streets.

Mobs of Hans responded with clubs and knives, hunting down any Uighurs they could find. Earlier this month, rumors spread that Uighurs were stabbing Hans with hypodermic needles; more protests broke out and the city's Communist Party chief and the region's police director were fired.

On a hillside overlooking the high-rises and hotels of Urumqi, a Uighur man named Talip sat recently in a neighborhood of crumbling houses and wept as he talked about Han police brutality. He said the police dragged him from his home to a local station, where a Han officer assaulted him and demanded that he confess to taking part in the riots.

After several rounds of being punched and kicked as he denied participating in the bloodshed, Talip said, he signed and put his thumbprint on a statement for police files.

"I could hear other Uighurs screaming in the next room; they were getting beaten, too," said Talip, a beefy man in his late 20s whose lips trembled so hard during parts of the interview that he could barely speak. "They treated us like garbage. Of course we are angry. . . . Of course it's affected our relationship with Han Chinese people."

Another Uighur man who was in custody the same evening confirmed Talip's account. The man also said that he was roughed up for hours before he was forced to sign a piece of paper.

Local police and political officials didn't respond to multiple requests for interviews.

A McClatchy reporter reached Talip and others in the Uighur community through a series of intermediaries. Police took one of them in for questioning the next day, and ordered him to describe his interactions with the reporter. Another of the men who helped McClatchy said that he'd had an experience afterward, presumably with police, that he wouldn't describe but that had terrified him.

Chinese officials have announced the arrests of dozens of men and women — the names released so far suggest that they're mostly Uighurs — for alleged needle stabbings, assaults, conspiracies and, last week, a reported bombing plot. Courts have sentenced at least seven men and women, all Uighurs, to between seven and 15 years in prison. None of the evidence against them has been made public.

A Uighur man named Umar, who said his Han boss had fired him after the riots, said that the Chinese government wouldn't have to worry about Uighur unrest much longer: "Many young Uighur men have been arrested, and many others were killed during the riots, so there aren't many Uighur men around to start a fight."

Like other Uighurs, Umar bristles at what he considers Han encroachment on his city, which Uighurs say has included Hans taking over most jobs and the government.

In the past several decades, the central government has sent more than 800,000 specialists to the area, mainly to Urumqi, to "rapidly change the situation of economic backwardness and lack of talents," according to an official pamphlet made available to journalists.

As a result of those and many other newcomers, while Uighurs still outnumber Hans in the region, Urumqi now has fewer than 300,000 Uighurs and more than 1.6 million Hans. The Hans accuse the Uighurs of being unappreciative of the progress and assistance Beijing's efforts have produced.

"The Chinese government subsidizes and supports these poor Uighurs and their children to try to win their support for government policy," said Liu Jie, who runs a convenience store. "Any rational person should appreciate this."

Chinese officials are trying to manage the situation with a combination of strict control and a propaganda push that blames ethnic rivalry on interference by Uighurs who live in the West.

Residents who have Internet access can pull up Web pages about local tourism and the harmonious Urumqi's promising financial outlook, but access to outside sites that could bring nongovernment-approved material has been shut down. Cell phone users are unable to send text messages, and all international communications are blocked.

Locals can call other parts of China, but the calls are monitored, and any suspicious conversations may result in a visit by the police.

A Chinese police official, his uniform neatly pressed, walked out of a conference room with ornate chandeliers and flashing cameras and paused a moment last week to answer a question about ethnic tensions in his city.

"Relationships between different ethnicities here have always been good," Huang Yabo, the director of the regional criminal investigation unit, said as he waited for the elevator. "There's no problem between different ethnicities."

After a few more words on how any local unrest was an overseas plot, Huang glided off through the Hoi Tak hotel, a five-star establishment where bellhops in matching hats and jackets carry luggage with white gloves, and young women in tight clothes and high heels sing pop songs in the lounge.

Everything, Huang said, will be OK — the Chinese government has it handled.

(Tom Lasseter, McClatchy's Moscow bureau chief, is on temporary assignment to Beijing.)

MORE FROM MCCLATCHY

Standoff Over Death in Custody

2009-09-19T18:02:00.000-04:00

Standoff Over Death in Custody

2009-09-19
In China’s tense Xinjiang region, could a suspicious death spark more ethnic violence?

AFP
Chinese paramilitary police trucks drive through downtown Urumqi, July 9, 2009.
HONG KONG—Relatives of a man who died in police custody in China’s remote Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region are in a tense standoff with authorities over their demand for an inquiry into how he died, villagers and the local police chief said.
One villager, contacted by telephone, said eight trucks of soldiers and two other armed vehicles had surrounded the man’s family home in Lengger [in Chinese, Langan] village in Qorghas [in Chinese, Huocheng]county, Ili prefecture.
Surrounding streets were blockaded, and another witness said police told him to remain inside when he tried to walk several blocks to Tursun’s family home.
“The police are asking us to bury the body early in the morning, otherwise they said they will bury him themselves,” Haji Memet, a relative of Shohret Tursun, 31, said. “We want to find out how he was killed.”
“We are asking the authorities to investigate—we want photos taken of his bruised body, we want justice, we want whoever killed our son to be punished,” he said.
Police returned Tursun’s body to his family at 2 p.m. Saturday, relatives said.
Deadly violence
Tursun, a member of the Uyghur ethnic minority, was among some 40 men from Qorghas detained around the time of deadly protests July 5 in the regional capital, Urumqi.
The protests by Uyghurs, a largely Muslim Turkic people, followed alleged official mishandling of earlier ethnic clashes in far-away Guangdong province.
The July 5 protest sparked days of deadly rioting in Urumqi, pitting Uyghurs against majority Han Chinese, and ending with a death toll of almost 200, by the government’s tally.
Badly disfigured

A map of China's northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Credit: RFA
The Langer police chief, who identified himself as Enver, said police were trying to convince the family to bury Tursun early Sunday.
The village imam, Alim Kari, described Tursun’s body as badly disfigured but said he was required to urge the family to bury Tursun.
“I saw the dead body—it was bruised and dark all over,” Kari said. “All the family was crying…his mother was slapping herself. The whole neighborhood is in chaos.”
“I don’t know how the body was injured, how it has so many bruises. The authorities are asking the imam, the elders, relatives, and neighbors to persuade the family to bury him. I am a peasant and I don’t know much about the law.”
“I have to do what the government asks me to do…and I have to believe them. We are working hard to persuade the family to bury Shohret Tursun early Sunday morning,” Kari said.
“After the family’s strong opposition, the authorities agreed to bury him Sunday morning. This has been confirmed and the funeral attendants have been selected and invited,” he said.
Earlier death alleged
About 10 days ago, relatives said, Tursun—along with Pazilat Akbar, Rabigul, Eli Hesenjan, and more than 35 others—were transferred from Urumqi to the Qorghas county jail.
Another villager, also contacted by telephone, said another man, 22-year-old Dilshat Ismayil, was beaten to death by police July 29 after he ran away from police trying to detain him.
That account couldn’t immediately be confirmed.
Uyghurs say they have long suffered ethnic discrimination, oppressive religious controls, and continued poverty and joblessness despite China's ambitious plans to develop its vast northwestern frontier.
Xinjiang is a strategically crucial vast desert territory that borders Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.
The region has abundant oil reserves and is China's largest natural gas-producing region.
Original reporting by Shohret Hoshur for RFA’s Uyghur service, translation by Alim Kerim. Uyghur service director: Dolkun Kamberi. Written and produced for the Web in English by Sarah Jackson-Han.
Copyright © 1998-2009 Radio Free Asia. All rights reserved.

How China Wins and Loses Xinjiang

2009-09-19T18:01:00.000-04:00

How China Wins and Loses Xinjiang
By Christina Larson, New America Foundation
Foreign Policy | July 9, 2009
China routinely looks more vulnerable from the inside than the outside, and its volatile minority affairs are just another example.

The Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program
Topics:
China, Foreign Policy, Minorities

On Sunday, more than 1,000 Uighurs clashed with police in the western Chinese city of Urumqi -- marking one of the country's bloodiest ethnic conflicts in recent years.
The government's crackdown on the Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority group that has long chafed under Beijing's rule, was nasty, brutish, and short. Overnight curfews were imposed. Thousands of police officers dispersed. President Hu Jintao left the G-8 summit in Europe to focus on putting out fires at home. But not all aspects of China's policies toward Uighurs and other minorities are characterized by such precision.
If you visit Xinjiang, the restive province that's home to China's roughly 8 million Uighurs, you'll realize there's a gap -- often a chasm -- between official intention on minority issues and what happens in practice. Sometimes the government's missteps appear to be the product of malevolence, sometimes of ignorance. The results are both tragic and absurd.
On bad days, the tragedy is obvious: More than 150 people, Uighur and Han Chinese, have died in recent riots. But there is also a thread of dark comedy, a continual drama of miscommunication and miscalculation, as Han authorities try to hamstring the practice of Islam and local politicians try to at once appease and suppress the Uighurs.
On paper, Islam is one of China's five officially recognized and legal religions. And the central government, in order to foster a "harmonious society," aims to help all minority peoples prosper alongside their Han neighbors. But in practice, ethnic policies as implemented alienate and inflame the largely Muslim population of Xinjiang. Tensions run high, liable to erupt at even distant provocations. (The spark that lit last Sunday's riots was the mistreatment and murder of Uighur factory workers in faraway Guangdong province.)
Recently, Robert D. Kaplan argued in The Atlantic that, on purely pragmatic grounds, in the case of Sri Lanka, repression worked. Other writers have recently made similar assertions in the case of Xinjiang. One line of argumentation indeed holds that China's uncompromising stance toward its ethnic populations may be unsavory to Westerners, but is in fact the surest way to keep the peace.
If only Beijing's iron fist were so dexterous. China's government is indeed effective at disbanding protests, building skyscrapers, and staging high-profile spectacles like the Olympics. It's also proved relatively adept, to its credit, at managing the financial crisis and keeping factories churning.
But you don't have to look far for signs of breakdown or miscoordination. Take the embarrassing wavering over Green Dam, the much-maligned Internet nanny program; or last year's scandals over tainted milk, an economic and international public relations disaster for Beijing. China routinely looks more vulnerable from the inside than the outside, and its volatile minority affairs are just another example.
Ultimately, China is more adept at creating fearsome impressions in the moment -- grand like the Olympic Opening Ceremony, or cruel like the crackdown on protestors -- than at maintenance. When you look close, it's apparent how much muddle there is beneath the surface, especially when authorities attempt to formulate policy around something they don't truly understand.
The Uighurs, as well as Islam itself, mystify China's secular leadership. In Xinjiang, a vast western province -- three times the size of France and bordering eight countries -- China's long-term policy toward minorities is puzzled in principle, capricious in execution, and the result is much suffering on the part of both Uighur and Han. Far from containing tension, the heavy-handed approach fans the flames. It is a brutal kind of confusion.
Xinjiang has been called the "Texas of China," and it certainly exhibits a rough-and-tumble frontier feel. Oil and mineral wealth have in recent years attracted Beijing's attention, and an influx of Han businessmen, swashbucklers, and entrepreneurs migrating from east China. When the western desert territory was incorporated into the People's Republic, the Chinese leaders selected as their provincial capital Urumqi, a city undistinguished by landmarks or history. In a region with a long and storied past, and a landscape dotted by historic mosques and the sites of famous battles and tombs of Uighur kings, the new capital was a relative blank slate. It seemed a place that new settlers could, in effect, start over.
But, on the face of it, official policy in Xinjiang is not to erase Uighur history or identity. Indeed, special efforts are made to highlight certain aspects of the past. Airport gift shops sell books printed by Han publishing houses about the charming customs of Xinjiang's minority groups. A stream of tourists, international and Han Chinese, comes to visit the historic old towns in cities like Kashgar, located in southwest Xinjiang. The local government is flirting with, or at least trying to make a few yuan off of, what the spokesperson of the Chinese embassy in London described to the BBC's Radio 4 as the region's "multiculturalism."
Outside Urumqi, the troubled provincial capital where Sunday's riots took place, new highway signs are posted in both Mandarin characters and the Uighur language, written in an Arabic script. But there's a danger of getting lost if one tries to follow those signs. If you ask the local Uighurs, they say that what passes for signage in their language is often nonsensical transliterations, a version of "Chinglish" in Uighur. There's ornamental appeal, sans utility -- evidently Uighurs weren't consulted in planning or proof-reading.
Special funds are allocated by the central government for religious affairs and poverty reduction bursaries in Xinjiang, as in other western provinces. But how are they spent? Take the "Xinjiang Minority Street" project in downtown Urumqi. It's a five-story market complex with an exotic-looking exterior, dominated by pale yellow turrets and fanciful archways, with numerous stalls and winding staircases inside. A placard by the entrance proudly announces that it was built in 2002 for the benefit of Xinjiang's minority people, as a place to sell their ethnic handicrafts, for the hefty sum of 160 million yuan (around $23.4 million).
But inside, most of the stalls, if they were ever occupied, are now empty. A few are home to Han jewelers selling jade trinkets. The paint is beginning to peel. A Chinese hostess stands outside a deserted restaurant with décor resembling how Walt Disney might imagine Arabia. In short, this is what a boondoggle looks like. Or rather, it's how local officials and contractors conceive of what Uighurs want (or at least how they can capture funds Beijing sets aside for minority affairs), without much consultation with Uighurs themselves. Sadly, the building sits adjacent to what is in fact the heart of the city's Uighur district, where families live in one-story shanties of brick and mud that could badly use money for repairs.
The building, a work of pure architectural and promotional fantasy, epitomizes the vast disconnect between how Han officialdom envisions China's minorities and how Uighurs see themselves, and Islam.
Last year I was in Kashgar during October's Golden Week -- an extended national holiday commemorating the founding of the People's Republic of China. My hotel sat on the grounds of the former Russian consulate -- a reminder of when Western powers fought over influence in Central Asia. That afternoon Chinese state television was showing continuous coverage of the Golden Week celebrations, including parades of China's officially-recognized minority peoples in bright costumes, singing and dancing, and saluting the legacy of New China.
But outside, residents of Kashgar were gathering to mark a rather different festival: the end of Ramadan, the month-long fasting period for Muslims. The final day of Ramadan, when the fast is broken and people celebrate, is called Rozi Festival. Annually, 10,000 men and their families from across southwestern Xinjiang travel to Kashgar to commemorate the holiday outside the ancient Id Kah mosque.
The sight of thousands of devout Muslims kneeling on unfurled prayer mats in a ceremony unsupervised by the state of course makes local authorities deeply nervous. The government hasn't razed the mosque or explicitly prohibited worship, but it has recently erected a giant TV screen in the public square facing the mosque. Kazakh soap operas are now screened at regular intervals throughout the day, timed to coincide with daily services. Unsurprisingly, this hasn't had much impact on mosque attendance.
One night I asked a Uighur man headed into Id Kah mosque about the TV. "If they put it somewhere else, people would be happy," he said. "But not here -- here it makes us angry."
***
Miscalculations about Uighurs and their religion have graver implications, too.
Beijing claims that new industry and oil exploration in Xinjiang is bringing wealth into the region, benefiting both Han and Uighurs. Yet according to the Asian Development Bank, income inequality in Xinjiang remains the highest in all of China. Hiring discrimination is a substantial barrier, often fueled by the Chinese Communist Party's perplexed attitude toward religion. "You have a party that is primarily Han and officially atheist," explains Gardner Bovingdon, professor of East Asian and Eurasian studies at Indiana University. "The party doctrine is founded on notion that religion is a mystification. It requires its members to be atheist; any party member or teacher in Xinjiang must renounce Islam."
The vast majority of the new jobs in Xinjiang are state-affiliated: Construction crews, bank clerks, police officers, nurses and school-teachers all work for the government (there isn't much private business on the frontier). Many of those positions are off-limits to publicly observant Muslims. The state-run Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, the largest development company in the province, for instance, not long ago filled, by mandate, 800 of 840 new job openings with Han Chinese.
Such policies exacerbate inequality and rile ethnic tensions. But do they also help the government squash would-be separatist movements?
Most analysts do not believe that religion itself, or radical Islam, animates pro-independence factions in Xinjiang. To target actual separatists, more precise strategies could be envisioned. "The way to respond to a small minority in a society is not to prevent the religiosity of an entire population," Bovingdon explains. "That's counterproductive, and makes plenty of people resentful."
And yet, that appears to be precisely the strategy the local government has adopted. Since 2002, when the U.S.-led "war on terror" gave China cover for greater surveillance of its own Muslim populations, the Xinjiang public security bureau has increased crackdowns on what it deems, with alarmingly broad brushstrokes, the "three evils" of "separatism, religious extremism and terrorism."
In practice, this means that loudspeakers in mosques are banned in Urumqi; families hosting dinner parties during religious festivals must register with the government; the interiors of even small rural mosques are plastered with tawdry government propaganda, and routinely visited by Han inspectors (who don't bother to doff their shoes when they enter and check log books). Although Islam is not officially outlawed, Uighurs are subject to a litany of intrusions on daily religious life, which leads them to see the government as an antagonistic force. As one man in Kashgar told me, "Because I am born a Uighur, I am a terrorist -- that is what the government thinks?"
The authorities' overreach is also clear in the way security policies target children. During certain religious holidays, anyone under 18 is barred from entering a mosque. In Kashgar, communal meals are imposed at school during the fast period of Ramadan, and attendance is required at special assemblies timed to coincide with Friday prayers. There's no reason to treat every Uighur child like an aspiring terrorist or separatist, unless the aim is truly to stamp out religion from next generation. But this tactic would seem a high-stakes gamble for the CCP.
Andrew Nathan, chair of the political science department at Columbia University, explains, "This is the Chinese style toward religion -- the government is very suspicious of religion. In Xinjiang, separatism is the thing they want to avoid. They conceive of the separatists as people who are religious fundamentalists. They're making a logical leap of faith. It produces resistance. It produces deep resentment."
And there are some indicators that China's attempts to curb Islam in the name of assimilating the Uighurs and other minorities in Xinjiang are woefully backfiring. Even as the local government has tightened its "counterterrorism" policies in recent years, the U.S. Congressional Commission on China has determined, the level of unrest in the province has actually increased. Last year saw a string of bus bombings and attacks on police in southwest Xinjiang; Sunday's bloody riots in Urumqi were the worst in many years.
"China's attempts to suppress Islam," a recent Human Rights Watch report concludes, "is a policy that is likely to alienate Uighurs, drive religious expression further underground, and encourage the development of more radicalized and oppositional forms of religious identity."
Commenting from a different angle, Richard Weitz, director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute, finds broader regional security implications. "A lot of Chinese problems do appear to be a bit of their own making," he said. "They justify a lot of what they're doing in the name of counterterrorism, but we fear it might also exacerbate a terrorist threat. Of course, the same could be said for some U.S. policies -- look at Iraq and Afghanistan."
Misunderstanding the Uighur culture and religion, the Chinese authorities fear the worst. And their current policies seem more likely to foster resistance and resentment than peace and passivity. Perhaps the backlash is already beginning.
Copyright 2009, Foreign Policy

2 more Uighur detainees at Gitmo heading to Palau

2009-09-19T01:07:00.000-04:00

2 more Uighur detainees at Gitmo heading to Palau

By JONATHAN KAMINSKY (AP) – 26 minutes ago

KOROR, Palau — Two more Chinese Muslim detainees held at Guantanamo Bay have agreed to be relocated to the tiny Pacific nation of Palau, their lawyer said Saturday, bringing to six the total who will resettle.

Palau has offered 13 ethnic Uighurs held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba a chance to move there — an arrangement that would ease President Barack Obama's plans to close the contentious facility.

The men have been held by the U.S. since their capture in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001. The Pentagon determined last year they were not "enemy combatants" but they have been in legal limbo ever since. China regards the Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gurs) as terrorist suspects and wants them returned.

But Uighur activists claim the detainees face persecution or death if they are returned there, and U.S. officials have struggled to find a country to take them in.

"Two more of our clients have agreed to go to Palau as the U.S. continues to look for a permanent home for them," Eric Tirschwell, the U.S.-based lawyer for four of the detainees, told The Associated Press on Saturday.

Their acceptance means six of the detained Chinese Muslims have now decided to move to the mid-Pacific state, which offered in early June to take in the Turkic Muslims from far western China.

That same month, four Uighur detainees were resettled in Bermuda.

Five of the detainees have declined even to meet with Palau officials.

The relocation agreements need U.S. Congressional approval, a process that is expected to take about two weeks.

"We are hopeful that this long overdue move to freedom will happen as quickly as possible and are doing whatever we can to make that happen," Tirschwell said in an e-mail.

There was no immediate response to requests for comment from Palauan officials or from the U.S. State Department.

Palau is a developing country of 20,000 that is dependent on U.S. development funds.

No Uighurs currently live on Palau, which has a Muslim population of about 400, mostly migrant workers from Bangladesh.

Made up of eight main islands plus more than 250 islets, Palau is best known for diving and tourism and is located some 500 miles (800 kilometers) east of the Philippines in the Pacific Ocean.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Guantanamo Envoy: U.S. Should Have Taken Cleared Prisoners; Some Should Never Have Been Held

2009-09-18T21:28:00.000-04:00

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Andy Worthington
Andy Worthington

Journalist and author of "The Guantanamo Files"
Posted: September 17, 2009 09:34 AM

Guantanamo Envoy: U.S. Should Have Taken Cleared Prisoners; Some Should Never Have Been Held

In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Daniel Fried came across as an eminently reasonable man placed in a disturbingly unreasonable position by his bosses. A senior diplomat, who was the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs for four years, Fried was plucked from his job in March 2009 to become the Obama administration's Special Envoy to Guantánamo, serving as a member of the interagency Task Force charged with reviewing the cases of the remaining Guantánamo prisoners, and responsible, primarily, for finding countries to accept dozens of prisoners who have been cleared for release, either by the Task Force, often based on decisions already taken by Bush-era military review boards, or by the courts, after successful habeas corpus petitions.

These are men who cannot be returned to their home countries because of fears that they will face torture, or further arbitrary imprisonment, on their return, although Fried is also responsible for trying to broker a deal with Yemen, whose nationals make up around 40 percent of the remaining 225 prisoners. Fried spoke mainly to the BBC about negotiations with Europe, but it is apparent that attempts to overcome the long-standing failure to secure a deal with the Yemeni government remains one of the most difficult tasks that he faces.

In an interview for Radio 4's Today program, which was partly filmed and televised on BBC News, Fried gave Jon Manel a largely spin-free account of the problems he faces, some of which have been exacerbated by the U.S. government's unwillingness -- or inability -- to resettle some cleared prisoners on the U.S. mainland.

To my mind, President Obama missed a golden opportunity to bring 17 prisoners to the U.S.. in his early days in office. These men, the Uighurs (Muslims who had fled oppression in China's Xinjiang province, and who were sold to U.S. forces after being betrayed by Pakistani villagers, following their flight from Afghanistan) had been cleared of any involvement with al-Qaeda, the Taliban or any form of international terrorism by the Bush administration and by the U.S. courts, but the President wavered, allowing Guantánamo's supporters in Congress (scaremongers inspired by the hateful and false rhetoric of former Vice President Dick Cheney) to gain the upper hand, eventually persuading Congress to pass legislation blocking the transfer of any cleared prisoners to the U.S. mainland.

Fried began by explaining that his job was "miserable," because he was "cleaning up a problem" inherited from the Bush administration, which had nothing to do with advancing any positive aspects of U.S. policy. "It's not like we're advancing liberty or making peace," he said. He added that working out what to do with the remaining prisoners is "a huge problem and a complicated one," but according to Manel, although he said that he would "not criticize Congress," he stated, unambiguously, "It is fair to say, as just an objective statement, that the U.S. could resettle more detainees [worldwide], had we been willing to take in some."

The interview was also notable for the following frank exchange about the perception of the remaining prisoners as "the worst of the worst," which included, I believe, the first public admission, by a senior Obama administration official, that some of the prisoners were nothing more than low-level Taliban recruits, in an inter-Muslim civil war (with the Northern Alliance) that preceded the 9/11 attacks and had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or international terrorism, and that they should not have been in Guantánamo for the last seven years:

Daniel Fried: The detainees in Guantánamo run a spectrum. Some really are awful. Some qualify as "the worst of the worst," and we're going to put those on trial. Some, frankly, should not have been in Guantánamo for the past seven years.

Jon Manel: So they were innocent?

Daniel Fried: Innocent, guilt ... I look at their files and some of them seem relatively benign, and I have in mind the Uighurs, in particular, but others ...

Jon Manel: They're the minority from China ...

Daniel Fried: That's right, the Uighur minority from China, but if I had to describe -- if there's such a thing as an average Guantánamo detainee, it's someone who was a volunteer, a low-level trainee or a very low-level fighter in a very bad cause, but not a hardened terrorist, not an organizer. Now it is those people whom we're asking Europeans to take a look at, and each government has to evaluate the background of each individual and make a decision.

Despite his criticism of the implications of the failure to accept any cleared prisoners into the United States, Fried did make the point that "parliamentarians in Europe" -- as well as the U.S. - "have raised questions about security, and we have to respect those opinions," although he was also concerned to publicize the successful resettlement of four of the Uighurs in Bermuda (in June), even though it had apparently brought him into conflict with the British government, because, as the BBC described it, "Bermuda is a British overseas territory and Britain was not informed until the last minute."

"The British government, it is fair to say, cannot be considered part of the deal. This was worked out between the Americans and the Bermudans," Fried told Manel, adding, "I will say that I've been admonished by the British government in very clear terms." He insisted, however, that the deal had been successful. "We are very grateful to the Bermudan government and the behavior of the four Uighurs has been exemplary, which really bolsters our contention that they were not any kind of threat," he said, adding, "These are four people who are enjoying freedom who would otherwise be in Guantánamo."

This was an important point to make, although I maintain that the Uighurs' "exemplary" behavior, which "bolsters" the government's "contention that they were not any kind of threat," would have had a far more powerful impact if it had happened in Washington D.C., where American citizens would have been able to appreciate, first-hand, that the Uighurs are not, and have never been terrorists.

In conclusion, Fried told Manel that he was "confident" that the President's January deadline for closing Guantánamo would be met, although he could not guarantee it. "President Obama's timetable is what we've got," he said, "we don't have Plan Bs, we're looking at that timetable. We've got a lot of work to do, we need help getting this done, and we're going to be working hard at it. But you're not going to have Guantánamo II. Whatever solution we come up with, it will be one based firmly on the rule of law and transparency."

Fried's interview coincided with an announcement that Hungary is preparing to take a cleared prisoner from Guantánamo, to add to those already accepted by the UK (Binyam Mohamed, a British resident, in February), France (Lakhdar Boumediene, an Algerian, in May), and Portugal (Mohammed al-Tumani and Moammar Dokhan, both Syrians, last month). Other countries who have agreed to take cleared prisoners are Belgium, Ireland, Italy (although with some disturbing conditions), and Spain, and discussions are apparently ongoing with both Lithuania and Switzerland.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press), and maintains a blog here.

Follow Andy Worthington on Twitter: www.twitter.com//GuantanamoAndy

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-worthington/guantanamo-envoy-us-shoul_b_289747.html

How amateur-hour diplomacy took away dad

2009-08-23T12:06:00.002-04:00

LOST CANADIANS
TheStar.com

How amateur-hour diplomacy took away dad
How amateur-hour diplomacy took away dad

PAWEL DWULIT/TORONTO STAR

Kamila Telendibaeva lifts her son Mohammad, 9, out of a wheelchair and into their minivan outside a community centre in Burlington. Telendibaeva has been left to take care of four sons alone as husband Huseyin Celil sits in solitary confinement in a jail in China, where he was extradited during a family trip to Uzbekistan.

Celil's case was not ignored. But it was handled very, very badly
Aug 23, 2009 04:30 AM
Iain Marlow
Staff Reporter

"Where is your dad?" Kamila Telendibaeva asks as she sits in the kitchen staring at her son Abdul's portrait of their family. The answers drift from behind her, where her four children have besieged the living room. "My dad is on holiday," says 3-year-old Zubeyir, whose face is smeared with chocolate popsicle. "Toronto?" asks Badrudin, 4, as he looks up from ploughing his head into his mom's thigh. Abdul, 5, replies quietly: "He's in China."

Abdul drew the picture around Valentine's Day last year, and the cut-out cardboard heart has remained on Telendibaeva's fridge, in her home in a Burlington housing co-op. The picture is optimistic in one respect: Abdul's eldest brother, Mohammad, a 9-year-old who is severely disabled and in a wheelchair, is pictured standing up.

But the artwork is disconcerting for a daycare project. "I bawled my eyes out," says Patti MacPherson, an early childhood educator who posted it on the wall with the others. "The way he identified it, but was okay with it. It was just, `This is my family.' "

The hunched stick-dad is covered by thick black lines descending vertically over a figure shorter than his own children; although smiling, he is a prisoner, present in Abdul's imagination but removed from the physical reality of this house, its joys and its burdens.

"Why is he there?" Kamila, 31, continues. Abdul, who is alone among his brothers in beginning to to understand the implications of his father's absence, replies: "He's in jail."

Abdul's father – Telendibaeva's husband – is Huseyin Celil, a Canadian citizen and Imam who once lived with them and delivered pizzas around Hamilton. He is now imprisoned in China's desolate northwest, serving a life sentence in solitary confinement. His relatives, who have met with him in prison, say he eats oatmeal gruel, is denied books and is forced to memorize tomes of Chinese laws.

While he, his wife and his sons were visiting family in Uzbekistan in the summer of 2006, he was detained and extradited to China, where he was convicted of terrorism-related offences and "splitism" – charges often applied to vocal members of China's Uighur Muslim minority, some of whom advocate independence for their autonomous region. Celil, 40, a human rights advocate, had previously fled China on similar charges.

His case was not ignored, like Suaad Hagi Mohamud's, just handled badly. Bellicose political posturing, from as high up as Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and what experts call a "lack of China competence" at the Canadian embassy in Beijing, have failed to win Celil's release and may even have ensured his incarceration. Celil's plight is emblematic, especially for Muslim or Arab Canadians, such as Abousfian Abdelrazik, who was tortured in Sudan; Bashir Makhtal, who was just convicted of terrorism in an Ethiopian kangaroo court; or even Omar Khadr, the child soldier stuck in Guantanamo. But it is still only one half of the agony; the rest of the burden falls on those left behind, like Kamila Telendibaeva, a diminutive woman now struggling to raise a large family in the shadows of personal tragedy and sluggish international bureaucracy.

The air above the pavement bends in the heat as Kamila drives her rusting Plymouth Voyageur through Burlington's gridlock. The hot wind is little comfort. Kamila's day is already long and her face is as it usually is, unsmiling but friendly, a mask broken only occasionally by the antics of her children.

She is on her way from a daycare to a special day camp. Abdul is asleep in the back and Badrudin seems listless, though it is Abdul who is sick. She is worried. A cold in a heat wave? It's those freezies, she thinks, as she parks at a community centre.

Wearing a light brown headscarf secured with turquoise pins, Kamila walks through the front doors trailing two sons. Mohammad, who is developmentally delayed, is waiting. She wheels him through the front doors but gets the thick wheels stuck on the door frame. She pushes twice more, but can't move him. Someone holds the door and she wheels Mohammad up to the minivan's sliding side door.

He begins to flail. She hoists him in and breathes deep before she leans over with the seat belt, receiving blows from boy in silence.

"Sometimes, when I lift him, I have back pain. I'm really scared, you know, if I have some problems," she continues. "They need a dad..... It was so much easier, because he's a man. He's strong. He can lift him." She starts the car and steers it back into traffic, now to a north Hamilton clinic. She is told Abdul is fine.

At home, she gets Mohammad's stroller stuck first on three tricycles and then a recycling box. In the winter it's worse: she has to shovel the ramp and driveway before Mohammad's pick-up at 8:15 a.m. But now it is sweltering. She opens the door and her children rush in, kicking soccer balls around the living room. Badrudin is somersaulting on the couch. Mohammad is crawling across the floor. Tiny Zubeyir demands inflatable pool time. Abdul kicks a ball off his mom's back as she drags in yellow grocery bags. "This is my day," she says.

Their ordeal began in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where Telendibaeva's parents fled to from China's neighbouring Xinjiang province after Mao Zedong's Communist victory in 1949. Her parents were Uighurs, nervous as revolution washed into their homeland, parts of which just enjoyed a brief bout of Soviet-backed independence.

The family had flown back in the summer of 2006 to visit Telendibaeva's family. It was her father who, in 1998, first raised the idea of an arranged marriage for Kamila with Celil, working in Kyrgyzstan as a cloth merchant and an Imam.

They had decided to get circumcisions for their young children in Tashkent, because the procedure is costly for non-infants in Canada. After the operation the children fell ill; not wanting to fly, the concerned parents applied for visa extensions.

They left their passports with Uzbekistan's security services, which Telendibaeva still calls the KGB. Celil and Telendibaeva's brother and father went to pick them up. "My husband," she says softly, "he went....." She trails off.

No one returned. Kamila, who was three-months pregnant, was frantic, but calls to their cellphones – which had by then been switched off – were not returned. At dusk, only two men came back. Celil had been arrested. "I searched everywhere," she says. "Even just to see him, to meet him."

Eventually, the family found his location and began bribing Uzbek prison guards to pass fresh clothes and food to Celil. "On June 22, they said they could not give him the food," she whispers.

He was gone.

Huseyin Celil, a husband and a father and a citizen of Canada, had been extradited to face trial in China, where Uighur activism is often conflated with separatist terrorism.

Before Uzbek authorities shipped Celil to China, the Canadian embassy in Moscow dispatched special representatives there. Uzbekistan did not listen; indeed, they had no reason to: in 2001, autocratic Uzbekistan joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a multilateral body composed of Russia, China and four post-Soviet `Stans, whose stated goal is to obliterate "terrorism, separatism and extremism" in member states.

Tashkent, where Celil was arrested, houses the organization's Regional Anti-Terrorist headquarters. It was unlikely Canada was ever going to negotiate the release of a suspected Uighur separatist in Uzbekistan, a close ally of China, which was where they would have to pursue the case.

But from the beginning, experts in Canada-China relations say, the case was bungled by Canada's Beijing embassy and taken up by ideological federal politicians in Canada, whose public statements may have crippled diplomats' efforts.

"We could have managed it better. It's possible that if we had, Mr. Celil would be in Burlington today," says Charles Burton, an academic who twice served as in-house counselor to Canada's embassy in Beijing.

He believes that Canada's foreign service remains intellectually ill-equipped to engage in the types of diplomacy that might have freed Celil, though Foreign Affairs says this is not true.

"The people that we have working in China don't have, first of all, the linguistic competence to be able to engage in diplomacy with the Chinese elements that are holding Mr. Celil," Burton says.

"Secondly, they don't have the cross-cultural communication skills to know how to approach the agencies that are responsible for his incarceration, to try and come up with some means to negotiate a satisfactory resolution."

Burton says this is because Canada's foreign service prefers to hire generalists, rather than people with expertise in a specific region or language, unlike foreign services in the United States or Britain. And Canadian diplomats posted to China, he adds, have rarely worked in the country before. He described Australia's current prime minister Kevin Rudd, a veteran diplomat and fluent Mandarin speaker with expertise in China, as "the kind of person our foreign service probably wouldn't be admitting."

Errol Mendes, a University of Ottawa law professor who co-edited a book on Chinese and Canadian approaches to human rights, said Harper's statements damaged any chance diplomats had of securing Celil's release. Harper's comment before the APEC forum in 2007 that he would not sell out human rights to the "almighty dollar," were too blunt, Mendes says.

"What I've learned, after going to China almost every year for the past 15 years is that the Chinese do not take kindly to people lecturing them. And the thing they need, more than anything else, is (help) trying to figure out a way of resolving disputes without losing face."

But a quiet, face-saving avenue for Beijing – something akin to former U.S. president Bill Clinton's private rescue of two U.S. journalists in North Korea, such as being sent abroad for medical treatment – may no longer be an option for Celil. Since riots in July left almost 200 dead in Urumchi, Xinjiang's capital, the Chinese government has ramped up repression within the province, and accused overseas Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer of fomenting the violence.

Any release now might look like a concession or even a victory to some Uighur exiles who crave an independent East Turkestan.

Since the riots, Telendibaeva has not been able to contact Celil's relatives, who used to visit him in prison every three months. They used to give her updates, which were not pleasant. He was not doing well. He was sick, his vision failing. She calls them every day.

No one picks up.

Hunks of Halal beef and lamb thaw in the sink. For her boys, Kamil likes to cook the traditional Uighur food she used to make for her husband – heavy, traditional fare like laghman noodles, which she rolls and stretches herself, or rice pilaf and mutton.

"They don't like our food, really," Kamila concedes. "They like hot dogs, sandwiches. But I don't give them. I try and make them fresh food every day."

Her boys' use of English is also an issue for her. The Uighurs' Turkic language is integral to their identity, and especially those who view the state school system's prioritization of Chinese in Xinjiang as forced assimilation. In China, they would have been taught Chinese and denied Islam; in North America, Kamila fears their cultural identity might simply wither."I speak to them in Uighur, but they talk to each other in English," she complains.

Her husband was a pillar of Uighur pride, a community volunteer and beacon for his young boys.

But his absence is pervasive. At one point, her federal child tax benefits were withdrawn because her application didn't have Celil's signature. It wasn't so bad when Kamila's mother was here. She came from Uzbekistan after Celil's arrest. After two years, diabetes and high blood pressure forced her home last August. It's been a year since she left and nearly three years since Abdul's tragic portrait has been the reality for Kamila and her sons.

She looks at it on the fridge.

"Look, he's behind a gate," she says, touching the picture.

"We need a key to get him out," Badrudin says triumphantly.

"Yes," his mother says, "We need a key."

China's oppression of Uyghurs remains largely ignored by the global community

2009-07-21T10:33:00.000-04:00

Monday, July 20, 2009

China's oppression of Uyghurs remains largely ignored by the global community
11:31 PM ET

Mehmet Tohti [Former Vice President, World Uyghur Congress]: "Horrible video footage posted on the internet regarding the July 5th Urumqi massacre has brought some international attention and at the same time revealed the bitter reality that can be summarized as miserable Uyghurs, cruel Chinese and a generally uninterested world when it comes to the reaction to this tragedy that resulted in more than 1000 dead and the subsequent arrests of as many as 10,000, according to a RFA Uyghur service caller from Urumqi where riots have taken place.

All Uyghurs are unanimous in calling the July 5th Urumqi massacre a tragic event, as both Chinese armed forces and civilian Chinese mobsters were given a free hand in attacking and killing Uyghurs in Urumqi without proper restrictions. It was reported that on the late evening of July 5th, electricity was cut in a mainstream Uyghur neighborhood upon the order of Wang Lequan, Communist Party chief in Uyghur Autonomous Region, and that Chinese military forces the began a "Uyghur Hunt" that lasted the whole night, resulting in the killing and arrest of an unspecified number of Uyghurs. According to the eye witness statements to RFA Uyghur service of Kazak nationals who came to Urumqi for a business trip, 150-200 Uyghurs were murdered right in front of their hotel and the Chinese military cleaned up the body and blood from the streets just prior to dawn on July 6th. According to Edward Wong from the New York Times, "Hospital officials in Urumqi have generally declined to allow foreign reporters to interview injured Uyghurs, but have allowed them to interview injured Han." So far the Chinese government has failed to show any injured or dead Uyghurs out of fear that most of them were apparently killed by bullets shot by the armed forces.

Uyghurs in East Turkistan are in the state of shock and anger for lack of condemnation from the outside world - especially from the United States of America -particularly considering the greater global reaction to the much smaller scale riots that occurred in Tibet last year. The lack of concern from the Western world gave a much needed free hand to the Chinese regime to expand its brutal crackdown throughout the region with the threat of execution to be used for those who have been part of the public unrest.

The July 5th outbreak is just the tip of the iceberg with regard to long existing ethnic tensions and evem hatred between the Uyghurs, who are the rightful owners of "Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region" and the Chinese, who are a migrant boss from mainland China that arrived to colonize the region due to its abundant natural resources and strategic location.

Despite the incorporation of East Turkistan into mainland China in 1949, Uyghurs have not accepted Chinese rule and want to restore their independent statehood while China remains determined to colonize this territory with a massive Chinese settlement program under the shadow of guns. As a result of this program the ethnic Han Chinese population has jumped from 5-6% in 1950s to almost 60% to today, even though many media outlets are using the old census numbers that put the Chinese population in the region around 40%, which is exclusive of the nearly 3.5 million Bingtuan, 1.5 million unregistered migrant workers and nearly 300,000 military personal and their family members. This colonization has brought cultural marginalization, ethnic isolation, social injustice and political deprivation to Uyghurs in East Turkistan as the central government in Beijing has consistently put the interest of the Han Chinese on the top of its priority list.

As early as 1980 China started a "Go West” campaign with tremendous incentives to encourage more and more Chinese settlers to resettle in East Turkistan. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and emergence of neighboring Turkic republics alongside the border of East Turkistan as independent states, a campaign was launched targeting Uyghurs to prevent a possible break up of East Turkistan from China and thus tighten Chinese control over the region. After 1997, right after publishing an official White Paper under former President Jiang Zemin, the central government identified East Turkistan as a high risk area for Chinese national security and adopted harsh measures to prevent the East Turkistan problem from being internationalized. They established the Shanghai Corporation Organization with the persuasion of the neighboring countries of East Turkistan (Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan) in the name of border security, which put Uyghurs as prime target. Short after the establishment of SCO almost all Uyghur organizations in central Asia that were kept open since the Soviet era were dismantled or sanctioned, a number of influential Uyghur organizational leaders have been assassinated and Uyghur refugees were deported back to China for prosecution.

The September 11 terrorist attacks provided a perfect opportunity for China to step up pressure on Uyghurs and the Uyghur national identity. Further diluting Uyghur identity is a short cut answer for the Chinese government to complete the long-term elimination of a Uyghur voice. Chinese efforts in this regard include branding every incidence of civil unrest or discontent with the terrorism label; increased religious persecution; harsh political suppression; sharp ethnic discrimination in employment, education and social participation; banning the more than 2000 year old Uyghur language from schools and forcefully imposing Chinese education starting from the kindergarten level; implementing the same Chinese law differently for Uyghurs; forcing Uyghur families to send their children to mainland China for employment arrangements while bringing millions of Han Chinese to the Uyghur region to fill employment vacancies; and generally coercing Uyghurs to become like the Chinese by sacrificing their unique identity.

There are further recent examples of Chinese oppression of Uyghurs.

In May 2009 a 33 year-old Chinese teacher surnamed Zhao, who was recruited by government to teach Uyghur pupils in the historical Uyghur city of Yarkend, was discovered to have sexually assaulted more than 20 pre-teen Uyghur girls. For this unforgivable crime, he was protected by the school principal Liu Yu Mei, along with other local Chinese police. One parent of the assaulted pupil traveled to Urumqi to have his voice heard but officials ignored him.

Then video footage surfaced of brutal beatings and killings of Uyghur workers in a Shaoguan toy factory on June 26, 2009, which resulted in more than 56 dead. Both the regional government in Urumqi and authorities in Shaoguan have downplayed this brutal killing of Uyghurs issuing a report of 2 dead and have done nothing to punish the perpetrators.

Ilham Tohti, Economic Professor in Beijing Nationality University and owner of an online Uyghur website intended to promote ethnic dialogue between Hans and Uyghurs has been arrested after the July 5th massacre for his sharp criticism of the government's wrong policy stating that "unemployment among Uyghurs are the highest on earth."

As many independent analysts have pointed out, it was the Chinese government's discriminatory policy that instigated the July 5th uprisings and and so the government needs to review its hard line policies in the region and move towards the prospect of reconciliation.

One anonymous Uyghur posted his outcry as follows:

I am very shocked to find out that the world is much [more] disabled than I imagined. The images show the Chinese in Urumqi are carrying out ethnic cleansing with the protection of the Chinese Army and the Police. The world is not seeing it and could not see it. But they saw it when it happened in Darfur, Even George Clooney saw it. Fareed Zakaria saw it when it happened to Tibetans. Bill Clinton saw it when it happened to Kosovar people. And the world spoke out on behalf of all of them.

But now? They are all deaf and blind."

The Empire Strikes Back

2009-07-18T21:16:00.001-04:00

The Empire Strikes Back

China tries to suppress its minority problem.

by Ross Terrill

07/27/2009, Volume 014, Issue 42

While the Chinese state often appears masterful in its dealings with the non-Chinese areas of the People's Republic of China (PRC) like Xinjiang and Tibet, it also seems alarmed at the volatility of its vast semi-empire.

Two weeks ago a false rumor about the rape of two Chinese (Han) women by Muslim Uighurs in a toy factory in the southern city of Shaoguan hit the Internet. In the resulting fights several Uighurs, who had been lured like many thousands to the non-Muslim south by work at high wages, were killed. Soon Xinjiang, the homeland of the Uighurs, which borders eight nations and is 2,000 miles from Shaoguan, was in turmoil. Hundreds were dead, and thousands of lives were derailed. President Hu Jintao rushed back from the G-8 summit in Rome to assert his authority.

In Urumqi, the capital of Xin-jiang, Han bystanders said they were attacked without provocation by Uighurs. Han groups retaliated. Both sides received scraps of information from the toy factory by cell phone and email (until Beijing cut off all such communications). Events spun out of control when People's Armed Police fired on protesters, and rioters torched cars and shops. Predictably, troublemakers jumped in, police were attacked, and age-old resentments flared.

One cannot fault the Chinese police's actions in Xinjiang. Mostly they tried to keep order between Han and Uighur in a parlous situation. Given the passions on both sides, it may have been impossible for security forces to avoid deaths. We can, however, fault the underlying approach of Beijing to Xinjiang, its largest autonomous region.

None of the western half of the PRC--Inner Mongolia in the north, Tibet in the south, and Xinjiang between them--was historically Chinese. The Chinese dynasties always had trouble dealing with Muslim areas, more even than with Tibet. The emperors were unfamiliar with Islam. An emperor could not enter a mosque since he wasn't a Muslim. Islam implies a realm hidden from the state's gaze, a worry for the emperors as it today is for Hu Jintao.

Xinjiang is larger than the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and Italy put together. As recently as 1944 it was the separate state of East Turkistan. This desert land of mosques and oil is as different from east China as Japan is from Bangladesh. Thanks to Stalin, in 1949 it became part of Mao's new Chinese empire: secular Han ruling Uighurs and other Muslims.

Cecil Rhodes once remarked that to avoid civil war, you must have empire. This is China's approach in Xinjiang (and Tibet). Han wear the uniforms and give the orders, minority languages have been phased out of schools, and mosques are treated as hostile zones.
Zhao Ziyang, the number two figure in the Chinese Communist government in the 1980s--he fell from power during the Tiananmen crisis of 1989--once asked Deng Xiaoping's son: "How come when we're so nice to those intellectuals, they turn round and oppose us?" Beijing today can't understand why affirmative action and the many concessions given to Uighurs bring only further defiance. But Muslims in western China want something hard for Beijing to give: space to be themselves, to disappear into a mosque for the hour of Friday prayers, to write a nihilistic poem or an essay that says Marxism is mistaken.

While the development of the west has never matched the speed and success of that in the coastal areas, Xinjiang has advanced economically. The government says GDP in Xinjiang leaped from $28 billion in 2004 to $60 billion in 2008, and that life expectancy has doubled over the 60 years of the PRC. The trouble is that Xinjiang society is Chinese-style apartheid. The pain of Han-Uighur tension outweighs the pleasure of rising incomes. Economic success recasts but does not remove empire.

We can begin to understand Beijing's imperial cast of mind by considering that Chinese school children are told Xinjiang has been part of China for two millennia since the Han Dynasty (false: only the Qing Dynasty, 1644-1911, incorporated Xinjiang into China). In one spectacle at the Beijing Olympics, "minority children" were dressed in the costumes of Xinjiang, Mongolia, Tibet, and so on, but every child was Han.

On two trips to Xinjiang in recent years, I found a tense and strident atmosphere. Radio and newspapers spoke of Mao Zedong Thought, class struggle, and the danger of enemies undermining the unity of the PRC. One day in the oasis city of Turfan I heard a radio message in Mandarin Chinese: "Every friend of ours in religious circles [i.e. restive Muslims] should recognize that only the Chinese Communist party represents the interests of the people of all ethnic groups."

Deng once said in a moment of insight: "The loudest thunder comes from dead silence. We are not afraid of the masses speaking up; what we do fear is ten thousand horses standing mute." The sullen silence of repressed Uighurs can mislead. Deng knew it, Hu knows it.
When I went to cross the western border of Xinjiang into Kazakhstan, every inch of my luggage, papers, clothes, and toilet gear was inspected by Chinese immigration officials. In triumph one declared, "You have taken our local newspapers!" He pulled out from the rubble of my luggage newspapers from Xian and Shanghai. "You should know with your experience that it is illegal to take local [non-Beijing] papers out of China." He folded the two newspapers under his arm, my passport inside them, and disappeared for an hour. The train had to wait. A rule from the Mao era, long disregarded in eastern China, was being used against me. Mother China watches especially closely in Xinjiang.

The present crisis began, not with demonstrations against the government, but with Uighur and Han trashing each other. Social group came up against social group. "They don't speak Chinese!" Han cried of Uighur "rapists" in the south. "They steal!"

The Chinese government quickly publicized the Urumqi riots, contrary to its longstanding practice, believing that pictures of the confrontation and carnage would arouse Han feeling on the government side. True enough, racial emotions surfaced. Uighur "are all terrorists," some Han shouted. "They're spoiled like pandas," said a woman irritated with the preferential treatment that Uighurs have received from Beijing.

The Han and Uighur truly dislike each other. Emotions run deeper than between Han and Tibetan or between Han and Mongol and argue against any hope that economic development will work its magic.

But there's larger trouble for Beijing. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, and other Muslim countries have been displaying sympathy for their brothers in Xinjiang and being rebuked by Beijing as a result. Last week Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan said, "The incidents in China are, simply put, a genocide. There's no point in interpreting this otherwise."
On top of this, there may be different views in the politburo about how to handle ethnic unrest. President Hu's career was shaped in non-Han areas, and his sensitivity to minority issues helps explain his unprecedented departure from an international summit to handle a domestic crisis. Under Hu, national security white papers from the military openly mention independence for Xinjiang and Tibet as threats to China. But his recipe for "stability"--guns plus propaganda--is not necessarily shared by every senior colleague. Some of the Communist rising stars below the politburo wonder if a non-Han empire is a liability to China's modern image and smiling international stance.

Still, without a major international dispute or a party split, Hu may well pull off the Communist melting pot strategy in Xinjiang (and Tibet). Muslims may be softened by growing prosperity and Xinjiang integrated internationally by the new rail, road, and pipeline links. Modernization may overcome apartheid.

Yet even so, at some point the new China must throw up a political system that allows minorities more latitude. The PRC is more populous than Europe and South and North America put together. In the United States, Mormon, Puerto Rican, Wall Street titan, Southern Baptist, Hawaiian hippie, Harvard professor, Amish grandma, Californian anarchist--thousands of such varied types coexist decade after decade. All are peas in a pod at election time or before a judge; each person is merely, and proudly, a citizen in the United States of America. The diversity is not lethal; in fact each election with the result accepted by all parties cements a unity deeper than the diversity. America's cacophony and fundamental stability are both missing in Xinjiang. Federalism is what China needs to gain true unity and stability. But it cannot come until the rule of law arrives first.

Ross Terrill is the author of The New Chinese Empire (Basic Books) and the biographies Mao and Madame Mao (both Stanford).

China's Uighurs hope to gain from world spotlight

2009-07-16T22:53:00.000-04:00

China's Uighurs hope to gain from world spotlight
AFP July 13, 2009, 5:01 pm

A policeman passes an ethnic Uighur man selling bags on a street in Urumqi. The recent uprising in the city, capital of China s Xinjiang region, has put the remote area on the world stage with many local people welcoming the attention but, warn experts, the hopes of the Uighurs could soon prove unfounded with the unrest likely to fortify China s resolve in maintaining its tight grip on the region.

AFP © [Enlarge photo]

URUMQI, China (AFP) - Like many ethnic Uighurs, businessman Anwar hopes greater world interest in the Muslim minority following deadly unrest in this remote Chinese city of Urumqi could lead to long-time grievances being addressed.

Sitting on an overturned bucket he uses as a chair in his cramped apartment, Anwar spoke in angry whispers about religious restrictions and other forms of repression many Uighurs say they suffer under Chinese rule.

"In my lifetime we have not had an opportunity like this," Anwar said of the recent international attention on the eight million Uighurs in China's far northwest Xinjiang region.

"We call on America or the United Nations to come here and see the situation for themselves and help us."

The Uighurs created headlines around the world after taking to the streets of Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital, on July 5 in protests that quickly turned violent.

The government said 184 people died that day, when some Uighurs savagely attacked members of China's dominant Han ethnic group and razed their shops.

However the death toll from that day of unrest, a security crackdown and subsequent clashes is likely to be higher.

When told of world criticism about some of China's policies toward Uighurs, Anwar, who wore a traditional four-cornered embroidered Uighur cap, broke into a broad grin as he stroked a scruffy beard.

"We welcome this. We hope the rest of the world can stop ignoring us," Anwar said in Mandarin.

Tucked in a remote corner of China, and without a charismatic globe-trotting figure like Tibet's Dalai Lama to trumpet their cause, many Uighurs expressed hope that the recent unrest here had finally given them a window on the world.

Aside from what they say is Beijing's religious and political oppression, Uighurs complain of an influx of Han migrants that they say is extinguishing their culture.

But those hopes could soon prove unfounded, experts said, with the unrest likely fortifying China's resolve to maintain its tight grip on Xinjiang, a strategic and energy-rich region that crosses into Central Asia.

Publicity about Uighurs attacking Han will also likely damage their public relations efforts.

"In some ways, this has helped the Uighur cause by raising their (world) profile," said Dru Gladney, an expert on the Turkic-speaking central Asian people at Pomona College in California.

"But domestically, the government has successfully turned this against the Uighurs and made them look very bad. It has demonstrated that the Uighurs are violent."

The Islamic world's criticism of Chinese policies towards the Uighurs has been the strongest, with Turkey's prime minister last week calling them "a kind of genocide."

But China, which says Xinjiang faces a Uighur terrorist threat, has given no hint of any softening. Official pronouncements have vowed a tough crackdown and made little or no mention of Uighur complaints.

Communist Party Politburo member Zhou Yongkang, the nation's security czar, over the weekend called for a "steel wall" of security against "hostile forces".

Gladney said he saw little hope of a government rethink to any policies relating to Uighur grievances.

"That has all been put on hold for a while," he said.

The Islamic world's criticism also is likely to prove only a blip against China's rising economic and diplomatic clout, Gladney added.

Many Uighurs agreed, expressing deep dismay that the violent riots had cost them the moral high ground and saying darker times lay ahead.

Akbar, a college-educated Uighur in his late 20s, has not held a steady job for three years, saying job fairs in Urumqi often say "Uighurs need not apply."

He left Urumqi at the weekend for his rural hometown several hours' drive away, fearing arrest amid reported police sweeps on young Uighur men, although he denies involvement in the unrest.

"Many of us (Uighurs) had wondered how it could be worse for us but we are now entering into a new period that will be bad for a long time, so I just want to spend time with my family now," he said.

Beijing can't bury the Xinjiang story

2009-07-16T22:52:00.000-04:00

Beijing can't bury the Xinjiang story
By Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING - The story of ethnic strife engulfing China's far-western province of Xinjiang may have been relegated to the inner pages of the country's state-controlled newspapers, but it found space on the front pages of almost every other Chinese daily.

Unlike the Tibetan riots last year, when the media were initially told to suppress the story, the clashes between Han Chinese and Muslim Uyghurs that erupted in the provincial capital of Urumqi on July 5 was widely reported.

In many ways, this is symbolic of the profound changes taking shape in this fast-developing society, which the communist mandarins can no longer fully control.

Taking cue from the protests in Iran, where the emergence of new

media tools like Twitter, Facebook, and You Tube ensured the story was broadcast to the rest of the world, Beijing was eager to put its own version out as quickly as possible.

On July 7, widely read local newspapers like the Beijing Youth Daily and the Beijing News published pictures of burned cars, smashed buses and bloodied people in Urumqi. Accompanying reports from the state news agency, Xinhua, claimed the violence that erupted was "a pre-empted, organized violent crime. It is instigated and directed from abroad and carried out by outlaws in the country".

Beijing has blamed Rebiya Kadeer - a female Muslim-American emigre, as well as pro-independence Uyghur groups in exile in Washington, Munich and London for masterminding the revolt from afar.

Even the Southern Weekend - a liberal newspaper based in China's free-wheeling south - fell in line with the mandated version of events. It devoted a full page to profiling Kadeer, describing her as "the Dalai Lama of Uyghur people". It spent little effort on probing how more than a hundred people died in a matter of hours in a city swamped with paramilitary police or questioning the officially released number of Han Chinese and Muslim Uyghur victims.

Beijing insists that Uyghurs' fight is for independence and has condemned their demands for religious freedom and genuine autonomy as separatist agitation. The Uyghurs - members of a Turkic-speaking group that is culturally, religiously and linguistically different from the Han Chinese - have long complained of the heavy-handed Chinese policies.

Li Wei, an expert on terrorism issues with the Chinese Institute for International relations told the Southern Weekend newspaper that the Urumqi riots had the same goal as the Tibetan riots that erupted in the run up to the Beijing Olympics last August.

"This is a provocation by Rebiya aimed at sabotaging the 60th founding anniversary of the People's Republic of China," he said. "She has been plotting incessantly and she has been looking for a suitable fuse to fire up unrest in the autonomous region."

Much of the media have attempted to convey a message of danger from "hostile" elements stirring trouble in the ethnic minority areas and has rallied the nation to stand together in the face of the "threat". Photos of paramilitary police officers on TV and the newspapers have been interspersed with the coverage of state leaders visiting wounded people in the hospitals and calling for national unity.

But not all the media have lined up behind the official line of reporting. Some business newspapers - widely perceived as operating outside of sensitive topics as national sovereignty - have probed the reasons for the protests beyond the official sanctioned explanation of separatism.

The China Business Journal for instance, carried an investigation into the triggers for the protests and dared to suggest that widening income disparity between the ethnic Han majority and the Muslim Uyghur minority has played a part in the uprising.

Much alike Tibetans, the Uyghurs have found themselves on the fringes of the Chinese economic miracle. Hoping to benefit from the economic reforms that Han Chinese spearheaded and introduced through the country, they have instead been marginalized as outsiders in their own homeland, witnessing how resources and profits have flown to Han Chinese migrants.

The last census taken in Xinjiang showed that although the nearly 8.4 million Uyghurs are still a majority in their land (they stand at 42% of the total), the Han Chinese population has risen to 38%.

The Urumqi riots - some of the deadliest conflicts between the two ethnic groups in Xinjiang region since the Chinese communist troops arrived there 60 years ago - started with demands by local Uyghurs for the government to investigate the deaths of two Muslim migrant workers in the southern province of Guangdong.

Violence erupted when police began to disperse protesters, spreading across the Han-majority capital city of 2.3 million people. Sympathy protests followed in the traditionally restive towns of Kashgar and Khotan, and in places as far away as Munich and Istanbul. The authorities claim some 184 people died in the riots, more than two-thirds of them Han Chinese.

While the China Business Journal's reporting steered clear of questioning the official version of events, it traced the origins of the conflict to a government-sponsored poverty alleviation project. The migrant workers that died in a brawl in Shaoguan, Guangdong province, were part of a labor force export scheme aimed at reducing social tensions in the most remote parts of Xinjiang.

The two Muslim workers were among the 4,100 people from Shufu county under Kashgar city that were "exported" by local authorities to work as migrant labor in the manufacturing hubs of China's east and south. According to the report, the project had transformed the remote county into a model "labor export" center, attracting some 8,000 recruits since 2008.

"In the poorest areas of China where resources are scarce, labor export is one of the most convenient ways for poverty alleviation," said Chen Yaogao, social researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

While in most areas, migrant force recruitment is conducted by labor agencies or the companies themselves, in the case of Shufu scheme the recruitment was entirely driven by the government. Local authorities contacted manufacturers in Guangdong and in the eastern coast harbor of Tianjin to find placement for the laborers, and even dispatched local cooks to cater to their food needs.

While sounding positive on the government intention, the paper highlighted the problems of Muslim Uyghurs feeling "resentful" of the wealth and living standards of Han Chinese. The report spoke of the "fragility" of the labor export experiment in ethnic minority areas plagued by poverty.

Electronic media has been even more effective in raising public awareness about political and economic inequality between Han and non-Han.

A Chinese-language website, www.uyghurbiz.cn, had emerged as a cyber forum probing Beijing's minority polices and questioning the wisdom of encouraging the migration of Han Chinese into Xinjiang. The Internet forum, founded by Uyghur economist Ilham Tohti, had argued that Beijing's polices were in need of revision as they had put Uyghurs at disadvantage and alienated them.

As Beijing tried to silence the forum after the riots, the response by online activists was immediate. A lobby of more than 100 Chinese writers and intellectuals published a letter calling for the release of www.uyghurbiz.cn's founder. Ilham Tohti was reported missing from his Beijing home this week and has apparently been detained.

The letter posted online on Monday urged Beijing to reflect on whether its own mistakes caused the unrest in Xinjiang and the anti-government riots last year in Lhasa and other Tibetan communities.

(Inter Press Service)

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

2009-07-16T22:50:00.000-04:00

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy by Christina Larson
The Uighurs aren't extremists--but the Chinese government may change that.
Post Date Thursday, July 16, 2009

Columns of paramilitary police are now keeping a tenuous peace in Urumqi, the western Chinese city where more than 1,000 Uighurs rioted ten days ago in the bloodiest clash in decades between the authorities and the Turkic-speaking Muslim minority group.

The eight million Uighurs who live in Xinjiang province have long chafed at Beijing's rule. Shortly after the United States introduced the concept of a global "war on terror," the local police seized the opportunity to ratchet up already stringent security measures aimed at Uighurs under the mantra of cracking down on the "three evils" of "terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism." The police treat these threats as interchangeable and as the underlying source of Uighur discontent in the region, despite the abundance of obvious socio-economic grievances-- which range from income inequality to dilapidated schools to job discrimination. The resulting dynamic is a simmering cauldron of unrest, ever threatening to boil over as in last week's riots.

But perhaps the most tragic irony lies in the Chinese insistence that Uighur dissent is rooted in ideology and religion, and that recent incidents of violence--such as the string of bus bombings and attacks on police that last year riled southwestern Xinjiang--are the work of Islamic extremists and agitators tied to foreign campaigns. In truth, the Uighurs' observance of Islam is largely apolitical, but by treating the Muslim faith itself as a threat and sharply curbing religious practice in Xinjiang, Chinese security forces may end up breeding the very kind of insurrection they are now trying to quell.

In principle, Islam is one of China's five officially recognized and legal faiths. But in practice, Uighurs face a litany of restrictions on daily devotional life: In Urumqi, mosques are banned from playing the call to prayer; in the ancient city of Kashgar, anyone under age 18 is barred from entering mosques during major Muslim festivals; and throughout the province, inspectors from China's ethnic Han majority routinely saunter into mosques to post government propaganda and peruse log books. As one Uighur man told me outside a mosque in Kashgar, "In theory, we have more religious freedom now [than during the Cultural Revolution]. But in reality, it is different. Of course it makes us angry."

It's not uncommon to feel threatened by what you don't understand. And fundamentally, the Chinese Communist Party, which was founded on materialist principles and encourages atheism among its members, doesn't understand religion. Its leaders see every non-state-supervised religious gathering, or attempt to impart values to children, as a potential threat to their political authority.

It's true that the Uighurs in Xinjiang are devout. Last fall, when I visited Kashgar during Ramadan, every Uighur man I met was keeping the fast. And on the holy month's final day, called the Rozi Festival, ten thousand men from across southwestern Xinjiang gathered to mark the occasion outside the city's historic Id Kah mosque. It's also true that the restive western province is located smack in the middle of volatile central Asia and borders eight nations, some of which, like Pakistan and Afghanistan, are wrestling with Muslim extremism.

Yet if you visit Xinjiang, you'll hear little about jihad or fatwas, and few diatribes against contemporary lifestyles, women's rights, or capitalism. The Uighurs, like the Turks with whom they share ethnic and linguistic roots, embrace a blending of devotion and modernity. While Islam is a central aspect of their identity, Uighurs don't view the world, or their relationship to Beijing, as an ecclesiastical clash of civilizations. They have plenty of complaints about Chinese government policy, but those grievances aren't formulated or expressed in the name of Allah. Nor do Uighur clerics enforce a culturally conservative outlook. Women in Kashgar wear headscarves, but they also zip themselves about town on motorbikes.

Although the world knows little about Xinjiang, educated Uighurs themselves tend to be outward-looking: Many speak three languages (Uighur, Mandarin, and English), and their English is often more fluent than that of their Han counterparts. Far from decrying global pop culture, Uighurs I met spoke fondly of Bruce Springsteen, Lindsay Lohan, and Braveheart.

As Gardner Bovingdon, professor of East Asian and Eurasian studies at Indiana University, told me, "The Islam of Xinjiang is not the Islam ascendant in some Middle Eastern countries, where religion is more fundamentalist, textualist, rigid." Uighurs, he added, have a heritage that is distinct--culturally, linguistically, and in outlook--from the Arab countries sometimes understood as Islamist flashpoints.

In fact, the notion of highly politicized religion seems at odds with Uighur mentality. When I traveled along the Karakorum Highway, a winding mountainous route stretching between Kashgar and Islamabad, my Uighur driver was quite concerned that we not actually cross the border into Pakistan. "It's a dangerous country--it's fundamentalist," he said. I asked him what that meant, and he explained, with a touch of mirth, "Fundamentalism means the men make the women stay home and take care of their bad children." Humor aside, he said he didn't want his home to become a place where Islam was deeply politicized. For now, he saw Xinjiang as different.

Some observers credit China's strict border controls--including a policy of routinely denying visa requests to Uighurs who wish to visit Mecca--with insulating the region from more incendiary religious factions in neighboring and nearby countries.

But at the same time, many analysts believe that further restricting religious observance--a troubling likelihood today, as Chinese authorities look for scapegoats in the wake of the riots--could encourage radicalism. A recent Human Rights Watch report makes a detailed and alarming case that China's "overbroad and repressive policies in Xinjiang deepen local resentment and risk further destabilizing the region." Or, as Andrew Nathan, chair of the political science department at Columbia University, puts it: "It's a real dilemma for the Chinese regime: They have long been committed to this regulatory repressive track, but it produces resentment. It produces resistance."

One afternoon, when I was visiting a small village mosque in southwest Xinjiang, two Han inspectors sauntered in, out of place in their dark brimmed hats; they didn't ask any questions, but seemed there largely to intimidate, to make their presence felt. My Uighur guide felt instantly uncomfortable, as if incriminated, and insisted we leave. The impression such encounters have left him with is: "I don't like police. They are always rude and rough."

Fueling popular indignation is a serious risk. As Richard Weitz of the Hudson Institute's Center for Political-Military Analysis, points out, the Chinese government could target alleged extremists (if they existed) without putting the entire Muslim community of Xinjiang under suspicion: "What should the government do if it was trying to control a real threat? Short term: Infiltrate these groups; arrest people with arms. Long term: Eliminate source of grievances, and allow more autonomy, religious and cultural freedom. ... Calling everyone a terrorist is not useful to achieving the goal of stability."

Or, as Nathan puts it: "Islam is extremely diverse. We should not 'essentialize' Islam. ... Countries and governments hurt themselves with the idea of a class of civilizations. We paint ourselves into a corner. We make a situation much worse by our imagination."

Christina Larson is an editor at Foreign Policy magazine and a fellow at the New America Foundation. She reports from Washington, DC, and Asia.

Cruel China, Miserable Uyghur and Disabled World

2009-07-15T10:00:00.001-04:00

Cruel China, Miserable Uyghur and Disabled World"

By Uyghur Oghlu
It is an undeniable fact that Uyghur people have suffered tremendously under the Chinese communist regime over the past 60 years. The destruction and tragedy that China has imposed on Uyghurs is no less than the holocaust that the fascist Germany committed against innocent Jews people. Although the nature of China's oppression of Uyghurs has been static prior to "9.11", the scale and intensity of it have been widended and acclerated after "9.11".

Seven years ago from today, although there is a day and light, Earth and Mars differences between the way of Uyghur life and lunatic Al-Qaida and Taliban Maniacs, Richard Armitage declared in Bejing that "ETIM", a fake organization that Uyghurs have never heard of as a terrorist organization. The opportunistic Chinese communist leaders took advantage of this, began to categorically demonize the Uyghur people as terrorists or terror suspects. Needless to say, US listing of so-called "ETIM" has played a catalyst role for China to oppress Uyghurs even harsher. With that declaration, the United Stated of America which stands for as a beacon of hope for oppressed people, and only one country on earth that can tremble the dictators in China and around the globe has sold out its core value, and debased its image among the oppressed people. Having won their jackpot from US, China attacked Uyghurs in every dimension of life.

Let's not talk about the innocent Uyghurs killed during the various political campaigns directed at Uyghurs since 1949.

Let's not talk about the untimely deaths of thousands of poor Uyghurs who without knowing what the cause of their diseases due to China's numerous atomic bomb tests in Uyghur Land since 1960.

Let's not talk about the mental and physical deaths of kind and naive uyghur women whose babies were aborted in an abject condition due to forced abortion.
Let's talk about how China increased its oppression of uyghurs since "9..11";
In violation of their own constituion and Autonomus Regional Law, China restricted Uyghur culture. Uyghur lanuguage was forbidden to teach at schools, and Mandarin was forced on Uyghur Children when they were in kindergarden. Uyghur teachers, and government staff were laid off due to insuffient Chinese language, where it is not needed at all. Uyghur government workers were forced to shave off their symbol of manhood - moustaches and beards and fined or reprimanded them for going to the mosque or attending the burial rituals. Uyghur youth who were found jogging or doing physical exercise were questioned for their motive of their increasing physical strength. Since 2006, hundreds and thousand of young and beautiful Uyghur girls were transferred to China's coastal regions in the name of employment. These girls' age range from 14-22 and are at the best of their reproductive age. Due to the revelation of this political campaign and subsequent international inquiry on this campaign, Wang le quan and his puppet Nur Bekri began to transfer young and able Uyghur men to the coastal region to cover their motive. Those young Uyghurs literaly were turned into modern slaves working for a dime per hour. Uyghurs who protested these policy were imprisoned at best, and executed at the worts, despite international organizations' criticism of China's human rights record. The local Chinese officials have turned Uyghur land which located in Central Asia into a "new concentration camp" in 21th century with Chinese caracteristics.

Uyghurs complained, screamed and cried, but no government dared to say anything to China.

As if these misery were not enough for uyghurs, Newt Ginggrich and Rush Limbaugh took sides with Communst China and demonized Uyghurs. what a dirty lap dancing?

Three things have happened recently in Uyghur life and it reminded us the cruelty of China, misery of uyghurs, and impotency of the world.

Listen world, you are semi-deaf. you heard the "calling" from Iran, and mourned the death of innocent girl - "Neda". but you have not heard the cry of uyghurs. Uyghurs started to cry louder since May'2009, when a 33 year old Chinese beast surnamed Zhao, a primary school language teacher who was recruited by government to teach Uyghur pupils in the historical Uyghur city of Yarkand- were discovered to have had sexually assaulted more than a dozen innocent Uyghur girls whose age ranges 8-11 old. For his unforgivable crime, he was protected by the school principal Liu Yu Mei, and along with other local Chinese police. The uyghur parents who demanded him be punished harshly were intimitated, discouraged.

Hello Chinese people, Hello parents in the world, don't you have kids? what were you do, if that happens to your children?

The second incident happened in Shao guan, Guangdong. The victims are 800 Uyghur young workers, of whom most were female. They were brought there by the intimidation and deception of so-called ineffective Autonomous Regional Government in mid-June of 2009. On June 26th, thousands of Chinese gangsters in Shaoguan attacked these young Uyghurs who were unaware of the death was falling on them. Any normal person with a human heart who sees the video distributed by the Chinese themselves will be furious at the crulety of those Chinese. In it, Uyghurs who were attempting to escape the Chinese terrorists were beaten to death. The more enraging fact is that the Chinese police did not come on time, and delayed protection of these innocent Uyghurs who were the victims of Wang Le quan's terror policy. As a result, a number of them died, and many of them were severely injured. I could not believe that Chinese people would show such cruelty toward Uyghurs who have done nothing wrong and happened to be their fellow citizens. Later, it turned out that these Chinese terrorists were instigated by a rumor made by another dissatisfied Chinese factory worker.
Poor Uyghurs, poor and soulless Chinese.

Had the police protected these innocent victims at the time, and Wang le quan or Nur Bekri flew to Guang Dong and paid attention to Uyghurs' pain, things would not have gotten this bad. The incoming tragedy must have been averted. I have the sympathy for the victims of Nanking massacre, and hate those war criminals, and I thought Chinese were better than those war criminals. but not anymore. In that video, holding the metal rods and other violent tools, shouts the Chinese: "Kill the Uyghurs, Kill them all!", and they raise their hands with pride and sense of victory each time an Uyghur falls. Did they think these Uyghurs came from Japan?

I did not forget that Chinese internet police has built the strongest online great wall to serve their national interest. I thought that unity comes from equality, and I believed that equality, unity and harmony among ethnic groups would make China stronger and greater. Having seen that video, I am convinced that Chinese descended to evilness, and Chinese people don't care about their image in the interconnected world. And they want to stay forever selfish and cruel as third class world citizens by trading the greatness with their surging nationalism. What a expensive trade, and what a high price to pay?

It must be noted that nationalism is a double edge sword. I worry that it hurts all parties involved. immediately after Shao guan massacre, young Chinese vented their anger toward Uyghurs, and instigated other Chinese to wipe out Uyghurs from the face of earth. I am surprised that when and how they began to share Ahmadi Nijad's idiology that "wipe out those whom you don't like". Some Chinese netizens even recommended government carry out a holocaust against Uyghurs. Until this day, I did not know that Chinese internet police along with Chinese netizens share the same feeling and would openly adore Adolf Hitler. "China needs Adolf Hitler, slaughter these Uyghur pigs", some Chinese netizens commented. May Almighty forbid that one of these fanatics will become the President of China in the future. If that happens, the possibility that he will turn the world into ashes will increase..

The holocaust that happened in the last century was a stain and shame that humanity can't and should not erase easily. It must be remembered to forewarn the present and future generations who may like to taste the blood of others.

Reports came out since yesterday that Uyghur students were suppressed by the Chinese military and we don't know how many Uyghurs died in Urumqi as of now. We also saw that incompetent governor, Nur Bekri finally gave an explanation about Shao Guan Massacre. Although he twisted the facts, he was late. Wang le quan and Nur Bekri could have easily prevented Urumqi massacre by taking a just and humble approach. But they showed the true face of blood thirsty dictators. We don't know what is going on in Urumqi now. It was also reported that Chinese civilians and semi-military population in Bing Tuan were armed themselves, organized and began to attack innocent people as long as they are Uyghurs. I doubt that Chinese state television will show the Uyghur victims of Chinese attack to the visiting foreign press.
Yes, all this happened and happening now in Urumqi, the capital of an ethnic Autonomous Region that China's constitution granted.

I am very shocked to find out that the world is much disabled than I imagined. The images show that Chinese in Urumqi is carrying out ethnic cleansing with the protection of Chinese Army and the Police. The world is not seeing it and could not see it. But they saw it when it happened in Darfur, Even George Clooney saw it. Fareed Zakaria saw it when it happened to Tibetans. Bill Clinton saw it when it happened to Kosovar people. And the world spoke out on behalf of all of them.

But now? They are all deaf and blind.

Whom do we expect some kind of humantarian gesture, a kind of ethical response to this incident?

By biologically defined marks, Uyghurs were related to Turks. Did not we hear from them? yes, we did. We heard that Turkish Authorities entrusted Chinese justice System standing in line with Beijing. Abdulla Gul must have been well received in Zhong nan hai.
It is useless to mention the independent Turkic states in Central Asia. They have a history of harming Uyghurs at the request of Beijing, because they can get benefits from China. Our neighbor, Pakistan and its army also have the history of killing or extraditing Uyghurs per Beijing's demand. The former Pakistani dictator- president Musharrap (May god curse him forever) was the first head of a sovereign government that accused Uyghurs of terrorsim without evidence, just to please Jiang Ze min.

Yes, I emphasize that the majority of Uyghurs were muslims, therefore it is natural to observe other muslim countries' attitude toward Uyghurs.
Syria has expelled Axmatjan Osman, a famous uyghur poet whose wife is Syrian, because China asked her to do so.
Neither Saudi king nor other so-called protectors of Islam has uttered a word on Chinese persecution of Uyghur muslims. China and these muslim states lick each other's lips as they think they have a common enemy - The West and Democracy. That leaves Uyghurs with some China-wary democratic western countries and although small but beautiful, kind and couragous great states like Albania, Bermuda and Palau..

I believe Uyghurs who are good at businesses remember those transactions. Believe me we will give the due credit when time comes to those who helped us in times of great diffuclty and do the same to those who had done the worst to us.

Hello world, have you lost your senses? something horrible must be happening in Uyghur land now. Please speak up!! What you do for Uyghurs today, will be your doings for yourself in tomorrow!
Please ask the United Nations, The United States and The European Union send an independent, impartial delegation to Urumqi, and have them investigate this massacre!.
Where are you, Spanish Judge? Wang le quan is committing genocidal crime aganist Uyghurs.

Hello Texas, Can you ask George W. Bush, if he still remembers by his statement that the United States Government stands by oppressed people. As a former president , his words still carries some weight.

Finally America, and freedom loving American people, can you please tell President Obama that Uyghurs can't expect an audacious hope for their freedom from him, but only craving a tiny ray of hope for their basic human rights???

A civil rights movement for Uighurs

2009-07-14T19:24:00.000-04:00

A civil rights movement for Uighurs

No peace or reconciliation is possible in Xinjiang while China rides roughshod over Uighurs' rights to shore up its authority

In 1955, a 14-year-old African-American boy named Emmett Till, who had been sent to rural Mississippi to spend the summer with his uncle, was beaten and shot, and then his body was weighed down and dropped into the Tallahatchie River after he was alleged to have made a vulgar pass at Carolyn Bryant, a white woman. Till's body was badly disfigured, but his mother insisted that there be an open casket at his funeral, and up to 50,000 people viewed his body. It took just over an hour for the all-white jury to decide to acquit the two defendants accused of murdering Till – the husband of Carolyn Bryant and his step-brother.

The murder of Emmett Till and the subsequent lack of justice in his case helped spark the beginnings of the American civil rights movement. Just over three months after Till's death, Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus. Till's murder shocked the world, revealing the severity of the prejudice experienced by African-Americans, particularly in the southern part of the United States. Decades of demonstrations and protests followed, as African-Americans struggled for equal treatment and a greater share of America's freedoms. Riots also rocked major American cities, exposing deep wounds in America's racial landscape.

More than half a century later, and half a world away, rumours that Uighurs at a factory in Shaoguan, in south-eastern China, had raped two Chinese women led a mob of Han Chinese workers to raid the dormitories of Uighur workers and attack them with knives, metal pipes and other weapons. Riot police reportedly took their time in arriving at the scene of the attacks, in the early hours of 26 June. Chinese officials reported that two Uighurs had been killed in the attacks, but Uighurs who witnessed the murders and beatings told the international media that many more had been killed. Immediately following the incident, the Chinese government only indicated that it had punished the disgruntled Chinese man, a former worker at the factory, responsible for spreading the false allegations of sexual molestation. However, there was no official indication that any arrests would be made related to the killings and beatings that took place. (On 7 July, the official Chinese media reported that 13 arrests were made on 5 July that were related to the Shaoguan factory violence.)

On 5 July, Uighurs began taking to the streets in Urumchi, at first peacefully, to protest the killings at Shaoguan and the lack of government action to bring the perpetrators to justice. Many people have questioned how an event that took place so far away (Shaoguan, in Guangdong province, is more than 3,000km away from Urumchi), and why what they perceive as such a small-scale, isolated event sparked so much anger and frustration. I ask people to understand that Uighurs feel much as African-Americans must have felt at the death of Emmett Till and the acquittal of his murderers; and that, just as the murder of Emmett Till sparked resentment and sadness throughout the United States at many decades of deep repression, lynchings, and lack of opportunity, following the Shaoguan violence, Uighurs in East Turkestan and throughout China felt anger and despair rise up over decades of economic, social and religious discrimination, together with the widespread execution, torture and imprisonment of their people.

I in no way endorse any of the violent acts carried out by Uighurs in East Turkestan over the past week. I am absolutely opposed to all violence. However, I believe that, just as the Chinese government misrepresented the facts in the Shaoguan incident, it has, on a much larger scale, grossly misrepresented the truth of the recent protests and violence in East Turkestan. The Chinese government has aggressively promoted a sophisticated, one-sided image of the killings and beatings that have taken place, distributing CDs to international journalists featuring an almost exclusive picture of violence committed by Uighurs against the Han Chinese population. It is irrefutable that acts of violence, including murders, were committed by Uighurs against Han Chinese. However, numerous residents of East Turkestan have told the organisations I lead that they have witnessed the deaths of hundreds of Uighurs that have gone unreported in the official press. At this point, it is impossible to verify these eyewitness accounts, as communications have been virtually cut off between East Turkestan and the outside world. But I cannot ignore the many accounts I have received of unimaginable atrocities that have been covered up.

How can real peace and justice be brought to East Turkestan? This is a difficult question to answer. Real peace cannot be achieved through a lack of transparency; through the 20,000 troops that have been brought in; or through blaming "outside forces", such as myself and the World Uighur Congress, for the turmoil that is now rocking the region. Real peace cannot be achieved through a complete lack of acknowledgment of ethnic discrimination and ethnic disharmony in East Turkestan, such as was exhibited in yesterday's opinion piece by Chinese ambassador Fu Ying. Peace and reconciliation may only begin when China, at the very least, acknowledges the depth and scope of the problems that exist in East Turkestan.

The Chinese government must stop fanning the flames of nationalism within the PRC, and using anti-Uighur anger to shore up its own legitimacy. Instead of blaming "outside forces", it must look within its own borders to examine widespread official repression and officially-promoted ethnic stereotypes. Chinese officials must work to provide job opportunities for Uighurs within East Turkestan and mitigate the severe employment imbalance between Uighurs and Han Chinese in the region. They must provide a forum for the most basic forms of dissent and dialogue between Uighurs and the government. There must be fair trials for those accused of perpetrating violence. And they must allow an independent, international investigation into the events of the past week.

It is hard to imagine the eventual growth of a Uighur civil rights movement, as tens of thousands of troops patrol Urumchi, Kashgar and other cities in East Turkestan. Not much hope for optimism can come from the recent arrest of a Uighur economics professor in Beijing, who merely called for more economic opportunities for Uighurs. And as Chinese officials broadcast rhetoric about the need to execute those found guilty of crimes over the past week, I expect that trials of the accused will not meet international standards. I can only hope against all hope, for the peace and prosperity of everyone in East Turkestan, that things will begin to change.

Jordan MPs urge government to protest China's crackdown on Muslims

2009-07-14T17:24:00.001-04:00

Jordan MPs urge government to protest China's crackdown on Muslims
Tuesday, 14 July 2009 18:21
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M&C

Amman - At least 40 Jordanian lawmakers signed a memorandum Monday urging the government to lodge an official protest over China's crackdown on Muslim Uighurs in the Xinjiang region, parliamentary sources said.

'The government should summon the Chinese envoy and relay to him a strongly worded protest and condemnation over what is going on in the Xinjiang province,' the deputies said in a memorandum handed to Abdul Hadi Majali, speaker of the lower house of Parliament.

'We have followed up with great concern the dangerous developments there and the horrible and bloody crackdown on Uighur Muslims and the threats by the Chinese authorities to execute more of them and prevent them from praying at mosques.'

Jordan's influential Muslim Brotherhood movement has condemned the killing of hundreds of Uighur Mislims and what it called the 'savage suppression' of the Chinese Muslims' peaceful activity.

'Dealing with Muslims in such an extremely cruel and violent manner has left deep wounds with us and with all Muslims all over the globe,' Brotherhood leader Hammam Saeed said in a message to Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Saeed urged Beijing to resort to dialogue instead of violence and to allow Muslims to exercise their right of free worship, saying China should preserve the 'traditional friendship with the Arab and Islamic nations.'

Is The World Ignoring A Massacre of Uighurs In China?

2009-07-14T17:21:00.002-04:00

Is The World Ignoring A Massacre of Uighurs In China?
14.7.09
Andy Worthington
I have just received disturbing information from several Uighur correspondents in the United States, regarding the "riots" that began just nine days ago in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of China.

When the unrest began, the world's media suddenly discovered the story of the Uighurs, who describe their situation as akin to that of the Tibetans, but without the popular support. Once known as East Turkestan, the Uighurs' long-contested homeland was conquered by the People's Liberation Army in 1949, and anyone even remotely familiar with recent Uighur history will be aware that, in the 1960s, Mao Zedong encouraged Han Chinese to settle in the area in large numbers, and that the Uighurs - some of whom came to the attention of the West when 22 refugees were sold to US forces and imprisoned in Guantánamo - maintain that, as a result, they are marginalized and persecuted in their own country.

According to a 2005 report by Human Rights Watch, the Chinese government has established a "multi-tiered system of surveillance, control, and suppression of religious activity aimed at Xinjiang's Uighurs. At its most extreme, peaceful activists who practice their religion in a manner deemed unacceptable by state authorities or Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials are arrested, tortured, and at times executed. The harshest punishments are meted out to those accused of involvement in separatist activity, which is increasingly equated by officials with ‘terrorism.' Because of fears in Beijing of the power of separatist messages, independent religious activity or dissent is at times arbitrarily equated with a breach of state security, a serious crime in China and one that is frequently prosecuted."

Unlike last year, when the violence in Tibet played out unfavorably for the Chinese government, coverage of the unrest in Urumqi, which coincided with a major Uighur demonstration, was commandeered by the government, which, in an unprecedented move, set up a press office and pumped out stories blaming the violence on the Uighurs - and specifically, on Rebiya Kadeer, the head of the World Uyghur Congress, who was blamed for inciting the violence.

The New York Times explained, "As with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, Chinese officials often blame Ms. Kadeer for ethnic unrest." For her part, Kadeer, who lives in Washington D.C., and was an extraordinarily successful businesswoman in Xinjiang until she was imprisoned on dubious spying charges by the Chinese government, not only denied the allegations, but also provided a glimpse of the strength of character that continues to draw supporters to the Uighurs' cause. "Instead of blaming me," she told the Times, "the Chinese government should start listening to the complaints of the Uighur people and choose dialogue."

As Arianna Huffington reports today, the government also "choked off the Internet, blocked Twitter, and deleted updates and videos from social networking sites," preventing the Uighurs from mounting an Iranian-style grass-roots response, and released news footage showing film of Han Chinese who had been wounded, and of Uighur youths attacking vehicles and buildings, which was broadcast around the world, effectively endorsing their one-sided message that the Uighurs were to blame for all the violence, and making it remarkably difficult to establish what actually took place.

Largely absent from the story, however, was a reason for the demonstration, which, it later transpired, was because a number of Uighur workers (two, according to the government's figures) had been murdered on June 25 in a toy factory in Guangdong (2,000 miles away from Xinjiang, on the other side of China) after Han Chinese workers falsely accused a number of their Uighur colleagues of raping two young Han Chinese women.

Also missing was a coherent explanation of why a demonstrably peaceful demonstration had suddenly turned violent, but by July 10, when the government issued a statement, claiming that 137 Han Chinese and 46 Uighurs had died in Urumqi (and 1,680 people had been wounded), the press wondered, briefly, about the fate of an unspecified number of Uighurs detained after the unrest, mentioned mobs of Han Chinese roaming the streets of Urumqi armed with swords and other weapons (and in some cases photographed them), and then largely moved on.

And yet, the reports I received from Uighurs in the US - drawing on accounts from inside Urumqi - provide uncomfortable answers to the questions posed above, and indicate that the government's suppression of the Uighurs may be so severe - involving the murder of up to 1,500 Uighurs, and the disappearance of thousands more, who, it is feared, will either not be seen again or will face unjust "show trials" - that it is nothing short of a massacre, whose true contours may never be known without concerted demands for accountability and restraint from the international community.

The toy factory murders

According to the reports, the murders in the Guangdong toy factory (in the city of Shaoguan), which prompted the demonstration on July 5 after government inaction, were more extensive than the official government report suggested, and involved the murder of between 18 and 30 Uighurs, with hundreds more wounded.

The Uighurs reporting from the US cast doubt on government claims that the toy factory murders followed an Internet posting in which a former Han employee of the toy factory said that several Uighur workers had raped two Han Chinese girls. "We believe," they wrote, "that the above account told by the Chinese government to the outside world is false. It is unimaginable that one accusation posted on the Internet can mobilize several thousand Han workers to take up iron pipes and other weapons, come to the factory campus, and start beating Uighur workers wherever they can find them, in most cases until their deaths."

They cited an article published in the Guardian on July 10, in which Jonathan Watts reported that the first of what would eventually be 818 Uighur migrants arrived at the toy factory on May 2, as part of "a controversial government program to encourage migration from poorer western regions such as Xinjiang to wealthy eastern provinces such as Guangdong," which has led to 200,000 young Uighurs leaving Xinjiang since the start of 2008. "Han colleagues initially treated them as a curiosity," Watts wrote, citing a female worker at the factory, who said, "At first, we thought they were fun because in the evenings they danced and it was very lively. But then many others arrived. The more of them there were, the worst relations became."

Reporting the story about the alleged rapes, and the Han Chinese workers' response to it, Watts noted that the allegation was "repeated by almost all of the 20 or so local people" that he spoke to, but "no one could provide evidence or the names of the victims." However, the racial tensions it inspired were clearly deep-seated, as Watts explained:

A local man said he took part in the assault because he was furious that the rapes had gone unpunished. "I just wanted to beat them. I hate Xinjiang people," he said. "Seven or eight of us beat a person together. Some Xinjiang people hid under their beds. We used iron bars to batter them to death and then dragged them out and put the bodies together." Squatting on his haunches in the shadows of a half-constructed apartment block, the Han man - who gave no name - said the government was lying about the death toll. He claims he helped to kill seven or eight Uighurs, battering them until they stopped screaming. He thinks the death toll is more than 30, including a few Han.

The US Uighurs added that, according to witness reports received by representatives of the World Uyghur Congress in several countries, "at least 30 Uighurs were killed and more than 300 were injured in this clash. It took about two days for the police to clean up bloodstains in streets and dormitories inside the factory campus." They added that several families of the victims from villages in Kashgar District, in Xinjiang province, had received the bodies of their loved ones, but "were threatened by police, telling them that they cannot talk to anybody about this incident; otherwise they will lose their homes, their farming lands and they will go to jail."

The Urumqi protest and its bloody aftermath

According to witnesses in Urumqi, who contacted Uighur organizations in the US, Germany and Turkey, the protest on July 5 began peacefully, and only turned violent when the Chinese police, who were "in position in People's Square before the Uighur protesters arrived, started kicking, beating and arresting them from the very beginning of their arrival. This is the reason why a well-prepared peaceful protest turned into violence within the first couple of hours of the protest."

In a press release, Rebiya Kadeer pointed out, "The fact that Uighurs were holding Chinese national flags speaks volumes for the nature of this peaceful protest and for what they were demanding - civil rights and equal justice under the law." Witnesses added that the Chinese authorities "had full knowledge of the upcoming protest because it was announced on the Internet, so they made full preparations and arrangements about how to deal with it and how to take advantage of it."

Witnesses also explained that the protest began at around 5 pm local time, and that "the police's beating, arresting and chasing started at that time, and lasted for many hours after that." By about 8:30 pm, when it was becoming dark, "the police chased the Uighur protesters into three alleyways mostly populated by Uighurs," and cut off the city's electricity supply for about 90 minutes. They continued:

During this time, the police, who were fully armed with armored vehicles and machine guns surrounded the crowds in the three alleyways from both sides, and fired at them with full military power en masse. The sounds of these gunshots can be heard in many YouTube videos filmed that night and posted on the Internet.

According to the witnesses, "an estimated 800 to 1000 people, most of them Uighurs, were shot to death during that one and a half hour period of time. For this reason, the Turkish Prime Minister compared this violence to genocide."

One witness reported that "a young Uighur man, in his 20s, was shot twice, but crawled into a nearby trench before he died. He was discovered by several Uighurs next morning. The news spread through the neighborhood quickly, and more than ten Uighur residents, most of them women and children, gathered at the spot. Right at that moment, a full truck of police arrived and took the dead body as well as all the bystanders with them. The whereabouts of those people as well as others detained are still not known."

According to "reports obtained by World Uyghur Congress representatives from several knowledgeable people" inside Xinjiang province, the Chinese authorities erased the evidence of the mass execution of Uighur victims by "burying the dead bodies two meters deep in a desert location so that nobody could find them."

The witnesses added that, "after electricity in Urumqi was set to normal at 10 pm, the police searched all the homes in the three alleyways where the police killing took place, and arrested all the males approximately 14 years or older." The Uighurs in the US added, "Knowing China's history of brutal crackdown and mass arrest of the Uighur participants in the past demonstrations, we strongly believe the Chinese authorities arrested an estimated 3,000 Uighur males that night. This is the reason why the Uighur protesters who took to the streets on July 7 and afterwards were mostly women and children."

Reporting on a Chinese website, T.D., a Han Chinese blogger, provided the most harrowing account of the Han Chinese response to the violence on July 5, when, as the US Uighurs described it, "a mob of several thousand Han Chinese, carrying meat cleavers, machetes, axes, clubs and shovels, went to Urumqi's streets, killed or injured every Uighur they could find, and destroyed shops and restaurants owned by Uighurs and two mosques." T.D. wrote:

I just made a phone call to Xinjiang. The situation has spread on a large scale. Immigrant Han Chinese have already started actions. They are beating and killing every Uighur they can find. The number of the Uighur shops destroyed far exceeds that of those destroyed on July 5 and owned by Han Chinese. The number of the Uighurs killed and injured is also many times more than what was reported. I was told that the people walking on the streets are only Han Chinese. Almost all of the Han Chinese walking on the streets are carrying long knives. It is [reported] that some Han Chinese killed Uighurs and then hung their dead bodies on trees. Some Han Chinese are standing on bridges and throwing Uighurs off them. There were so many dead bodies that trash-collecting trucks started to move them away. The policemen standing nearby were pretending they didn't see anything, and sometimes saying, "hit the Uighurs at the life-threatening places." This has greatly encouraged those Han Chinese.

The Uighurs in the US added that, according to other reports they received, the Han Chinese mobs were "probably military personnel dressed like civilians, because they acted, when beating and killing Uighurs, like well-trained professionals." They also reiterated the blogger's report that "the police made no attempts to stop the armed Han Chinese mobs, and no reports have been made that any members of Han Chinese mobs who killed or injured Uighur victims or [damaged] Uighur properties have been arrested."

They also noted that Urumqi's CCP chief, Li Zhi, said "those who had used ‘cruel means' during the rioting would be executed," and added, "Because the Han mobs who used ‘cruel means' to injure and kill Uighurs and damaged properties owned by Uighurs were not arrested, Li Zhi was referring to those several thousand Uighurs who have been detained."

In conclusion, they stated,

We, the Uighurs around the world, call for urgent intervention in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region by the UN and human rights bodies. We appeal to the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva to send independent observers to XUAR, and force the Chinese authorities to immediately launch an independent investigation into the protests, accounting for all those who have died in the protests and who have been detained, [because they] are at great risk of torture or other ill-treatment. Given these alarming developments and given the history of over 60 years of human rights violations by the Chinese authorities in XUAR, what we are asking today is for a high-level UN engagement with the Chinese authorities to stop these brutal crackdowns against the Uighur people.

In the Guardian today, cementing her role as a sensitive and capable leader-in-exile, Rebiya Kadeer confronted the actions of her own people in Urumqi, but stressed that reports of the murders of large numbers of Uighurs were too numerous to dismiss. "It is irrefutable that acts of violence, including murders, were committed by Uighurs against Han Chinese," she wrote. "However, numerous residents of East Turkestan have told the organizations I lead that they have witnessed the deaths of hundreds of Uighurs that have gone unreported in the official press. At this point, it is impossible to verify these eyewitness accounts, as communications have been virtually cut off between East Turkestan and the outside world. But I cannot ignore the many accounts I have received of unimaginable atrocities that have been covered up." Like her compatriots, Rebiya Kadeer called for justice and accountability, demanding "fair trials for those accused of perpetrating violence," and "an independent, international investigation into the events of the past week."

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon - click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed, and also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009.
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Old suspicions magnified mistrust into ethnic riots in Urumqi

2009-07-12T00:19:00.000-04:00

Old suspicions magnified mistrust into ethnic riots in Urumqi

Job creation and integration went violently wrong in Guangdong

When the deadly three-hour fight broke out in the Xuri toy factory, employees thought at first that the screams and shouts were the new arrivals dancing.

It was an easy mistake to make. When the first young migrants arrived two months earlier, they did not speak the local language and so danced each night to make friends with their new workmates.

But the jollity was not enough to transcend the huge religious, cultural and geographic divide that separated the new arrivals from the local people.

The Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs had been brought 3,000 miles across China to work and live alongside the Han majority in Guangdong province, the semi-tropical workshop of the world. It proved a lethal combination. On the night of 25 June, two Uighurs were killed by a Han mob. The fury and hatred from that episode was rapidly transmitted back across the country via internet and mobile phone to Xinjiang, the Uighurs' home. Little more than a week later, thousands of Uighur protesters took to the streets of Urumqi, capital of the far western province of Xinjiang, slaughtering Han people in the worst race riots in modern Chinese history. The explosion of violence on one side of China was far deadlier than the distant spark that ignited it.

The first few Uighur migrants arrived at the toy factory on 2 May. Han colleagues initially treated them as a curiosity. "At first, we thought they were fun because in the evenings they danced and it was very lively," said a female worker who gave her name as Ma. "But then many others arrived. The more of them there were, the worst relations became."

Within a few weeks, 818 Muslim Uighurs had been transplanted into the factory under a controversial government programme to encourage migration from poorer western regions such as Xinjiang to wealthy eastern provinces such as Guangdong. The authorities say this is an important step towards closing the gulf in incomes and providing jobs for the estimated 1.5 million surplus workers in Xinjiang.

Exile groups have condemned the policy as an attempt to assimilate Uighurs into Han culture. They see their homeland being stripped of oil, gas, coal and now young people, particularly women, who make up the majority of the migrants.

As the Han have flowed into Xinjiang under the government's Go West policy, some of its population has been nudged east by the declining environment in Xinjiang, government incentives and the lure of a modern life.

Two hundred thousand Uighurs have made the move since the start of 2008. Most are teenagers and leaving home to work for the first time. Typically, they sign a one- to three-year contract then travel to factory dormitories in the humid, semi-tropics.

Monthly pay ranges from 1,000 yuan to 1,400 yuan, on a par with local workers, but many get the additional benefit of free bed and board.

But parachuting in thousands of Uighurs into a very different environment has created tensions. Shaoguan has seen an influx of migrants which has swollen the population to 3 million. Industrial estates are expanding into former farmland. The Xuri toy factory was an orchard three years ago. Today, it employs 18,000 people and had plans to quadruple the workforce.

The centre of this instant community is a giant TV screen sponsored by Pepsi that sits at the base of an electricity pylon outside the factory gate. Hundreds gather here each night to watch kung fu dramas after their shifts. They say the Uighurs made themselves unpopular.

"The Xinjiang people have a low level of civilisation," said a local shop owner. "They ordered beer and refused to pay for it. They pushed and shoved people who passed them on the street, and they chased and harassed the girls all the time."

He said there was a rumour that Uighurs raped at least two women before the factory fight. One of the women killed herself afterwards, he said. "The Xinjiang men weren't punished. There is a different set of rules for them."

The government denies there were any rapes, but the allegation is repeated by almost all of the 20 or so local people the Guardian spoke to, including a policeman who said the government was covering up an incident that could incite racial tensions. But no one could provide evidence or the names of the victims. Whether truth or rumour, the rape allegations had huge consequences, exacerbated by modern technology.

The fight started some time after 11pm on 25 June, when a female worker was said to have called for help after being surrounded by chanting Uighur men, either near or inside their first floor rooms in the workers' dormitory.

A security guard attempted to intervene, but was rebuffed. Agitated Han residents in the floors above smashed windows and rained shards of glass and other objects down below. A mob, initially only a couple of dozen strong, armed themselves with iron pipes, wooden staves and other tools and started fighting with the knife-bearing Uighurs.

As those involved called for reinforcements on their mobile phones, the brawl drew in hundreds. Video footage shot on a mobile phone and posted online shows a savage one-sided assault on Uighurs being severely beaten.

A local man said he took part in the assault because he was furious that the rapes had gone unpunished. "I just wanted to beat them. I hate Xinjiang people," he said. "Seven or eight of us beat a person together. Some Xinjiang people hid under their beds. We used iron bars to batter them to death and then dragged them out and put the bodies together."

Squatting on his haunches in the shadows of a half-constructed apartment block, the Han man – who gave no name – said the government was lying about the death toll. He claims he helped to kill seven or eight Uighurs, battering them until they stopped screaming. He thinks the death toll is more than 30, including a few Han.

"When I see the news and they say only two people died, I am so angry. That must be wrong. How can they not be dead? I saw their heads bleeding."

The Guardian was unable to verify his claims. Nobody else put the death toll as high. The security forces did not arrive until two and a half hours after the clashes started.

A policeman who was among them said only two people had died. "We got there late because it took a long time to assemble sufficient officers," he said. "When we arrived, there was blood everywhere and dozens of badly wounded people lying on the ground. It took two days for them to clear up." The authorities say 118 were injured, many critically.

Hundreds of those involved in the violence then left the next day, locals said, to avoid arrest. For more than a week after the deadly brawl, the only arrest was of Zhu Gangyuan, a man accused of spreading the rumours about the rape of the two women. Police say he was a disgruntled former employee who made up the story to get revenge on the company after it refused to re-hire him.

Every computer screen at the local internet cafe carries a warning: "Do not spread rumours. Do not upload or spread information about the toy factory."

Yet the world's biggest censor has been unable to keep a lid on what happened. Video of the brutality and photographs of the victims were quickly circulated on the internet by Uighur exile groups, along with claims that the death toll was under-reported and the police were slow to act.

Within days of the Shaoguan killings, Uighurs in Urumqi - the capital of Xinjiang - used email to call for a protests.

But the scale of the Uighur protest and its level of violence took everyone by surprise. Witnesses describe a peaceful, but noisy crowd in the Central Square at 7pm that turned into an angry mob that set upon Han passers-by. Many victims were slashed, stabbed and beaten to death. The government says 184 people were killed, including 137 Han Chinese, 46 Uighurs and one from the Hui ethnic group, and more than 1,000 injured. The vast majority were Han.

The state media have published graphic images of the bloodied bodies of Han victims in Urumqi, but pictures and video of the violence against Uighurs in Shaoguan remains censored.

A day after the riots in Urumqi, police rounded up more than 1,000 Uighur suspects. But it was not until the following day – 10 days after the toy factory fight – that the Shaoguan police announced that they had detained anyone suspected of killing the Uighur migrants.

Dousing the ethnic flames will be difficult. The state media have published stories about the return of harmony in Shaoguan and happy Uighurs returning gratefully to work, but the Guardian was turned away from the toy factory, dormitories and hospital. The Uighurs have been relocated to isolated dormitories more than seven miles away and work in a separate factory.

A Kashgar communist party official said 757 left of the original 818 arrivals remain. The rest, he said, had gone home over the past two months because they were unhappy.

Those who are left are guarded by police. The migrants are segregated by fear. A Muslim restaurant in town says it supplies 600 orders of noodles every day. Other restaurants do the same. The food is picked up by officials and taken to the Uighurs' camp. They dare not go into the city.

"They used to come at weekends to walk around," said a drink seller in the leafy Sun Yat Sen park in the centre of town. "But they have not returned since the fight." He said even the Uighur kebab sellers, who are unconnected to the factory group, have moved out.

Two Uighur workers were brought out for a press conference, surrounded by officials. They said they are very satisfied with their new accommodation and workplace. They denied there had been any rapes or that the death toll had been underplayed.

"We travelled thousands of kilometres together to come here and now two bodies have been sent home. Isn't that proof enough?", said Bayi Aikemu, a young man who was a friend of one of the victims.

A Shaoguan government spokesmen Wang Qinxin, called the factory killings "a very ordinary incident", which he said had been exaggerated to foment unrest.

Other officials said harmony has been restored. But the propaganda machine is struggling. At the genesis of the riot, there is little cause for the authorities to feel reassured.

Many factors contribute to the ethnic violence in Shaoguan and Urumqi, but mistrust has been magnified by new technology and old suspicions.

"Sometimes a rumour is like a snowball. It will become bigger and bigger, especially on the internet," said Li Xiaolin, the head of the Shaoguan propaganda department.

"If there is a lack of communication, it will create a market for rumours. If communication goes well, there is no space for rumours."

In Shaoguan, they continue to swirl.

EU must put pressure on China to stop human rights violation in Xinjiang

2009-07-11T23:48:00.000-04:00

China - Xinjiang : EU must put pressure on China to stop human rights violation in Xinjiang and elsewhere
Today | Uyghur Related

08.07.2009

Commenting on the violence in Urumqi, capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, which has left many people dead and injured, Helga Trüpel MEP, member of the EP's China delegation, said:

"These riots are a direct result of China's repressive policies against the Uighur minority. The Uighur minority has been systematically repressed and discriminated against, with measures such as the closing of the minority schools and the prohibition of Turkic languages in lectures. These policies, combined with ethnic resettlement policies of the Beijing government, have disadvantaged the Uighurs and caused suffering.

"China must stop its repressive policies against minorities and respect the cultural identity of the Uighurs and other ethnic groups, such as the Tibetans. Unfortunately, the EU seems to have given up the ambition to make human rights issues a focus of its foreign policy. This is particularly true of relations with China, with human rights issues being brushed under the table. The new Swedish presidency of the EU must put pressure on China to stop human rights violations in Xinjiang and elsewhere

US must help Uighurs

2009-07-11T23:47:00.000-04:00

US must help Uighurs

By Ellen Bork, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post
Published: July 11, 2009, 23:29

Unrest in China's far western region, known as Xinjiang, should not come as a surprise.

The communist authorities maintain intense and unrelenting pressure on Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority group. Over the past week, the violence that has killed at least 156 and injured hundreds more came after the ethnically motivated murder of two Uighur migrant workers late last month.

Communist Party control of the media makes it difficult to know what actually happened when initially peaceful protests became riots. Chinese authorities have arrested hundreds, sent in troops and begun a propaganda campaign against the Uighurs.

Comparisons to the uprising in Tibet last year seem apt. In Tibet, peaceful protests by monks were met with force, and demonstrations proliferated throughout the region. Like those of the Tibetans, Uighurs' efforts at asserting their identity are smeared as subversive by Chinese authorities and used as justification for further repression.

Unlike the Tibetans, though, Uighurs do not benefit from a well-defined US policy supporting their political rights, autonomy and cultural identity. In fact, the United States has distinct policies toward all of the major territorial or ethnic conflicts in China except in Xinjiang, which Uighurs call East Turkestan.

The high-level post of special coordinator for Tibet was created at the State Department a decade ago. Taiwan has a defence commitment from the United States and unofficial but substantive relations through a quasi-diplomatic entity, both of which are underwritten by the Taiwan Relations Act. Hong Kong benefits from US law setting out support for its autonomy, rule of law and limited democracy, as well as the considerable interest of the American business community.

The task of supporting Uighurs has become more difficult than it should be. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, China capitalised on the American desire for cooperation in fighting terrorism - and general suspicion of Muslims. The State Department's designation of the small East Turkestan Independence Movement as a terrorist organisation was derided by human rights activists, who saw the danger of approving a freer Chinese hand, as well as scholarly experts on Xinjiang. Moreover, the detention of fewer than two dozen Uighurs at Guantanamo Bay dominates American perceptions of this ethnic group.

The priority on counter-terrorism efforts has distracted Washington from the need to support a secular, democratic movement as a counterweight to potential radicalisation. Traditionally, Uighur nationalism was secular and led by intellectuals. But Chinese communists, who consider any opposition as 'splittist' or 'terrorist', have sought to repress Uighur language and education. Moreover, the Communist Party's religious policies, along with a reaction to non-Muslim rule that scholars have noted in many countries, have led to a growing role for Islam in Uighur nationalism. It is in America's interest to cultivate democratic, secular political thinking among Uighurs no less than among Iraqis or other Muslim populations.

At a modest level, America already supports this. In 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice helped secure the release of Rebiya Kadeer, an Uighur businesswoman who lives in Fairfax County, Virginia, and leads the Uighurs in exile (even as two of her adult children are in prison in Xinjiang).

Kadeer has condemned acts of violence by Uighurs as well as Han Chinese, and while Chinese officials reportedly blame Kadeer for the recent riots, she has said the Chinese police provoked the riots.

The National Endowment for Democracy, an independent organisation funded by Congress, supports the Uyghur Human Rights Project, which documents and disseminates information about Chinese abuses. Radio Free Asia broadcasts in Uighur one hour a day. These programmes should be expanded and new initiatives undertaken.

The choice in Xinjiang is not between Chinese communist repression of the Uighurs and radical Islamism. It is time for the United States to choose another option and develop a Uighur policy rooted in democracy and secularism.

The writer is director of Democracy and Human Rights at the Foreign Policy Initiative.

Death Toll Debated In China's Rioting

2009-07-11T23:46:00.001-04:00

Death Toll Debated In China's Rioting
Today | Uyghur Related

Death Toll Debated In China's Rioting
Officially, 184 People Died on Sunday

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 11, 2009

A policeman makes an arrest in Urumqi, in the far western region of Xinjiang, as authorities sought to maintain calm after deadly ethnic clashes. Photo Credit: By Nelson Ching -- Bloomberg NewsURUMQI, China -- The Yu siblings could hardly bear to look at the police snapshots of the dead -- the images so full of anger and cruelty. So they took turns sifting through them in search of their brother, who had been missing since ethnically charged riots shook this city in far western China on Sunday.

Yu Xinqing was the one who found him, victim No. 46.

Yu's elder brother, Yu Xinping, had been finishing his shift when a protest by Muslim Uighurs turned violent and some went on a rampage, attacking Han Chinese in the city. His body was mangled from multiple knife wounds and was badly burned.

"When I saw his picture, I couldn't help crying," said Yu, 35. "If you give me a gun, I will rush out and shoot all the Uighurs I meet. I won't look at them in the same way, no matter how good of an explanation there is."

Chinese authorities on Friday raised the official death count to 184 and said more than 1,000 people were injured in the rioting Sunday, making it the deadliest clash in the far western region of Xinjiang since Chinese troops arrived here 60 years ago and one of the worst in the country's modern history. Additional people were victimized in retaliatory attacks in the following days.

Of the dead, 137 were Han Chinese, 46 were Uighur and one was part of the Hui Muslim minority group. But other details are scarce.

Local officials have declined to release information about how the victims died or were hurt.

Nearly all of the 150 or so police snapshots of the dead appear to be of Han Chinese. Most have gashes or cuts on their heads. Only about 10 appear to be Uighur, at least three with apparent bullet wounds near their hearts -- a detail that lends credence to charges by Uighur leaders that Chinese national security forces fired into the crowd of protesters.

But the faces of several victims were so swollen or injured that they were unrecognizable. At least three bodies were completely burned.

Some Uighur residents of Urumqi, however, say the number of Uighur victims in the official group of pictures is low because not all of the Uighurs' bodies are being tallied. Uighurs -- members of a Turkic-speaking group that is culturally, religiously, linguistically and physically different from the Han Chinese, who make up more than 90 percent of China's population -- have long complained of government policies they say are repressive.

Leaders of Uighur exile groups say that China is grossly misrepresenting the number of people killed and that the melee occurred because security forces overreacted to what had been a peaceful protest. On Friday, Rebiya Kadeer, the Washington-based head of the World Uighur Congress, said that by her organization's tally, based on unconfirmed reports from family members and community leaders, the number of dead Uighurs could be in the thousands. The Chinese government has accused Kadeer of inciting the violence, a charge she denies.

Two Han men in Urumqi who were searching for relatives said they believe that the government might be hiding bodies in an effort to minimize the death count. In separate interviews, they said they went to all 23 hospitals in the area and checked the police pictures, but could not find their brothers, who were near the city's bazaar when the rioting began.

"The government is worried that if they announce the real statistics, it will raise the national anger," said Wang Haifeng, 21, who last heard from his 18-year-old brother, Wang Haibo, a real estate agent, when he called Sunday during the riots to say he was walking home from a date and was scared. Then the phone went dead.

The Urumqi government said Friday that families of "innocent" people killed in the unrest will receive about $29,300 in compensation, but it was unclear how officials would make that determination.

Interviews with Han and Uighur victims and their families over the past few days and visits to hospitals where many of the injured are being kept in ethnically segregated wards reveal that the violence was often barbaric and random -- and it went both ways.

Some of the injured and dead appear to have been bystanders.

Chinese troops had locked down this city of 2.4 million by Wednesday, separating Han Chinese from Uighurs and establishing a tense peace. But the accounts from victims speak to the long-standing mistrust between the ethnic groups and how explosive that hatred can quickly become.

Liu Yonghe, 44, a businessman, and his wife, Zhao Lihong, 23, were among the Han victims admitted to a hospital. They had just finished work and were on a bus en route to shops about 8 p.m. Sunday when it was stoned by a mob. They tried to escape but were beaten with sticks. Liu suffered head injuries, and his leg and two ribs were broken. His wife suffered brain injuries.

In another part of the city's bazaar that day, a Han couple on their way to pick up their granddaughter ran into Uighur protesters. Deng Yimin, 66, and Xiao Xianzhi, 65, said they were beaten until they were bleeding and collapsed.

In a retaliatory attack against Uighurs on Tuesday, Ali, a 21-year-old Uighur laborer, was on his way to his company to collect his salary at 4 p.m. when he was jumped by about 50 people. His fingers were broken, and he suffered a concussion and gashes on his back and legs. The same afternoon, Nuryeraly, 25, was running errands with his brother when someone yelled that Uighurs were nearby. Several hundred people then began to beat the brothers. The last thing he heard before he passed out was his brother calling for his mother, who was not there. "I don't know where he is now -- if he is alive or not," he said.

But there were signs of kindness across ethnic lines that have triggered soul-searching.

Ali said that before he was beaten, a Han man begged others in his group not to hit him even as the crowd turned on him and cursed him.

Zhao, who has lived in Urumqi for six years and is a shop assistant, said she was not injured as severely as she might have been because a Uighur man pulled her into the shadows of a nearby building while the attackers turned their attention to the Han men.

"I don't blame the Uighurs for all of this," she said. "There is no difference between Uighurs and Han. There are only good people and bad people."

And Xiao, who was on her way to pick up her granddaughter, said she is grateful to two Uighur men who put themselves between an angry mob and Xiao and her husband.

"They shouted at the group of people and pushed them away," Xiao recalled. "They were shouting in the Uighur language, so I didn't know exactly what they were talking about. Then they pulled us up and walked away with us."

Yu, who grew up in Urumqi and said he had no animosity toward Uighurs before this week, is not among those who say they can be friendly with their Uighur neighbors again.

"If the Uighurs are dissatisfied with the government, they should protest to the government instead of killing innocent people. Although I understand that there are bad people and good people in Uighurs, I still have a barrier in my heart," Yu said. The death of his brother, the second of six children, "is such a big hurt for our family."

Researchers Zhang Jie in Urumqi and Liu Liu in Beijing contributed to this report.

Uighur riots show need for rethink by Beijing

2009-07-11T23:43:00.000-04:00

Uighur riots show need for rethink by Beijing
Today | Chinese Sources

By Minxin Pei
Published: July 9 2009 18:22 | Last updated: July 9 2009 18:22

The deadly ethnic riot on Sunday in Urumqi, capital of China’s Xinjiang province, is a wake-up call for Beijing. The violent incident, in which 156 were killed and more than 800 wounded, should prompt the Chinese government to change its policies and address the ethnic tensions in China’s restive border regions, particularly Xinjiang and Tibet. Without immediate policy adjustments, these tensions could mushroom into debilitating low-intensity conflicts, distracting China’s leadership from economic growth and tarnishing the country’s international image.

On the surface, Sunday’s clash erupted after a protest rally organised by the Uighurs turned into a violent riot and rampage. But underneath the rage is a combination of historical animosity, a clash of ethnic identities, cultural prejudices, and Uighur resentment at political domination and economic exploitation. As the largest ethnic group in the region, the Uighurs – who briefly established the self-governing First East Turkestan Republic in 1933 – have chafed under Chinese rule since the region was formally incorporated into China in the mid-18th century. In recent years, relations between Han Chinese and the Uighurs have deteriorated further. On the one hand, in the eyes of many Uighurs, the Han Chinese control the most important positions in the government; encourage Chinese migration that threatens the status of the Uighurs as the dominant ethnic group in Xinjiang; reap the bulk of the benefits from the region’s rich energy resources; and show little respect for the Uighurs’ cultural and religious traditions. On the other hand, the Han Chinese view the Uighurs as harbouring separatist aspirations and being disloyal and ungrateful, in spite of preferential policies for ethnic minority groups. Occasional terrorist incidents blamed on Uighur extremists have stoked anger among ordinary Han Chinese against the Uighurs – and given Beijing an excuse to maintain its tough stance against ethnic separatism.

As with its Tibet policy, Beijing’s hardline approach to the Uighurs enjoys broad public support among the Han Chinese, who make up 92 per cent of China’s population. But, as Sunday’s incident shows, toughness does not always pay. Legitimate grievances felt by ethnic minorities can only be resolved through political reconciliation and compromise. The experience of other countries shows that repressive measures might work for a short time but often deepen ethnic divides, fuel radicalism and trigger violent rebellions.

So the Uighur problem poses two difficult challenges for Beijing. In the immediate aftermath of this week’s riots, the Chinese government faces the task of giving a credible account of the events and providing details on the victims. Encouragingly, Beijing has allowed foreign journalists to visit Urumqi. Further transparency in the investigation of the riot will be needed to burnish China’s international credibility.

The Chinese government must also tone down its official rhetoric, as it can be interpreted by the Han Chinese as encouraging retribution against Uighurs. Otherwise, Beijing could paint itself into a corner: Chinese public opinion, influenced by official rhetoric vilifying Uighurs, may force the government to take unnecessarily tough measures that are, in the end, self-defeating.

Most importantly, Beijing needs to exercise extraordinary care in deciding what to do with roughly 1,400 suspects arrested in connection with the riot. Investigations must have the greatest possible transparency and probity. The punishment of those found guilty must be measured and justified. Unless such care is taken, Beijing risks sowing lasting seeds of ethnic hatred among the Uighurs.

The long-term challenge for Beijing is to question the core assumptions of its current policies toward both Xinjiang and Tibet and adopt a different strategy. Such a shift will be hard. Ethnic conflict is perhaps the most intractable problem, even for democracies. For one-party states, it is almost insoluble. But with so much at stake, Beijing has no choice but to search for a political approach that will give China’s ethnic minorities, particularly Uighurs and Tibetans, genuine autonomy under Chinese rule.

The writer is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and an adjunct senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA: PARLIAMENTARIANS ON HUNGER STRIKE TO DEMAND A G8 INTERVENTION FOR THE RESPECT OF UIGHURS RIGHTS

2009-07-10T23:21:00.001-04:00

HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA: PARLIAMENTARIANS ON HUNGER STRIKE TO DEMAND A G8 INTERVENTION FOR THE RESPECT OF UIGHURS RIGHTS

Rome, 8th July 2009

Since this evening the Italian Parliamentarians Matteo Mecacci, Rita Bernardini, Maria Antonietta Farina Coscioni, Roberto Giachetti, Marco Perduca, Maurizio Turco and Elisabetta Zamparutti have started a hunger strike to demand an intervention of the leaders assembled at the G8 Summit Conference in L’Aquila towards China, calling for the end of violence in the Xinjang region, a fact-finding mission on riots which erupted into violence in the last days and the respect of Uighurs rights.

Especially, Italian Parliamentarians call upon the Italian Government to promote a G8 initiative soliciting China to:

1) Stop violence in Xingjian region, taking the necessary action in order to prevent Security Forces as well as armed Chinese civilians’ attacks against Uighur population;

2) Cooperate with International Institutions that work in humanitarian assistance and human rights monitoring, as Red Cross, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), international NGOs and international press.

“The G8 Summit - that President Hu Jintao would not attend because he had to suddenly move back to China - must ask Peking for respect of existing international humanitarian rules” said Italian Parliamentarians, “If China really wants to play a lead role in international policy and institutions must respect international human rights standards like all international civil countries”.

Canada's Uyghurs 'awakened' by Chinese crackdown

2009-07-09T21:50:00.001-04:00

Canada's Uyghurs 'awakened' by Chinese crackdown

‘People are very, very angry'

Jennifer MacMillan

From Thursday's Globe and Mail Last updated on Thursday, Jul. 09, 2009 09:45AM EDT

Uyghur-Canadians are banding together to protest the recent crackdown by Chinese authorities on demonstrations in their homeland, and some say last weekend's riots have been an “awakening” for the tiny community.

“Usually when we had protests before, it was hard to get 20 or 30 people to show up,” said Mehmet Tohti, an Uyghur-Canadian living in Mississauga, Ont. “But today, everyone stopped working and came together to express their anger.”

Nearly all of the Toronto 120 Uyghurs demonstrated outside the Chinese consulate in Toronto Wednesday while another 30 of Alberta's Uyghurs gathered at the Chinese consulate in Calgary. The Toronto group was joined by a few dozen supporters, mostly from the region's Turkish community. The Uyghurs are a Muslim people of Turkic descent who have a long history in a part of northwestern China bordered by Mongolia and Kazakhstan in the north and India in the south.

Despite the fact the region has been under Beijing's rule for the past 60 years, Uyghurs are ethnically closer to the Turks and feel their culture is under siege as hundreds of thousands of Han Chinese have been encouraged to move into the region by the government, ratcheting up tensions between the two groups.

Violent clashes are nothing new to the region, but Mr. Tohti says the latest round of riots are different.

“It's crossing the line,” he said. “The Han Chinese are openly killing the Uyghurs.”

Demonstration organizers tried to keep the peace among protesters Wednesday, but tensions flared at one point as one man lit a Chinese flag on fire and another woman threw water bottles at a man who laughed at the protesters while exiting the consulate.

“People are very, very angry,” said Gulia, 55, who didn't want to use her last name for fear of reprisal attacks against her siblings who live in Urumqi. “They're very scared.”

Tursun Nurdun, 48, lives in Etobicoke and says he hasn't been able to reach his mother, two sisters and a brother in Urumqi since last Sunday's riots. He fears they may have been hurt or killed in the violence.

“Every day, I call the phone, it [doesn't] work,” he said. “I send the e-mail, and there's no e-mail back.”

Mr. Nurdun drives a truck for a living to support his wife and two teenaged children, and tries to help his family back in Urumqi when he can. He hasn't seen them in 12 years.

“I have a job and I send them money,” Mr. Nurdun said. “All of them went to university and then there's no job. The companies say to them, ‘I don't need Uyghurs, I hire Han Chinese.'”

Amnesty International, along with Uyghur-Canadian groups, is calling on China to launch an independent and impartial investigation into the recent violence.

“It's also our concern that the serious violations of human rights in the longer term be addressed as well,” said Amnesty's China campaigner, Lindsay Mossman. “Accusations of terrorism with little merit have been used to detain Uyghurs in the past.”

Huseyin Celil, an Uyghur-Canadian, was sentenced to life in prison in China on terrorism charges in 2006 and remains in jail overseas despite years of lobbying by the federal government to secure his freedom.

Mr. Nurdun wants Canada to keep pressuring China on its treatment of Uyghurs, and the group plans to hold another protest in Ottawa tomorrow Friday.

“I hope Stephen Harper will push Hu Jintao to change the system,” Mr. Nurdun said.

Behind the Violence in Xinjiang

2009-07-09T21:48:00.001-04:00

Op-Ed Contributor
Behind the Violence in Xinjiang

By NICHOLAS BEQUELIN
Published: July 9, 2009

HONG KONG — The eruption of ethnic violence in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, the most deadly recorded in decades, seems to have taken both Beijing and the world by surprise. It should not have.

The violence, coming on the heels of massive protests in Tibet less than 18 months ago, reflects the profound failure of Beijing’s policies toward national minorities, whose areas represent almost four-fifths of the country’s landmass but whose population makes up only 8 percent of China’s 1.3 billion people.

The Uighur people, much like the Tibetans, have a history, culture, religion and language distinct from the rest of China. Their homeland, the ring of oases that formed the backbone of the Silk Road in ancient times, was only incorporated into the Chinese empire in the 18th century.

And the effective colonization of Xinjiang only started after 1950s, when Beijing began to settle People’s Liberation Army soldiers who had put down the short-lived independent East Turkestan Republic (1944-1949) on military state farms. The proportion of Han Chinese in the population of Xinjiang leaped from 6 to 40 percent as a result of state-sponsored population transfers from other parts of China.

A second massive assimilation drive was initiated in the 1990s, prompted in part by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and Beijing’s fear of instability in the region. This time, instead of relying on forcible population transfers, Beijing created economic incentives to attract new Han settlers. In less than a decade, an ambitious program called the “Big Development of the Northwest” brought between one and two million new Chinese migrants to Xinjiang.

Economic development surged, spurred by a combination of massive subsidies, oil exploitation and rapid urbanization. But the Uighurs were not part of the rising tide. Resentment over job discrimination and loss of lands swelled, combined with anger at China’s religion policies and the stream of new settlers.

The government’s response was purely repressive. Already sharp limits on religious and cultural expression were further tightened. Any expression of dissent became synonymous with advocating “separatism” — a crime under Chinese law that can carry the death penalty.

Any sign of ethnic distinctiveness outside of the sanitized version promoted by the state was denounced as a plot by “separatist forces abroad.” After a failed uprising in the city of Yining in February 1997, the authorities launched a massive crackdown that led to tens of thousands of arrests and dozens of executions.

For most Uighurs, Xinjiang increasingly became a police state, where they lived in fear of arrest for the slightest sign of disloyalty toward Beijing.

Even prison officials started to complain to Beijing that prison and labor camps across the region had become jam-packed. Isolated acts of anti-state violence, such as the assassination of Uighur “collaborators,” attacks against police stations and the explosion of two bombs in Urumqi buses in February 1998 only reinforced the determination of the state to increase its repression.

After the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S., the Chinese began to justify its campaigns in Xinjiang as a contribution to the global war on terror. China also used its growing international influence to secure cooperation from neighboring states to arrest and deport Uighurs who had fled persecution.

Although there is no dispute that clandestine Uighur groups have from time to time carried out violent attacks — most recently in a series of bombings and attacks on Chinese soldiers just before the Olympic Games — the massive propaganda offensive about the threat of “East Turkestan” terrorism drove Chinese public opinion toward an even more negative perception of the Uighur people, who in turn felt increasingly ostracized and discriminated against.

Beijing’s accelerated attempt over the past few years to forcibly refashion Uighur identity has also fueled growing resentment. Following Xinjiang Party Secretary Wang Lequan’s declaration in 2002 that the Uighur language was “out of step with the 21st century,” the government started to shift the entire education system to Mandarin, replacing Uighur teachers with newly arrived Han Chinese. The authorities also organized public burnings of Uighur books. Control over religion was extended last year to prohibit traditional customs such as religious weddings, burials or pilgrimages to the tombs of local saints.

Earlier this year, the government suddenly announced plans to raze the city of Kashgar, the centuries-old cultural center of the Uighur civilization and one of the only remaining examples of traditional central Asian architecture. In a few weeks, the old city will have almost entirely disappeared, forcing out 50,000 families to newly constructed, soulless modern buildings.

This is the backdrop against which Uighurs reacted to graphic images circulating on the Internet last week of Uighur workers being beaten to death by Chinese coworkers in a Guangdong factory. They took to the streets.

Unless the government addresses the root causes of ethnic tensions and ends its systemic human rights violations, the chances of more violence will remain high.

Nicholas Bequelin is a senior Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch.

Uighur detainees at Gitmo frustrated with Canadian refugee process

2009-07-09T18:26:00.000-04:00

Uighur detainees at Gitmo frustrated with Canadian refugee process

By Jennifer Ditchburn – 49 minutes ago

OTTAWA — Three Uighurs detained without charge at Guantanamo Bay have applied to Canada for asylum but the processing of their requests has mysteriously ground to a halt.

And American and Canadian officials offer contradictory views on the status of the refugee process launched by the men from China's troubled Xinjiang region.

The Uighurs have been living in Gitmo limbo for six years as they cannot go back to China and the United States will not resettle them.

A source within the American administration told The Canadian Press that Canadian officials this spring requested consular access to the three men.

"The United States government responded positively to the request and asked for further information to arrange the visit to the Gitmo detention facility."

But there was no response from the Canadians, the source said.

But that's not what Canadians told lawyers for the three Muslim men.

Eric Tirschwell, a New York-based attorney representing two of the Uighurs, said Canadian officials informed them this spring that their Jamaican-based immigration officer couldn't get permission to visit Guantanamo.

"Our clients would welcome the opportunity to meet with Canadian immigration officials and it is our understanding that the United States government would allow that and facilitate that if the Canadian immigration officials made the request," Tirschwell said in an interview.

George Clarke, a lawyer for the third man, was more blunt.

"The (U.S.) State Department, I can guarantee you this, will not in any way block access to Guantanamo to the Canadians. I would stake everything on that's not true."

A spokesman for Immigration Minister Jason Kenney would not comment on the details of the case.

But Alykhan Velshi noted that refugee applications can take more than three years to process, with interviews normally occurring toward the end of the process. The three applications were made within the last year.

"Our position remains that there will be no extraordinary political intervention to expedite these applications," Velshi said in an email.

"That said, every application will be considered on its individual merits, on a case-by-case basis. These cases will be examined individually for eligibility and admissibility under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act."

The three are part of a remaining group of 13 Uighurs who were rounded up in and around Afghanistan six years ago and labelled terrorists. American courts have ordered them released, declaring them no security threat to the United States and offering no proof of terrorist activity or affiliation.

The Obama administration has faced opposition from Republicans and some Democrats who say alleged terrorists should not be resettled on American soil. But the men cannot be returned to their Chinese homeland, for fear of torture or death.

They hail from the same territory that is currently in the grips of bloody ethnic violence. Chinese authorities have dealt harshly with any Uighurs critical of Beijing or supportive of a Uighur homeland.

Washington has asked other countries about taking the men. Only Bermuda and Albania have agreed, taking small groups. Other countries have faced pressure from China to ignore the requests, and are reluctant to legitimize the Guantanamo mess by giving Washington a hand with the problem.

Documents prepared for the foreign affairs minister in the fall of 2006 said no formal decision to "discourage or encourage the US" on the resettlement issue had been taken. The documents were obtained under the Access to Information Act.

But that position changed this spring.

After a visit by Daniel Fried, Washington's special envoy for the closure of the Guantanamo prisons, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office made it crystal clear Canada was not interested in any special deals to take the men.

Question period talking points, also released through the Access to Information Act, hint the government is concerned about possible terrorist links.

"Our number one focus is protecting the safety and security of Canadians," reads one document.

It goes on to note that individuals are inadmissible to Canada when there are "reasonable grounds to believe they have engaged in terrorism or acts of espionage or subversion against a democratic government."

Clarke draws a link between the political decision made this spring and the immigration process.

"The best I can tell, there is no hope that the Canadian (refugee) process will somehow trump the political decision that has been made," Clarke said.

Government officials wrote in 2006 that the men were "likely inadmissible under Canadian immigration law."

Statement by Minister Cannon on Incidents in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

2009-07-06T20:14:00.001-04:00

July 6, 2009 (6:15 p.m. EDT)
No. 190

Statement by Minister Cannon on Incidents in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

The Honourable Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today issued the following statement regarding reports of the deadly riots in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region:

“The Government of Canada is alarmed at reports of violence and high numbers of casualties following yesterday’s protests in Xinjiang.

“We urge restraint on all sides and call on the Government of China to respect freedom of speech and information and the right to peaceful protest. Dialogue and goodwill are required to help resolve grievances and prevent further deterioration of the situation.

“Freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law are values fundamental to Canada’s foreign policy.

“Our embassy in Beijing is monitoring the situation closely. There have been no reports of Canadians in the affected area. Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada advises Canadians planning to travel to the region to exercise heightened caution and to inform Canadian consular officials of their travel plans.”

- 30 -

For further information, media representatives may contact:

Natalie Sarafian
Press Secretary
Office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs
613-995-1851

Foreign Affairs Media Relations Office
Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada
613-995-1874
www.international.gc.ca/index.aspx

China: Fair and impartial investigation must be launched in Urumqi

2009-07-06T16:19:00.001-04:00

6 July 2009

Media Release
China: Fair and impartial investigation must be launched in Urumqi

Amnesty International today called on the authorities in Urumqi to immediately launch an independent and impartial investigation into reports that 140 people were killed when a protest turned violent late on Sunday.

"The Chinese authorities must fully account for all those who died and have been detained. Those who were detained solely for peacefully expressing their views and exercising their freedom of expression, association and assembly must be released immediately. A fair and thorough investigation must be launched resulting in fair trials that are in accordance with international standards without recourse to the death penalty”, said Roseann Rife, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director Asia-Pacific.

“There has been a tragic loss of life and it is essential that an urgent independent investigation takes place to bring all those responsible for the deaths to justice”, said Roseann Rife. “Violence and abuses from either the authorities or protestors is in no way justified.”

Amnesty International urged the authorities to respect their obligations under domestic and international law which protect peaceful freedom of expression and assembly, prohibit arbitrary arrest and torture or ill-treatment in custody. The organization also called on the authorities to allow free access for domestic and foreign journalists and independent observers to report on the incident.

Xinhua, an official state news agency, reported that police in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and home to over 8 million Uighurs, have arrested several hundred participants, including more than ten key figures that were accused of instigating the unrest, and are still searching for approximately 90 more.

The protests are reported to have begun with non-violent demonstrations against government inaction after a violent riot at a factory in Shaoguan, Guangdong province, resulted in two deaths. On 26 June, hundreds of Uighur workers clashed with thousands of Han Chinese workers at a factory where Uighurs had been recruited from the XUAR. Police have reportedly detained the man, a laid-off employee from the same factory, who circulated rumours which provoked the deadly clash. The official response to the violence in Guangdong was to impose an information black-out on the incident, with websites and online discussion boards instructed to delete posts related to the clash.

Beyond responding to the immediate outbreak of violence, authorities need to address issues that have given rise to tensions. Since the 1980s, the Uighurs have been the target of systematic and extensive human rights violations. These include arbitrary detention and imprisonment, incommunicado detention, and serious restrictions on religious freedom as
well as cultural and social rights.

Chinese government policies, including those that limit use of the Uighur language, severe restrictions on freedom of religion, and a sustained influx of Han Chinese migrants into the region, are destroying customs and, together with employment discrimination, fuelling discontent and ethnic tensions. The Chinese government has mounted an aggressive campaign that has led to the arrest and arbitrary detention of thousands of Uighurs on charges of “terrorism, separatism and religious extremism” for peacefully exercising their human rights.

http://www.amnesty.ca/resource_centre/news/view.php?load=arcview&article=4793&c=Resource+Centre+News

Lindsay Mossman

Campaigner

Women’s Human Rights

Amnesty International Canada

312 Laurier Ave East

Ottawa, Ontario

K1N 1H9

613-744-7667 ext. 243

lmossman@amnesty.ca

Check out the Women's Human Rights blog: www.amnesty.ca/women

My Trip to Guantanamo: It Must Be Closed

2009-07-02T22:13:00.000-04:00

Rep. Jan Schakowsky

Posted: June 25, 2009 03:25 PM

My Trip to Guantanamo: It Must Be Closed

I went to the prison at Guantanamo Bay on June 16 with a small bi-partisan group of House members. It was my third trip, and I came away thinking that those Congressional visits may not be helpful in generating support for closing the facility. (That conclusion, by the way, has nothing to do with the true fact that I fell on a step and fractured my foot while at the facility.) The problem is that a one day guided tour can easily leave the wrong impression.

What one sees at Guantanamo is what appears at first blush to be simply an efficiently managed prison, the mission of which as described by the congenial and impressive Rear Admiral David Thomas, Commander of Joint Task Force-GTMO, is the "safe, transparent, legal and humane treatment of detainees." He answered all our questions, fed us lunch, and took us on a tour of the facility. This man is clearly a strong and popular leader who is doing his job and doing it well.

Admiral Thomas took us on the grand tour. One of the must-sees is Camp 4 where prisoners live in barrack-style units, 5 to a unit (though built to accommodate 10) who are "free" to move in and out of an outdoor yard 20 hours per day. Camp 5 and 6 are medium and maximum (not counting the high value detainees) and visitors are shown the small individual cells and are told that these prisoners are given up to 4 hours per day out in the yard with other prisoners. Camps 4, 5, 6 are comfortably air-conditioned.

There is barely a dissonant note, unless of course you remind yourself of the 229 detainees currently held at Guantanamo none has been convicted of anything. And for the vast majority, no charges. None. No trials. No due process. NOTHING.

This is hard to remember as you take the tour and see men (Muslim men) in prison garb in a prison setting. It's especially challenging when the group of more than a dozen Camp 4 prisoners who are on a "Rec Strike" -- they refuse to come inside from the yard -- yell obscenities at the tourists as we pass by. It's much easier to think of them as "bad guys", which some of them most probably are, than possibly innocent men that were arrested after a sizable bounty was paid to the person that fingered them in Afghanistan.

Ask a few more questions, and other troubling facts come to light. There was another suicide two weeks ago, this time in Camp 3. No details. Still under investigation. Guards are supposed to check every three minutes on prisoners in Camps 5, 6, and every one minute in Camp 3 where 9 prisoners are in solitary confinement. Those detainees are described as the real troublemakers at Gitmo, the ones that disrupt the order of the prison. It was here, in defiance of the regulations, that the suicide took place.

In response to another of my long list of questions, provided to me by a habeas corpus lawyer friend of mine, Gary Isaac, we learn that 29 prisoners are hunger strikers, and 26 of those are being force fed -- 3 of that group, "for years." Prisoners are considered to be on a hunger strike if they eat less than 1/3 of a meal for nine meals in a row. The International Committee of the Red Cross, representatives of which visit the prisoners every three months, opposes force-feeding at the stage at which it begins at Guantanamo.

Admiral Thomas, to his credit, asked to be fed through a tube down his nose, for a week, to assure himself that the procedure met the "humane" standard. He pointed out that his father, who recently died of Alzheimer's, was fed that way for a long time. I asked to see the chair in which the detainees are restrained while being fed, (Thomas rejected the term "force fed") and it looked less than benign to me. Thomas said he was not about to let someone die of starvation. Remember now: not convicted of ANYTHING. Apparently, regardless of which camp they are in, many prisoners are not happy campers. Rec strikes; hunger strikes; suicide.

Decisions about placement of prisoners are made entirely based on their level of compliance within the facility. It has nothing to do with alleged terrorist activities or crimes, since no one -- you got it -- no one has been convicted of anything. It is easy to think that prisoners in Camp 5 or 6 are a greater danger to the United States of America because of their stricter level of confinement. This has nothing to do with it. A prisoner who is non-compliant, perhaps assaulting a guard, is placed in a higher security Camp. I get this. But what it means is that this place where people are held without charges (don't forget), incarceration takes on a life of its own.

Then there are the Uighur's, members of an oppressed Muslim minority group living in Western China, an area they call East Turkestan. The U.S. government has detained 22 Uighur's at Guantanamo. On August 24, 2005, the Washington Post reported that 15 of them were determined to be "No longer enemy combatants" but were still incarcerated and still shackled to the floor. As of June 22, 2009, thirteen Uighur men remain incarcerated. Two years ago, an Administrative Review Board declared all but one to be "approved for release." According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon had previously determined, reportedly as early as 2003, that the Uyghur's could be released. That would be six years ago!

I saw the Uighur compound from the outside. Surrounded by rolls of barbed wire and fences, the Uighur's are "free" to move about an area the floor space of what looked like an average Chicago school playground. An added attraction that I hadn't perceived, according to a young and well-meaning soldier, was "the beautiful ocean view." I'm not kidding.

I went to Gitmo the first time in the summer of 2003. Most of the prisoners were still in open air cages -- literally. They looked like a larger version of something you would put your dog in. The only amenity was a tarp over the top to protect against overhead sun and rain. Many prisoners had been there since early 2002 when the prison first opened. Major General Geoffrey Miller was the commander at the time. In a sprightly, upbeat manner, he explained that everyone there was a "Bad Guy". "How do you know?" I asked. "Because," he said, "we have foolproof screening process in Afghanistan," never mentioning the bounties that were paid for them. Donald Rumsfeld called them "the worst of the worst."

It is now well known that prisoner abuse at Guantanamo occurred under Miller's watch, though he showed us carpeted interrogation rooms with 2-way mirrors where prisoners were offered snacks for information. Miller, having done such a swell job, was transferred to Iraq where he made recommendations for improving intelligence-gathering at Abu Ghraib. Everyone knows how that turned out. Miller ordered the arrest of James Yee, the Army Captain who served as a chaplain for Muslims prisoners at Gitmo. Yee was part of the entourage that showed me around in 2003. Miller accused Yee of stealing classified documents and smuggling them out of the prison -- charges that were later dropped, and today there is no Muslim Chaplain at Guantanamo. Geoffrey Miller is now retired -- without consequences.

I came limping back to Washington on my fractured ankle more convinced than ever that Guantanamo must be closed. As long as it isn't, it remains a stain on the reputation of our country. President Obama understands this. Closing Guantanamo was one of his very first decisions. The President has created a task force that is making recommendations about what to do with each and every prisoner individually. We then need to apply our well-tested Constitution, rule of law, due process -- our system of justice that is the envy of the world -- to these prisoners. Some of them likely committed terrorist acts. Others may have been detained by mistake. We need to know and to act with all the legal and moral integrity our country aspires to. I look forward to the task force report.

The Congress voted to require a detailed plan from the President before any funds will be appropriated to close Gitmo. The demagogues are raging every day about not allowing terrorists to set foot in the United States for any purpose. I haven't recommended to my colleagues that they visit the prison at Guantanamo Bay. It's just too easy to feel comfortable there, riding the boat through beautiful waters from the leeward to the windward side of the U.S. base, and taking in the beautiful ocean view seen from the prison where no one has been convicted of anything.

A Gitmo Tragedy: The Uighurs

2009-07-02T22:09:00.000-04:00

Ginny Sloan
Ginny Sloan
Posted: July 2, 2009 02:18 PM

A Gitmo Tragedy: The Uighurs

Of the many Guantanamo tragedies, perhaps none has been greater than our handling of the Uighurs, a group of Chinese Muslim detainees. Picked up, detained, and wrongly classified as dangerous terrorists, 17 Uighurs spent more than seven years wrongfully imprisoned. Four were finally released last month, but 13 remain locked up at Guantanamo.

The courts, the United States military, and the executive branch - dating back to the former administration - have long recognized that these men are not "enemy combatants" and do not pose a threat to the nation. No moral, legal, or security grounds exist for holding these men a single day longer. This is not a partisan issue. It is one of due process, civil liberties, and fundamental fairness.

In an unexpected move on Monday, the United States Supreme Court put off deciding whether to hear the remaining Uighurs' case, Kiyemba v. Obama, until they convene again in the fall. The Uighurs seek review of a D.C. Circuit decision holding that courts lack the power to order the executive branch to release them, even though a court has found that their detention lacks any legal basis. After years of delay and disappointment, the Kiyemba case represented a glimmer of hope for the wrongfully imprisoned men. The Supreme Court's failure to take decisive action--while not an outright rejection of the Uighurs' petition--leaves the promise of their release unfulfilled, a dream deferred. Before the case is even considered, the Uighurs will remain at Guantanamo for several more months, unless either political branch steps up.

Thus far, however, the legislative and executive branches have been moving in the opposite direction. Congress has created a culture of fear in Washington, with members rushing to introduce bills that would prevent any detainees from being transferred into their districts. Just last week, Congress passed a supplemental appropriations measure that included provisions severely restricting the president's authority to bring any of the Guantanamo detainees into the United States - for trial or release. The Uighurs, who cannot be repatriated to China, their homeland, due to state-sponsored persecution, are now prohibited from being released into the United States, at least until the appropriations bill expires at the end of the fiscal year.

President Obama, for his part, has not done much better. Reacting to political pressure, he signed the supplemental appropriations bill into law, undermining his efforts to shut down Guantanamo in the process. And he continues to assert the authority to detain the Uighurs though they have won their habeas cases and pose no security threat to our country. While his administration successfully resettled four Uighur detainees in Bermuda, attempts to move the remaining detainees to the island nation of Palau or other countries have been unsuccessful thus far.

The president missed his opportunity, before this bill became law, to resettle some of the remaining Uighurs in the United States. Local Uighur communities offered to help these men integrate into our society. Of more strategic importance, by accepting its share of responsibility, the United States would have sent a clear signal to our allies, encouraging other countries to partner with us to fulfill the promise to close the Guantanamo detention facility in one year's time.

Instead, the administration now faces an uphill battle in any efforts to find alternative homes for these wrongfully detained men. At this rate, it may still be up to the Supreme Court next fall to finally provide justice for the Uighurs.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher on the Uighurs

2009-06-29T22:23:00.001-04:00

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher on the Uighurs

Editor's note: The following letter was submitted by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who serves as Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight, in response to this blog post by Thomas Joscelyn.

Despite the court rulings declaring the Uighurs continued detention in GITMO as unjust and the decision by the Obama administration to finally release them, there are still naysayers who refuse to believe the Uighurs pose no threat to the United States. They never have. Rather, the Uighurs are a Muslim ethnic minority from a remote section of China, who desired to learn how to protect themselves and their homeland against the persecution of the brutal Chinese communist regime. In that quest, they became a pawn in a bigger global chess game between the United States and China’s veto wielding power on the U.N. Security Council at a time when the U.S. needed China’s support for the impending invasion of Iraq. The naysayers, who continue to dismiss this correlation, seem to be more interested in politically expedient fear mongering than the actual facts.

The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight, of which I am the Ranking Member, held two hearings on June 10 and June 16. The hearings respectively focused on the Uighurs historic persecution in the occupied East Turkestan region of China and the nature of Uighur nationalism versus terrorism. Several witnesses during those hearings took issue with the recent news reports and editorials accusing the Uighurs of being associated with al Qaeda affiliated groups, specifically the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), engaging in terrorist camp weapons training and allegedly posing a national security threat to the United States.

The oft-repeated accusation that the Uighurs held at Gitmo were members of the ETIM is patently false. Not only have the Uighurs themselves categorically denied this, according to their Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) statements, but every federal court that has reviewed the case has ruled in favor of the Uighurs. The U.S. District Court of Appeals issued a detailed opinion in Parhat v. Gates (2008) that found no evidence of Huzaifa Parhat’s membership in the ETIM. It rejected the government’s ETIM evidence as “wholly inadequate” on the grounds that it did not establish that ETIM was associated with al Qaeda, or the Taliban, or that they engaged in hostilities against the U.S. or its coalition partners.

Which brings up the curious decision by the United States to designate the ETIM a terrorist group in 2002. During the June 16 subcommittee hearing, Dr. Sean Roberts, associate professor of practice for the Elliot School of International Affairs at The George Washington University, testified that few scholars studying the Uighur people had ever heard of the ETIM in 2002. Dr. Dru C. Gladney, professor, Pomona College, also testified that “it came as a surprise at the conclusion of his August 2002 visit to Beijing, that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage identified ETIM as the main coordinating Uighur group to be targeted as an international terrorist group. At the time, very few people including activists deeply engaged in working for an independent East Turkistan, had ever heard of the ETIM.”

A Defense Intelligence Agency analyst working on Chinese counterintelligence operations once said, “It’s the mother’s milk of counterintelligence to create phony political organizations.” He also stated that the Chinese are especially good at it and utilize this method in order to know who to watch and who to eventually eliminate.

More after the jump...

In August of 2002, the U.S. was urgently seeking U.N. consensus for military action in Iraq. According to court documents, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri traveled to Beijing for “high-level meetings” around the same time as Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage, both seeking Chinese support. However, Mr. Armitage met with the Chinese first. At the conclusion of that meeting on August 26, 2002, Mr. Armitage acknowledged during a press briefing that talks had focused on Iraq and discussions of putting ETIM on the terrorist list did in fact take place. Several weeks later, ETIM was conveniently placed on the official State Department list of terrorist organizations.

It seems the United States offered another concession in exchange for Chinese acquiescence. In September 2002, Chinese intelligence agents were permitted to interrogate the Uighurs held at Gitmo. Amnesty International reported, “It is alleged that during the Chinese delegation’s visit, the detainees were subjected to intimidation and threats,” and “some of the interrogation techniques were alleged to have been on the instruction of the Chinese delegation.” Another Uighur detainee described in court documents a similar scene but also stated an American who identified himself as a “White House representative specifically threatened to send him back to China if he did not cooperate with interrogators.” A month later, President Bush welcomed Chinese President Jiang to Texas to discuss China’s position on potential military action in Iraq.

It’s also important to note that Rep. William Delahunt and I were both denied access to the Uighur detainees as part of our official Oversight Committee’s investigation into their incarceration at Gitmo. Pentagon Spokesman, Bryan Whitman, issued a statement acknowledging foreign nationals are permitted to come into Guantanamo but “Congressmen, the general public, media are not permitted to question detainees. It can only be done in an official capacity and no congressmen can interrogate or question detainees because it is not part of their oversight responsibilities.” Yet our government lays out the welcome mat for Communist Chinese intelligence officers.

Newt Gingrich recently alleged the Uighurs received “jihadist training in weapons, explosives and ideology of mass killing.” This claim is completely unfounded and nothing more than rhetorical exaggeration. The weapons training consisted of learning how to assemble, break down and clean a single Kalashnikov rifle and taking a few shots of target practice in a remote village where they helped build a house and performed odd jobs in exchange for food and shelter. Former detainee Parhat clearly stated that when he decided to leave China he sought training only to fight the Chinese government. As a matter of fact, all of the Uighur detainees say they abhor terrorism.

Abdul Helil Mamut, another detainee recently transferred to Bermuda, corroborated Parhat’s description of the “camp’s” activities. “There was no typical training,” he said. “Whoever volunteered, once in a while, people would run or exercise. One day they showed us an old rusty rifle for about a half hour. Then the second day we shot three to five bullets.” A far cry from any formal terrorist training camp folks like Mr. Gingrich or Thomas Joscelyn would have you believe.

Another repeated falsehood references an incident where a Uighur detainee supposedly threw a television set because women with bear arms appeared on the screen. Once again, untrue. In 2006 a detainee kicked a television set in protest of his continued wrongful imprisonment a year after his CSRT confirmed he was not an enemy combatant. The man who kicked the TV has since been released, attends college in Albania, has a Facebook page, and has been pictured hiking with several women in his group wearing tank tops and a guy wearing an American flag T-shirt.

The bottom line is all of the Uighurs were cleared for release by the U.S. military under the Bush administration, some as far back as 2003. The Bush administration conceded they were not enemy combatants, which translates into a tacit admission they were most likely picked up by mistake and never should have been at GITMO in the first place. The U.S. Court of Appeals examined both classified and unclassified evidence and determined the Uighurs not only posed no threat to the U.S. but also clearly hadn’t committed any acts of violence against anyone.

The truth of the matter is this; The Uighurs mean us no harm and want the communist Chinese out of their homeland in East Turkistan. They are caught up in a quid pro quo between the United States and China. The oppressive Chinese regime is their true enemy, not us.

Moving on up

2009-06-25T12:30:00.000-04:00

Moving on up

Finding homes for the Guantánamo Uighurs is no simple task

Tags: Bermuda, britain, deniability, Guantanamo Bay, national security, Uighurs, United States
Written by Charlie Gillis on Thursday, June 25, 2009

Moving on upIt was a favour, dressed up as a snub. When the United States cut a deal last week to send four Muslim Uighurs from Guantánamo Bay to Bermuda, it did so behind Britain’s back—not out of spite but compassion. Washington’s tin ear for Commonwealth protocol may be legendary. But even it knew London would bristle at being cut out of the loop on a matter of national security. Bermuda, after all, remains a self-governing protectorate of the United Kingdom, which means foreign governments doing business with it are supposed to give the mother country courtesy calls on issues that might carry foreign policy implications.

But as the former detainees roamed the beaches of their new island home, it became increasingly clear that Uncle Sam had spared Britain a massive diplomatic headache. The Guantánamo Uighurs are part of a Muslim separatist movement hailing from China’s far northwestern territory, which Beijing treats as a terrorist threat. Any country that took them in risked diplomatic or economic recriminations from China—though by all accounts the men posed negligible risk. By the weekend, senior U.S. officials were confirming that they had deliberately kept the transfer deal with Bermuda secret, providing the U.K. with some much-needed deniability.

Whether Beijing is buying it is anyone’s guess. But America’s use of deception in the Uighurs’ case is a measure of how far the global power dynamic has shifted since the war on terrorism began. With Congress loath to settle Guantánamo inmates on U.S. soil, the Obama administration had been left scouring the globe for allies willing to host the detainees—encountering China’s shadow at every turn. Canada, for one, declined repeated White House requests to take in some or all of the Uighurs, having already tweaked Beijing by publicly protesting its arrest of Huseyin Celil, a Uighur-Canadian currently imprisoned in China on dubious accusations of terrorism. The Celil affair is widely thought to have damaged Canada’s trading relationship with Beijing, and the prospect of making matters worse was evidently too much for the Harper government to risk. “They didn’t want to compromise trade,” says Mehmet Tohti, a prominent Uighur-Canadian who lobbied on behalf of the men. “I see this as a sign of weakness on Canada’s part.”

Certainly the case against the Guantánamo Uighurs was little better than the tissue of allegations that cost Celil his freedom. The four men in Bermuda counted among 22 who escaped China to Afghanistan in the summer of 2001 but were picked up a few months later by Pakistani forces during the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. They were then turned over to U.S. troops and sent to Guantánamo, where a legal battle ensued over their status as “enemy combatants.”

Five were subsequently sent to Albania, but the other 17 remained in legal limbo until a federal judge ruled last fall they must be released for lack of evidence. Sending them back to China was not an option; they would almost certainly face persecution. So the U.S. was forced to place them in distant countries with little or no trade with China. The South Pacific republic of Palau has agreed to accept 13, while Bermuda received the other four under a program for visiting workers. That prompted a stern rebuke from London, which has promised to review the terms of an agreement granting the island protectorate control over immigration matters.

To David Welch, director of the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto, the whole saga is a sign of changing times. “China’s growing importance in the world means people are paying more attention to it,” he says, “and the Chinese play hardball.” But others caution against blaming China for slowing Washington’s attempts to resolve its Guantánamo dilemma—or other countries for failing to help the U.S. out. Having created the “legal black hole” of Guantánamo in the first place, the U.S. bears responsibility to find a place for the detainees within its own borders, says Jeremy Paltiel, an international politics expert at Carleton University in Ottawa. “It’s cowardice,” he says of the White House’s efforts to foist the men on other countries. “Obama won’t confront his own Congress on this, after their own court said let these people go. Why should anybody else solve the problem for them?”

The answer, of course, lies in the time-tested willingness of U.S. allies to lend Uncle Sam a hand, knowing it’s in their long-term interest. Eight years after George W. Bush dispatched the bombers for Afghanistan, Washington needs more favours than ever. But if last week’s machinations are anything to go by, its old friends don’t want to be seen helping out. And Washington knows it.

Bermuda Premier Faces Scrutiny

2009-06-21T22:51:00.001-04:00

Bermuda Premier Faces Scrutiny
Leader Defends Taking Former Guantanamo Prisoners, but Critics See Other Motives

By PAULO PRADA

HAMILTON, Bermuda -- Bermuda's top elected official survived a vote of no-confidence after a 14-hour parliamentary debate here over the weekend, but Prime Minister Ewart Brown remains the focus of fiery public debate over the motives that led him to accept four freed prisoners from the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Mr. Brown, in an interview, said the decision was "the right thing to do" and that he was happy "to be of help to the United States and to President Obama."

Bermuda Debates Uighurs' Status
Associated Press

Four Uighurs released from U.S. military custody at Guantanamo Bay are being resettled in Bermuda, where the government's decision to take them has stirred controversy. Above, three of the men at an ice cream shop.

In recent days, he has called the move a "humanitarian gesture," considering that the former detainees, Uighur Muslims from western China, can't return to their homeland, where the government considers them a separatist threat.

Yet many of Bermuda's nearly 70,000 people divine the premier's true motives in political goals on distant shores of the Atlantic. By cozying up to the Obama administration, some observers say, Mr. Brown hopes to gain leverage for Bermuda as the U.S. looks to tighten rules on overseas tax shelters.

Mr. Brown has also stoked the old debate over independence for the island by making the decision without consulting Bermuda's territorial overseers in the U.K., not to mention the British-appointed governor on the island.

"He's looking for brownie points with Obama and at the same time trying to make the British get angry," said Ed Rainor, a 68-year-old diesel mechanic, discussing the Uighur transfer with a group of friends at Albouy's Point, a small waterfront park in Hamilton, Bermuda's capital.

Mr. Brown, like most Bermudians, has long navigated the cultural and political divides characteristic of the territory, a verdant and costly island just a two-hour flight east of the Carolinas.

A native of the island, Mr. Brown, 63 years old, is also a former citizen of the U.S., where he studied and practiced medicine in Washington and Los Angeles. Bermuda itself, while a jewel of the British Commonwealth, depends on the inflow of American tourists and dollars from U.S. companies, many of which take advantage of its lack of corporate taxes.

Mr. Brown's decision to accept the Uighurs, who were cleared of any suspicion by the U.S. and are now living freely in a guesthouse near Bermuda's airport, unleashed an outcry from critics enraged that he didn't consult British authorities -- or even his own cabinet -- first. Bermudians learned of the decision on June 11, the morning after the Uighurs were flown here.

Last week, hundreds of protesters called for the premier's ouster in marches through downtown Hamilton, a city of pastel-painted mansions, white roofs, and colonial architecture. Signs read "good deed, wrong way," expressing displeasure not with the arrival of the Uighurs themselves, but with what protesters considered the premier's failure to govern with transparency.

Mr. Brown has repeatedly enacted policies without sufficient public discourse since he took office in 2006, critics say, including controversial changes to a public-health clinic and his handling of a contract for promoting tourism from the U.S.

"Voters of this country have been disrespected by our premier time and time again," said Janice Battersbee, a protest organizer, at a rally last Friday. "Our voices were neither heard nor welcomed."

Mr. Brown says his style is "assertive," but says the decision to take the former Guantanamo prisoners conforms to his government's interpretation of the constitution.

Over the weekend, public speculation turned to the prime minister's motives. Some say Bermuda could press the U.S. for money it has long sought to clean up waste, including fuel spills, at abandoned facilities that the U.S. Navy once used on the island. But most say Mr. Brown wants to use the move to win Bermuda concessions ahead of any U.S. crackdown on offshore tax shelters.

During last year's U.S. election, Barack Obama campaigned on a promise to pursue such measures. A "Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act," now proposed in both houses of Congress, lists Bermuda as one of 34 overseas shelters that could be targeted for sanctions.

A White House spokesman declined to comment on the discussions with Bermuda.

Mr. Brown said there "was no quid pro quo," but added, "it's unrealistic to expect that the relationship between Bermuda and the U.S. was not strengthened."

After objections from the British government over his acceptance of the Uighurs, a move London says is under its authority as foreign and security policy, many Bermudians said they believe Mr. Brown is trying to push for the eventual goal of independence.

Though Bermudians have rejected votes on independence in the past, Mr. Brown and other leaders in the ruling party believe it should eventually happen. "It's always on the agenda but not always on the front burner," he said. "When issues like this come up, it moves to the front."
—Jonathan Weisman in Washington and Alistair MacDonald in London contributed to this article.

Write to Paulo Prada at paulo.prada@wsj.com

The Myth of the $12 Million Uighur

2009-06-20T18:01:00.001-04:00

Op-Ed Contributor
The Myth of the $12 Million Uighur

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By STUART BECK
Published: June 19, 2009

CONGRATULATIONS Palau. Our little country, a group of islands 500 miles east of the Philippines, has become, if only briefly, a household word. President Obama, much admired in Palau, asked our new president, Johnson Toribiong, to do the United States a favor: Please accept, as refugees, a group of innocent Chinese Muslims. They are not anti-American terrorists, but victims of human rights violations, who landed at Guantánamo Bay for seven years. Innocent, stateless, harmless.
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Times Topics: Palau | Uighurs

President Toribiong, a lawyer trained at the University of Washington and a highly regarded litigator, told President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that he needed to assure his people that the Uighurs were indeed harmless, and could be integrated into Palau’s small, diverse and friendly culture. Assuming that this due diligence brought satisfactory results, Palau would be pleased to give the refugees temporary residence. Last weekend, he dispatched a number of officials to Guantánamo to interview the Uighurs and review their records.

One would have thought that this positive gesture of friendship from a staunch American ally would have been applauded, at least in the United States. Instead, for reasons that are beyond me, unattributed leaks and unsubstantiated rumors have twisted Palau’s act of decency into another grab for dollars by a cunning third-world country. In breaking the story that Palau was amenable to President Obama’s request, the Associated Press reported that two anonymous State Department officials had linked Palau’s acceptance of the Uighurs to a $200 million payoff.

Almost immediately, much of the news media took the bait, did the math and asserted that Palau was getting nearly $12 million dollars per Uighur. Within a day or two, The Wall Street Journal was pontificating against a shakedown.

Before the story gets too far out of hand, let’s consider a few facts. It is true that the United States and Palau have an economic relationship. Palau has been receiving American aid since it was wrested from the Japanese in 1944. (Over the past 15 years, this has averaged about $56 million a year.) This aid has come with strings; as the United States has always insisted that the Palauan government be ready to promptly turn over land for bases should the security of the United States or Palau require it.

In 1994, the two countries agreed to a 50-year option that allows the United States to use Palau for military purposes. That agreement’s economic terms expire in October 2009, and a new economic package for the remaining 35 years is in the works — and has been for some time. But there has never been a mention of $200 million. And no one has even hinted at linking the deal to Palau’s acceptance of the Uighurs. The United States simply offered to pay relocation costs for the Uighurs of less than $90,000 per person to cover transportation, food, housing and medical help until the men can get oriented and get jobs.

Palau is a small and peaceful community. Its constitution bans weapons of all kinds. Capital crimes are virtually unknown. Social life revolves around the family. Children wander from house to house. Could anyone believe that the leaders of Palau would risk the safety and serenity of their modern Eden in exchange for money? Is it plausible that these close-knit people would countenance the presence of terrorists in their midst? I can assure you the answer is no.

Last week, the Palauans lowered their flags to half-staff in memory of Sgt. Jasper Obakrairur, a Palauan who joined the United States Marines and died on June 1 helping to root out the Taliban in Afghanistan. He was the fourth Palauan serviceman to die in recent years, following his fallen comrades in American uniform Cpl. JayGee Meluat, Cpl. Meresebang Ngiraked and Specialist Philton Ueki. The people of Palau are very proud of them, and of our country’s special relationship with the United States. Can’t Americans be proud of the relationship, too?

Stuart Beck is Palau’s permanent representative to the United Nations.

Bermuda Premier Escapes Censure Over Uighurs

2009-06-20T15:27:00.000-04:00

Bermuda Premier Escapes Censure Over Uighurs

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By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 20, 2009

HAMILTON, Bermuda (AP) — Bermuda’s premier survived a no-confidence vote on Saturday aimed at punishing him for allowing four former Guantánamo prisoners to settle in the British island territory.

Parliament rejected the resolution in a 22-11 vote after 14 hours of debate, which went through the night.

Opposition lawmakers accused the premier, Ewart F. Brown, of “autocratic” behavior for agreeing in secret with United States authorities to accept the former prisoners, ethnic Uighurs originally from western China, without consulting political leaders in Bermuda or the British government.

Kim Swan, leader of the opposition United Bermuda Party, told fellow lawmakers that the resolution was aimed not at the government but at Mr. Brown, for causing an “international debacle.”

Mr. Brown said that he had accepted the Uighurs on humanitarian grounds, and that he believed that the move improved relations with the United States by helping to resolve a diplomatic headache.

American authorities had determined that the Uighurs were not terrorists and ordered their release, but they could not be sent back to China, where they might have faced persecution for their separatist beliefs. Other countries refused to accept them.

Video on Gitmo Uyghurs from Congressmen

2009-06-18T22:56:00.000-04:00

Rohrabacher & Delahunt Call For Hearings On Detainees

US congressman flying to Island to meet Uighurs

2009-06-18T20:58:00.000-04:00

US congressman flying to Island to meet Uighurs

By Amanda Dale

The Chairman of the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on International Organisations, Human Rights and Oversight is expected to meet the four Uighurs this weekend.

Congressman Bill Delahunt is to travel to Bermuda to meet the former Guantanamo detainees, to learn more about their "apprehension and detention", according to his Chief of Staff.

The Democrat is currently engaged in a series of hearings into how 22 Uighurs were arrested in late 2001 on suspicion of terrorist links to Al Qaeda.

Chief of Staff Mark Forest said Congressman Delahunt and Subcommittee ranking member Dana Rohrabacher have previously tried to interview the men at Camp X-Ray, without success.

He told The Royal Gazette: "Mr. Delahunt and Mr. Rohrabacher want to get their testimony and have made several attempts in the past to interview them but were denied permission to do so.

"The Bush Administration refused them on at least a couple of occasions, but this is a Human Rights Oversight Subcommittee so obviously they should be given the right to speak to these people.

"In the past we were concerned the Chinese Government had access to them (at Guantanamo).

"A lot of the information about the so-called threat from these men came from the Chinese Government fear-mongering and we've been rubberstamping that.

"The Congressman is interested in learning more about their apprehension and detention, so our intention is to speak with them.

"Apparently there were bounties that were paid and the people who allegedly turned them in were paid handsomely. It's an amazing story and a very sad chapter in terms of American history."

The Premier's Press Secretary Glenn Jones said in a statement last night that Congressman Delahunt is to visit the Island tomorrow, to meet the Chinese Muslims plus Bermuda Government officials.

Mr. Forest said he could not confirm the Congressman's arrival but that it was anticipated to be this weekend.

"We are making plans to get out there (Bermuda) but at the moment no schedule has been finalised," he said.

He added the House Foreign Affairs Oversight Subcommittee would continue to hold hearings into the circumstances surrounding the detention of Uighurs at Guantanamo "well into the summer".

"Our hearings will continue over the next several months. We are also interested in speaking to the Uighurs released elsewhere, such as in Albania," said Mr. Forest.

U.S. Sold Out to Chinese in Holding Ethnic Uighurs, Lawmakers Charge

2009-06-17T22:45:00.000-04:00

U.S. Sold Out to Chinese in Holding Ethnic Uighurs, Lawmakers Charge
By NICK WILSON
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WASHINGTON (CN) - Republican and Democratic representatives united Tuesday in charging that U.S. foreign policy bowed to Chinese interests when 22 Uighurs -- bought from bounty hunters -- were imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, compounding the misery of an ethnic group persecuted by the Chinese in their homeland. "Have we drifted so far away from our principles?" asked a House member.
Members of the House Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight accused the George W. Bush administration of designating a terrorist group without knowing enough information about the organization, and said it had simply accepted Chinese intelligence as fact.
"Not only is this about 22 individuals," Massachusetts Democrat Bill Delahunt said. "It's about the very process we utilize in making far reaching decisions."
"Have we drifted so far away from our principles?" asked California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, when we "do the bidding of the communist Chinese party by attacking people who are protesting Beijing's repressive rule."
The designation, which they said was made to please China into buying more US treasuries, resulted in the capture of non-terrorist Uighurs, and their long detention in Guantanamo Bay Prison.
The 22 Uighurs bought from bounty hunters for $5,000 each by the United States have cost the nation much more in a legal headache and in national image, provoking questions over how the United States determines who is a terrorist.
After the Bush administration determined the Uighurs were not terrorists, they were ordered released. But returning them to China is out of the question.
"They would likely face persecution, torture, or execution," Kan said. Delahunt agreed that their "return to China would be certain torture."
At the same time, Republicans have fought against moves to settle them in the United States. Some members of the Republican Party are lumping Uighurs in with terrorists "much to my dismay," Rohrabacher said.
The United States has since turned to other countries to take the Uighurs. So far, Albania and Bermuda have taken some in, but the United States is still left with 17 who have been imprisoned for nearly seven years.
Dru Gladney, from Pomona College, described the Uighurs as a largely Muslim separatist group living in northwestern China. The 10 million strong agriculturalist population has been persecuted by the Chinese government, which has designated many of them as terrorists.
Chinese authorities claim the Uighurs are members of a terrorist organization, the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, and continue to arrest them. But most of the arrests, said Sean Roberts, a professor at George Washington University, are for political dissent, not for acts of violence.
He spoke to the legislators from Kosovo, his face transmitted onto two giant television screens.
In fact, the designation of ETIM as a terrorist organization is now under scrutiny, as are its ties to the Uighurs.
At the request of the Chinese, the United States designated the ETIM as a terrorist group in 2002.
Delahunt asked how the United States could possibly know enough about the group to make such a decision. The United States military, he said, didn't know of ETIM until 2001. Less than a year later, the nation designated it as a terrorist group.
"We don't even know what ETIM really is," he said. "We're making it up. That's what everybody else is thinking."
Delahunt further discredited the groups designation by added that media reports he's read claim the organization has only one AK-47.
Shirley Kan of the Congressional Research Service, defended the group's designation, stating that the organization had received money from Al Qaeda.
Delahunt dismissed this. "Up until recently, the former vice president continued to maintain that there was a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein," he said.
He suggested that the committee hold a classified briefing to determine the relationship between the organization and Al Qaeda, but immediately rejected the idea as useless. "I can remember weapons of mass destruction and mushroom clouds," he said, referring to the misleading briefings before the war in Iraq.
Delahunt said the perceived connection between the Uighurs and the terrorist organization was the "hook" that kept them incarcerated for almost seven years.
But, even if the ETIM were a properly designated terrorist organization, members of the committee and the panel agreed that the Uighurs detained by the United States had no association with it.
Roberts from George Washington University, who lived with the Uighurs during much of the 1990s, said he never heard of the terrorist group until it was placed on the terrorism list in 2002, and called the classification of Uighurs as terrorists a "misnomer" at best, and a "calculated misrepresentation" by the Chinese government at worst.
There is "very little evidence to support the claim that the people in question are terrorists," he said.
The Uighurs collected from bounty hunters in Afghanistan are reported to have fled to Afghanistan to organize against the Chinese government, but Roberts from George Washington University said the group has remained small.
It is "proper for us to surmise that our government was just spoon fed information," Rohrabacher said, calling the designation a "pathetic attempt" to please the Chinese. "Now our leaders have to beg the Chinese to buy our treasuries."
Rohrabacher said the Uighurs do not fulfill the role of terrorists because their violence is only directed at government officials, not innocent civilians. He likened them to American revolutionaries and the Tibetans. "We should never be on the side of the oppressor."
Before the hearing ended, Delahunt proposed holding a hearing on the vacation island of Bermuda to question the Uighurs in person. The legislators agreed promptly and unanimously to that proposal.

Lawmakers Weigh Uighur Hearing in Bermuda

2009-06-17T22:44:00.000-04:00

Lawmakers Weigh Uighur Hearing in Bermuda

Rep. Bill Delahunt and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher are trying to set up a congressional hearing on the resort island of Bermuda, so that the former Guantanamo Bay detainees known as the Uighurs, who just moved there, can testify.

By Judson Berger

FOXNews.com

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Former Guantanamo detainee Khelil Mamut, right, talks with a former Bermudan military official assigned to help him adjust to life in Bermuda. (AP Photo)

Former Guantanamo detainee Khelil Mamut, right, talks with a former Bermudan military official assigned to help him adjust to life in Bermuda. (AP Photo)
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The next time Rep. Bill Delahunt's subcommittee holds a hearing, it might just be lit by tiki torches.

Delahunt, D-Mass., and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., chairman and ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight, respectively, are trying to set up a congressional hearing on the resort island of Bermuda where four former Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detainees known can have a chance to testify and tell their side of the story.

Delahunt has tried before to draw attention to the plight of the Uighurs, who are Chinese Muslims, who just moved to Bermuda from the prison facility.

Though it's rare for Congress to hold a hearing off U.S. soil -- Bermuda is a British territory -- a Rohrabacher aide noted that under the terms of their transfer the former prisoners cannot travel stateside without special permission. So it's Bermuda or bust.

"I think this is still kind of in the works," Rohrabacher spokeswoman Tara Setmayer said, adding that Rohrabacher would support the hearing "100 percent."

This would be the latest in a series of subcommittee hearings on the Uighurs. Last week, Delahunt led a hearing titled, "The Uighurs: A History of Persecution." In a hearing Tuesday, Delahunt explored the nature of the Uighur resistance to the communist Chinese government and the extent of the threat the Uighurs posed.

Delahunt raised questions about whether the U.S. government relied too heavily on Chinese intelligence in viewing the Uighurs as a threat. A Delahunt aide said Chinese intervention in the Uighurs' detention would be one issue to explore at a Bermuda-based hearing.

Setmayer said other committee members may focus on their treatment at Guantanamo and the legality of their incarceration after they were cleared by the U.S. government.

Plus the former detainees could have a chance to answer allegations about terrorism ties. Through a translator, the four men told FOX News last week that didn't know anything about Al Qaeda and just wanted to live in peace.

Rohrabacher's aide deflected any charges that her boss -- who represents the 46th District in southern California that includes Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa and Long Beach -- or anyone else is just trying to score a free trip to the beach.

"Given the fact that Congressman Rohrabacher represents one of the most beautiful coastal districts in southern California, I don't think he needs an excuse to go to the beach," she said.

It's unclear whether the hearing, if held at all, would include members of the full House Foreign Affairs Committee or just the smaller subcommittee.

The Uighurs have turned into a peculiar kind of celebrity since some of them were finally transferred out of their Cuba detention camp.

The group was originally picked up while receiving weapons training in Afghanistan in order to fight the Chinese, officials said. Since then, the U.S. government has struggled with how to treat them and where to send them. They were removed from the enemy combatant list but congressional lawmakers and the public did not want them released in the United States.

The Obama administration made progress this month, announcing that it would divvy up the 17 remaining Uighurs between Bermuda, where four of them moved last week, and the South Pacific island of Palau.

Setmayer joked that it might be more difficult to pull off a hearing in Palau.

House subcommittee questions Uighur terrorist classification

2009-06-17T22:42:00.000-04:00

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2009/06/house-subcommittee-questions-uighur.php

House subcommittee questions Uighur terrorist classification
Christian Ehret at 2:22 PM ET

Photo source or description
[JURIST] A US House of Representatives [official webpage] subcommittee questioned why a group of Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs [JURIST news archive] is classified as a terrorist organization during a hearing [materials] Tuesday. The House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight [official website] heard testimony on why the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) [CFR backgrounder] militant group, which has been blamed for 162 deaths, has been classified as a terrorist organization since 2002. Criticizing US authorities for overly relying on questionable Chinese intelligence in their classification, Representative Bill Delahunt (D-MA) [official website] accused China of "conflat[ing] peaceful, civil disobedience and dissent with violent terrorist activity" on behalf of the Uighurs. China maintains that the Uighurs held at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] belong to the ETIM, an accusation that is disputed by the Uighur detainees and US authorities. Delahunt maintained that returning the Uighurs to China would be a "one way ticket to the death penalty" and addressed China's classification of the group:

the communist Chinese government has used the war on terror as a means to avoid criticism as they broomly persecuted and repressed the Uighur minority.

The charge that the Uighurs at Guantanamo were terrorists, were predicated on an unsubstantiated claim that they were somehow affiliated with this group.

Delahunt referred to a House resolution [HR 497 text] from the 110th Congress that called for China to stop the religious suppression directed against the Uighur people, saying that China "manipulated the strategic objectives of the international war on terror to increase their culture, linguistic and religious suppression of the Muslim population residing in the Uighur autonomous region."

Last week, four of the Uighurs being held at Guantanamo Bay were transferred to Bermuda [JURIST report]. Thirteen remain at the detention facility, although they have been cleared of wrongdoing. The Uighurs' release was ordered [opinion and order, PDF; JURIST report] by a US district court in October, but that decision was overturned [opinion, PDF; JURIST report] in February by the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit [official website]. They have appealed [JURIST report] to the US Supreme Court [official website]. If the remaining Uighurs are transferred before the Court decides to hear their case, it will likely be dismissed as moot. Last week, Palau President Johnson Toribiong said that his government had reached an agreement with the US [JURIST report] to accept all 17 Uighur detainees. US officials said later that no final agreement had been reached. Also last week, Torigiong said that the offer was motivated by human rights concerns [JURIST report] and not by the Chinese government's reaction. Although the Chinese government has demanded the repatriation of the Uighurs, the US has rejected such requests [JURIST report], citing fear of torture upon their return.

Resettling Uyghurs no easy task

2009-06-16T11:30:00.000-04:00

Resettling Uyghurs no easy task
By Ian Williams

The plight of the Uyghurs has had more publicity than ever before because of the United States Congress's reticence and Beijing's bluster. The 22 prisoners have served their people well, if unwillingly and unwittingly, although resettling these victims of Guantanamo has not brought out the best in people or countries elsewhere.

Almost forgotten in the recent acceptance of some of them by Bermuda
and Palau is Albania stepping up to the plate to take five of them four years ago. Albania, the only Muslim-majority United Nations member in Europe, was doubtless sentimentally inclined to accept their co-religionists from the other end of the Turkic sphere of influence, but one rather suspects that the George W Bush administration offered cash and or big diplomatic favors in

return. Under Enver Hoxha, Albania had cocked a snook at China when it was its only friend in the world. It could well afford to risk the displeasure that Beijing is displaying so prominently.

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, when the UN Security Council was setting up its anti-terrorism committee, China's ambassador kept trying to add "and secessionist activities", to its remit. The other members were politely overlooking him until he persisted and demanded to know why he was being ignored and the British ambassador, looking over his shoulder at Welsh and Scottish nationalist parties back home, told him firmly, "Because secessionist activities are not against international law, or the domestic law of many members."

Certainly nothing could have provoked Uyghur secessionist sentiment more than Beijing's chauvinistic policies there, insouciantly swamping the allegedly autonomous region with Hans and marginalizing the Turkic Uyghurs. Even their close brethren in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are not going to risk relations with China over their treatment, although many ordinary citizens are unhappy about it.

China has been demanding their repatriation, not least since they cannot tell the difference between secessionism and terrorism. Perhaps the only way the US comes out of this with a modicum of respectability is that, after kidnapping and incarcerating these Uyghur refugees, it has refused to hand them over to Beijing. Otherwise, it is shameful on grounds of equity and humanity that the US has not offered asylum to its victims, who have been cleared of any crime. In its traditional invertebrate mode, Congress, having done nothing to stop their illegal incarceration, now refuses to allow President Barack Obama to resettle them in the US.

That marginally excuses all the other nations who have refused to accept them. After all, how do you explain to your own voters that these people are harmless victims if the last country to victimize them won't allow them in?

Ironically, both countries that had the courage of their humanitarian convictions and a weather eye to as yet unspecified profit, Palau and Bermuda, are studies in how far autonomy will go.

Bermuda is still technically a British territory and London is responsible for its security and foreign policy. The island government, for unspecified returns but almost certainly more substantial than mere gratitude, is treating this as an immigration issue, although London wants to talk. It is likely that British umbrage is more with Washington's insouciance to its titular sovereignty over Bermuda than with the island government.

However, if New Labour wanted to abase itself to China by making a constitutional issue of it, it would meet outrage at home. While there may not be much enthusiasm for taking in Washington's dirty laundry, the civil rights issues would emerge noisily. In Bermuda, heavy-handed interference from London could strengthen the independence movement and possibly provoke prompt recognition of Taiwan.

Palau battled Washington for decades about the American insistence that it remove its nuclear-free clauses from its constitution before the US would accept the Compact of Free Association that eventually allowed its membership of the United Nations. By that compact, the US is totally in charge of the archipelago's defense, and effectively pays its budget. Indeed, in the Trusteeship Council at the time, yet another British diplomat mused on the record about whether Palau and its sister former UN Strategic Trust territories met traditional definitions of sovereignty. Ever-obliging Palau was one of the first of the "willing" to join the coalition of the same, although no outrigger canoes were seen paddling up the Gulf as a result. It also helps that Palau recognizes Taiwan, so Beijing's pressure would be even more ineffectual.

Indeed, one wonders why Taiwan did not step up to the plate, but then the Kuomintang has only recently accepted Mongolian sovereignty, let alone Xinjiang's. It would have been interesting if the Democratic Progressive Party, itself a secessionist organization, were still in power.

Ian Williams is the author of Deserter: Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans and His Past, Nation Books, New York.

(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

A Home for the Uighurs (Washington Post Editorial)

2009-06-16T01:07:00.000-04:00

A Home for the Uighurs
America's allies help Muslims from China emerge from an injust imprisonment. Why isn't the U.S. stepping up?

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

NEWS THAT some of the 17 Uighur Muslims wrongly detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2002 have found homes brings both relief and disappointment.

The men were cleared for release by the Bush administration years ago; the federal courts that reviewed their cases concluded that there was no evidence to justify their imprisonment in the first place. Yet they languished behind bars because the United States could not return them to their native China for fear they would be tortured, or worse. Some 100 countries declined U.S. requests to take the Uighurs, in part because of Chinese threats of retaliation. U.S. lawmakers railed against the possibility of allowing the detainees into the United States, claiming that they were dangerous terrorists despite the assessments of a Republican and a Democratic president, military officers and an independent judiciary.

Enter Bermuda and Palau. On June 11, the Justice Department announced that Bermuda would accept four of the Uighurs. The administration has also been negotiating with Palau, an island nation of some 20,000 people located east of the Philippines. The president of Palau said in a statement that his country is willing to take some of the men.

The Uighurs who are headed to Bermuda and Palau will finally get a chance to start their lives again -- albeit in foreign surroundings and without the comfort of family or an extended community that speaks their language and shares their culture. But it is disappointing that the United States has had to beseech its allies to correct an injustice wholly of its own creation. It is maddening that U.S. administrations and lawmakers of both parties did not act with cooler heads and good faith to welcome at least some of these men into this country -- especially when well-established and reputable Uighur organizations and communities offered to provide food and shelter and help to get the men established.
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If U.S. lawmakers balk at accepting the Uighurs -- who never viewed the United States as an enemy -- will they consider offering safe harbor to others who have been cleared for release and who will not be accepted elsewhere? Yesterday, the European Union said it would help the United States "turn a page" on Guantanamo; several E.U. members are considering admitting detainees who have been cleared for release. While encouraging, how can the United States continue to ask something of allies that it is unwilling or unable to do itself?

Uyghur men grateful to Bermuda for their new life

2009-06-15T16:47:00.001-04:00

Uyghur men grateful to Bermuda for their new life
By UAA Administrator

The four Uyghur men who recently arrived in Bermuda after spending more than seven years in the Guantanamo Bay detention center. From left to right: Helil Mamut (Abdul Nasser), Ablikim Turahun (Huzaifa Parhat), Salahidin Abdulahat (Abdul Semet), and Abdulla Abduqadir (Jalal Jalalidin). (Photo courtesy of Rushan Abbas)

Out of Guantánamo, Uighurs Bask in Bermuda

2009-06-14T23:19:00.001-04:00

Out of Guantánamo, Uighurs Bask in Bermuda
Justin Maxon/The New York Times

AN OCEAN IDYLL Salahidin Abdulahat, left, and Khaleel Mamut swam in the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday in Bermuda. The Uighur Muslims, recently freed from captivity at Guantánamo Bay, have been resettled in Bermuda. Mr. Abdulahat said his first-ever ocean swim was "the happiest day of my life."

By ERIK ECKHOLM
Published: June 14, 2009

ST. GEORGE, Bermuda — Almost exactly seven years after arriving at Guantánamo in chains as accused enemy combatants, and four days after their surprise predawn flight to Bermuda, four Uighur Muslim men basked in their new-found freedom here, grateful for the handshakes many residents had offered and marveling at the serene beauty of this tidy, postcard island.
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Justin Maxon/The New York Times

ONCE DETAINEES, NOW TOURISTS The four freed Uighurs toured the historic district of St. George in Bermuda on Sunday. They have been greeted with hospitality by the island’s residents.

In newly purchased polo shirts and chinos, the four husky men, members of a restive ethnic minority from western China, might blend in except for their scruffy beards. Smelling hibiscus flowers, luxuriating in the freedom to drift through scenic streets and harbors, they expressed wonder at their good fortune in landing here after a captivity that included more than a year in solitary confinement.

“I went swimming in the ocean for the first time ever yesterday, and it was the happiest day of my life,” said Salahidin Abdulahat, 32.

Over a lunch of fish and chips on Sunday, they praised Bermuda for showing courage in the face of potential Chinese pressures that, in their view, powerful European countries had failed to muster.

The men were among a larger group of Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers) who had fled what they called Chinese persecution of Muslims in western China and spent part of 2001 in a Uighur camp in Afghanistan. They fled, apparently unarmed, when the Americans bombed the camp, and were later turned in to the authorities by Pakistani villagers in return for an American bounty.

The four brought here, like 13 other Uighurs still at Guantánamo but expected to depart soon to other destinations, had been cleared by American officials and courts of taking up arms against the United States or ties to global terrorism.

But proposals to resettle them in the United States caused a political furor that the Obama administration did not want to aggravate. On Sunday, these four expressed a surprising lack of bitterness toward the United States, saying — as they had during interrogations years ago in Guantánamo — that they had never been anti-American and just wanted to get on with their lives.

“Before we were asking, ‘Why are the Americans doing this to us?’ ” said Mr. Abdulahat. Now, he said, with others nodding in agreement, “We have ended up in such a beautiful place. We don’t want to look back, and we don’t have any hard feelings toward the United States.”

While two of the men speak some English, all spoke in Uighur, aided by a Uighur woman who has translated at Guantánamo for them and for their lawyers.

Their resettlement on this British colony, known for yachting and pastel buildings, is a small step toward the administration’s aim of closing down Guantánamo by January. It has created a political tempest for the premier of Bermuda, who some say acted in an autocratic manner, and angered Britain’s Foreign Office, which is in charge of foreign policy and says it was not properly consulted.

But most objections voiced here concerned the secrecy of the deal rather than fears of having former terrorist suspects at large, as some have expressed in the United States. No quid pro quo has become public.

While some less affluent residents said they felt it was unfair to offer jobs and citizenship to men the United States itself would not take, many others shrugged and expressed pride at Bermudan hospitality. As the men venture from the seaside cottage where they temporarily live until they get jobs and figure out next steps, people often come up to shake their hands and wish them well, and the men said they were deeply touched.

Their homeland of Xinjiang, a largely Muslim region in western China where many residents chafe under Chinese rule, is landlocked, and many of the Uighur detainees saw an ocean — still a distant, mysterious presence — for the first time ever through fences at Guantánamo.

Now they can play in the waters. Khaleel Mamut, 31, said he went fishing on a boat on Saturday and caught his first fish ever. “I was so excited,” he said. “You just drop the hook in the water and you get a fish.” Hearing that fishing did not always bring such quick results, one of the other men quipped that perhaps the fish were joining in Bermuda’s welcome.

They have been promised work visas and, in perhaps a year or so, possible citizenship, their American lawyers said. That would give them passports and a right to travel.

Out of Guantánamo, Uighurs Bask in Bermuda

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Published: June 14, 2009

(Page 2 of 2)

“The intent is that they shall become Bermudians,” said Maj. Gen. Glenn W. Brangman, a retired officer appointed by the government to help the new arrivals and who greets them with hearty bear hugs.

Under the current arrangement, Bermuda will not allow the men to visit the United States. It is unclear whether they will ever be able to do so even if they gain Bermuda citizenship.

The four said they wanted nothing to do with their ostensible home country of China, which has demanded their repatriation and would almost certainly imprison them.

During interrogations at Guantánamo, these four and other Uighurs said they had ended up in Afghanistan after fleeing Chinese persecution and had wanted to work for the “liberation” of the Uighur people — a position regarded as treason in China.

Many said they had been shown how to fire a Kalashnikov rifle at the Uighur encampment, but had no real training, knew nothing of Al Qaeda, and did not fight the Americans or consider them the enemy.

These four were among a larger group that hid in mountain caves near Jalalabad after their camp was bombed by American forces in late 2001. Hungry, frightened and unarmed, they made their way to Pakistan, where villagers turned them in to the authorities in exchange for American reward money.

Years into their captivity, American officials concluded that the men should not be considered enemy combatants. Last October, a court ordered their release, but it was delayed by the inability to find a host country and a court reversal that prevented their move to American soil.

In 2007, five Uighurs were sent to Albania. Negotiations are under way to send all or most of the remaining 13 to the Pacific island of Palau.

Bermudans awoke Thursday to learn that the four had been flown in before dawn, with Premier Ewart F. Brown, who had negotiated in secret with the Americans, calling this “the right thing to do.” Opponents, who already regarded Mr. Brown as autocratic, called for a vote of no confidence, which could occur in weeks.

At the same time, the British governor here expressed his displeasure at being kept in the dark, and the British Foreign Office complained to Washington.

Mr. Brown’s fate may be uncertain, but when confronted with the four men in the flesh, many residents seem to warm to them.

Washington has walked a thin line in the handling of the Uighurs. It sought China’s support in antiterrorism efforts after the Sept. 11 attacks, branded an obscure Uighur independence group as terrorist and in 2002 allowed Chinese officials into Guantánamo to interrogate Uighur captives. The four men released here said that interrogation was a low point of their Guantánamo incarceration, with Chinese officials questioning them for long hours without food and threatening them and their families.

From the men’s own statements, it is clear that their presence in Afghanistan was linked to their animosity toward China. Whatever they might have wished in 2001, there is no evidence they sought to become part of a global jihad.

Now, over Chinese objections, the men are being released to third countries.

All that seems distant, the men said Sunday as they pondered, with some pleasure, the unexpected new turn in their lives.

Guantánamo four stir up tropical storm in Bermuda

2009-06-14T11:39:00.001-04:00

Guantánamo four stir up tropical storm in Bermuda
Grinning broadly and protesting their desire only for the "peaceful life", four Chinese Muslims released from Guantanamo Bay enjoyed the delights of their new home over the weekend.

By Tom Leonard in Hamilton, Bermuda
Published: 7:00AM BST 14 Jun 2009

Guantanamo Uighurs enjoy sun, sea and sand in new home of Bermuda

That meant fried Bermudan rock fish with banana and almonds, and a monumental row about their arrival in Britain's oldest colony.

Their celebratory meal, joined by The Sunday Telegraph after this newspaper tracked them down to their hideaway in a guesthouse in a remote corner of Bermuda, was washed down with water and a heavy dose of relief and gratitude toward their hosts.

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Clearly relishing each mouthful after years of bland and solitary prison meals, Abdulla Abdulqadir, 30, said: "Eating together like this, gathered around a table together – that's what freedom is all about for me."

"In Guantanamo Bay, there's no friendliness," added Salahidin Abulahad, 32. "The people here have been so friendly, they come and hug us. Bermuda had the courage to step and do this – it's a small place but it has a big heart. This is where we want to stay."

But by no means everyone is delighted by their presence. Ewart Brown, Bermuda's premier, swiftly provoked a row with his colonial masters on Thursday when he abruptly announced that the small but wealthy British overseas territory had taken in four of the 17 Uighurs still held in the controversial US detention facility.

An angry Britain, which is responsible for Bermuda's security and foreign policy, complained that it should have been consulted and put the foursome's future on hold until it has conducted its own security checks.

Dr Brown's supposed humanitarian gesture prompted an even more furious reaction on Bermuda where radio talkshows have been flooded with angry callers fretting about the arrival of "blood-crazed jihadists" on a cosy island better known for talcum powder beaches and international offshore finance houses.

On Friday, opposition MPs tabled a motion of no confidence as the embattled leader admitted that the offer to help out with Barack Obama's Guantanamo Bay clean-out was linked to discussions on the US clampdown on tax havens.

David Miliband telephoned Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, to express Britain's disappointment as a state department official admitted the UK was angry.

Given China's insistence they are terrorists, the four Uighurs conceded that they may never see their families again, including Mr Turahun who has an 11-year-old son.

Mr Mamut said he had spoken to his parents. "They told me: 'My boy, my son, congratulations on your freedom," he said.

But even this sobering thought has not yet got in the way of the four men's obvious joy at swapping seven years in a cramped cell for a new life on one of the world's more beautiful and affluent islands.

They have been to the beach, although not yet for a swim, and went on a longer walk through the Bermudan countryside. "A horse appeared – they hadn't seen a horse in seven years," said Sabin Willett, their American lawyer. "It was a beautiful moment, you could tell they were moved just to see this horse."

They also found time for a brief kick of a football after noticing a group of teenagers playing in a nearby field.

The US government long ago decided that the Uighur detainees did not pose a terrorist threat. The four – who also include Helil Mamut, 31, and Ablikin Turahun, 38 – insisted they were innocent victims of the US war on terror and the "brutal dictatorship" of China.

They were captured by bounty hunters in Pakistan where they went after fleeing US bombing in Afghanistan. They had fled to Afghanistan to escape Chinese "oppression", they had been held at the controversial detention centre in Cuba since 2002.

They insisted they had never even heard of al-Qaeda until they arrived at the prison and denied allegations that they received military training in a terrorist camp at Tora Bora.

The four, whom China say are separatists fighting for independence for the remote western region of Xinjiang, said they fled to Pakistan and Afghanistan simply because they were easy to get into without papers.

"Because we had no visas, we were living in an abandoned house in a little Afghan village, it wasn't a training camp," said Mr Abdulahad. They learn how to use AK47 assault rifles because everyone carried them and they were "curious", not because they had formal military instruction, he said.

They were aware of what was being said about them by some of their new hosts. "What did you think when you saw us? Do we look like that kind of people? Are you nervous around us?" said Mr Abdulqadir.

Although they have no love for the Chinese – Mr Abdulahad said his worst ordeal at Guantanamo was when Chinese interrogators were once allowed to question him almost continually for a day and a half – the men said they had "nothing against the Americans".

"What's past is past. The administration made a mistake as we were innocent. It's really sad that seven years of my life were lost but we don't hold any grudges. We just want to concentrate on the future," he said.

The men have been renewing their acquaintance with the basic comforts of life outside prison, noting that since arriving they had glimpsed their first horse, first game of football and first fish – during a beach walk – that they had seen for seven years.

They are currently staying in a $200 a night guesthouse while the authorities arrange for them to have travel and work papers. Their expenses are being paid by the Bermudan authorities who are being recompensed by the US government.

Two of them speak some English and local people say they will have no trouble finding work on an island with neglible unemployment.

They were vague about what skills they had to offer and said they had not yet got around to considering their options.

If they were clearly reluctant to discuss too much their time in Guantanamo, they were keen to bring up the plight of those they left behind.

"Our 13 brothers still in Guantanamo are just the same as us," said Mr Abdulqadir. "People need to understand that."

The Guantanamo refugees no one wants

2009-06-14T11:34:00.001-04:00

The Guantanamo refugees no one wants

* Donald Rothwell
* June 15, 2009

The Chinese Uighurs are caught in a legal tangle not of their making.

THAT the Atlantic island territory of Bermuda has agreed to resettle four of the 17 Chinese nationals of Uighur ethnic origin who had been held at Guantanamo Bay, does little to diminish some of the intractable legal issues US policy towards detainees has created. This dilemma for the Obama Administration has become all the more urgent in light of its commitment to shut Guantanamo by January 2010.

Notwithstanding multiple diplomatic overtures, other than Bermuda, only Albania's 2006 decision to take five and the tiny Pacific archipelago of Palau's recent decision to assist have been the only other offers to date. Australia has now been approached for the third time in just over a year to consider taking up to 10 of the Uighurs.

The Federal Government has yet to respond with Foreign Minister Stephen Smith indicating the request will be assessed on a "case-by-case" basis. Germany, which has a Uighur community in Munich, has also been considering a similar US request.

The Guantanamo Uighurs, ethnically Turkic Muslims who populate the north-west of China, have been detained since early 2002. They had left China for Afghanistan in 2001 fleeing persecution from Chinese officials, only to have their village bombed in mid-October 2001 by allied forces during Operation Enduring Freedom. They then travelled to Pakistan where they were arrested by local security forces and turned over to the US military. There has never been any credible evidence that the Uighurs actively supported either the Taliban or al-Qaeda, and while the US maintains that in 2001 they attended a militant training camp in Afghanistan, the evidence for this claim appears flimsy.

It is therefore not surprising that once the US began reviewing the basis for ongoing detention of Guantanamo detainees, the Uighurs were among the first who were cleared for release. However, unlike many of the detainees that were allowed to leave Guantanamo from 2004 onwards, the Chinese nationality of the Uighurs has been a significant issue.

The Uighurs have been in ongoing conflict with Chinese authorities over the status of their region and have faced religious persecution and efforts to integrate them into the wider Chinese population.

Following demonstrations in February 1997, Amnesty International reported examples of serious human rights abuses against the Uighur people — including arbitrary detention, unfair trials, torture, and executions.

The Chinese Government has used the term "separatism" to refer to the activities of the Uighurs, and has sought — on suspicion of committing terrorist acts — the return of some Uighurs who live outside of China.

Further reports that some Uighurs were tortured and executed on their return to China after the 9/11 terrorist attacks caused the US to become wary of repatriating the Guantanamo Uighurs to China and to this day it has refused to accede to any Chinese requests of this kind.

This has placed the US in a particular quandary as effectively the Guantanamo Uighurs have been recognised as refugees entitled to asylum because they fear persecution and are entitled to protection under the Refugees Convention. Any handing over of the Uighurs to China would be a clear violation of international law.

One of the issues that third countries need to consider when assessing these requests is how China may respond. Earlier this month, the Chinese Embassy in Canberra indicated to Radio Australia that they considered the "Chinese terrorist suspects" held at Guantanamo Bay to be "members of the terrorist group East Turkestan Islamic Movement" and they "should be handed over to China for proper handling according to law". While Stephen Smith responded by noting that "from my point of view, we put to one side any hypothetical view that a different or a third nation might have", the Chinese position cannot be totally irrelevant for Australia.

Part of the impasse is also due to the failure of the US to accept that it too has some responsibility towards the Uighurs. Notwithstanding successful US District Court rulings that the Uighurs should be released, both the Bush and now the Obama Administration have blocked legal efforts by the Uighurs to be released in the US. Plans were well advanced in May to relocate some of the Uighurs to Virginia, but those plans were scuttled after a Congressional backlash.

Fifty Guantanamo detainees, including the Uighurs, are now eligible for release under plans developed by the Obama Administration and the US is courting close allies to assist in their resettlement. The EU position is that assistance will only be provided once a formal EU-US agreement is reached, which provides levels of assurance as to the human rights of the former detainees, and also financial commitments towards their ongoing needs.

The US will need to make important concessions for any agreement is to be concluded; the US must accept that it has an ongoing responsibility for some Guantanamo detainees who were wrongfully held and that it is prepared to resettle some, including the Uighurs, in the US.

Australia would be well within its rights to make similar demands.

However, until the US is prepared to acknowledge that "charity begins at home" then the future for the Guantanamo Uighurs will remain deadlocked.

Donald Rothwell is professor of international law at the ANU college of law.

From hell to paradise for ex-Gitmo detainees

2009-06-14T00:03:00.001-04:00

From hell to paradise for ex-Gitmo detainees
MICHELLE SHEPHARD/TORONTO STAR
Uighurs Salahidin Abdulahat, 32, left, and Khelil Mamut, 31, go fishing in Bermuda, where they're living after almost eight years in Guantanamo Bay.
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Four ethnic Uighurs adjusting to Bermuda, and life on outside
Jun 13, 2009 11:34 PM
Michelle Shephard
NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER

HAMILTON, Bermuda – After almost eight years of captivity, each step of Khelil Mamut's freedom is a little overwhelming.

The ocean, which he could hear only on windy days when the waves crashed beyond Guantanamo's razor wire rimmed fence, is now something he can wade into.

People call him by his name, not 278, his internee serial number.

Then there was the horse he saw while walking one of the island trails on Thursday, the day he and three other Chinese citizens of the Muslim Uighur minority arrived in Bermuda. The animal made him stop suddenly, just to stare.

"How can I express it," he said yesterday, describing the new tropical home where he now lives with the three other former Guantanamo detainees. "It is so great, so beautiful."

"This may be a small island," added Abdullah Abdulqadir. "But it has a big heart."

The men spent yesterday with the Toronto Star, as they adjusted to life on the outside and reflected on a week that one local paper headlined: "From prison to paradise."

Despite the backlash to their move, which has all Bermudians talking, they seemed insulated in their oceanside pink cottage, enjoying a fish lunch, a sunset swim and fielding the occasional media call.

They broke their composure only when a local imam visited them, embracing each fiercely.

The U.S. government is footing the bill for their food and accommodation until they can find work, which likely won't be a problem since local companies have reportedly already made six offers.

Inside their three-bedroom apartment, where the carpet, curtain and walls match the pastel exterior, the men have managed to form a makeshift family.

American translator Rushan Abbas, who alternated yesterday between typing emails to their U.S. lawyers and kneading dough for a traditional Uighur dinner, joked that despite only being a few years older she considered the men her children.

Abbas worked for U.S. interrogators translating with Uighur detainees when she first started at Guantanamo in 2002.

Then she "switched sides," she said, and started working for defence attorneys. She came here for a few days to make the transition smoother since Abdulqadir and Mamut know only limited English, and the other two men, Salahidin Abdulahat and Ablikim Turahun, don't understand at all.

The men also have the assistance of a retired Bermudian army major, Glenn Brangman, who now works with the government. With his booming voice and hibiscus-patterned surf shorts, Brangman has become their energetic guide.

Two weeks ago the scene for these men in Camp Iguana – the U.S. military's name for the prison where they were detained in Guantanamo – couldn't have been more different. On June 1, Abdulqadir approached a small group of journalists during a rare unscripted moment in a prison where the message is tightly controlled.

"Who's in charge?" Abdulqadir asked, as reporters, including one from the Star, stood mute on the other side of the fence due to rules that forbid communication between journalists and prisoners.

Abdulqadir and another detainee then quickly displayed a sketch pad where they'd written their message in crayon, managing to pull off the detention centre's first public protest.

"We need to freedom (sic)," said one page.

Ten days later, a secret pre-dawn private flight whisked them away from Guantanamo to this tourist mecca.

There's no doubt the four men stand out in this self-governing British territory that's only 54 square kilometres – less than half the size of Guantanamo's U.S. naval base.

There's no Uighur population here and when locals are asked if there's an Asian community, most point to a Japanese resident who opened a restaurant.

Their arrival has consumed the local media and parliament. Opposition members tabled a no-confidence motion on Friday to oust Bermuda's Premier Ewart Brown, arguing that his covert deal with U.S. President Barack Obama was indicative of his "autocratic" leadership.

"We don't know who these men are," opposition minister Shawn Crockwell said in an interview with the Star.

"All of a sudden there's an association between Bermuda and terrorism. Whether or not these men are or not, there's that association."

The men yesterday said they hoped they could shake the terrorist label.

"There's absolutely no hard feelings toward the U.S.," said Abdulqadir.

"There are some people accusing us, labelling us as dangerous people, but that's not true at all."

For years, the debate over the Uighur detainees, who range in age from 30 to 38, was whether they were Guantanamo victims or men who had formed links with Al Qaeda to support their opposition to China's rule.

The men said they fled China in the summer of 2001 for neighbouring Afghanistan – the two countries share a tiny stretch of border – because they could not get passports enabling them to go elsewhere.

After the 9/11 attacks and the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, the men were caught by Pakistani services and sold to the United States for a bounty.

The Pentagon accused them of training at "Al Qaeda-linked" camps and belonging to the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which opposes China's oppression of Uighurs.

In September 2002, after the men had been in custody for almost a year, the ETIM was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

The listing itself was criticized by some who accused the United States of succumbing to China's pressure at a time when Beijing's support was sought for the upcoming war in Iraq.

During years of litigation, the D.C. courts slammed the inadequacy of the government's evidence, eventually pushing the Bush administration to concede that the Uighurs were no longer designated "enemy combatants."

This administrative reclassification, which cleared the men for release, prompted one District Court judge to quip: "The government's use of the Kafkaesque term `no longer enemy combatants' deliberately begs the question of whether these petitioners ever were enemy combatants."

Yesterday, the men said the toughest time in their captivity was when Chinese interrogators were allowed on the base in 2002.

They also talked of their year inside Camp 6, where they were kept in solitary confinement and only meals and calls of other prisoners broke the monotony of the day.

After a D.C. judge ordered them released last October, they were transferred to Camp Iguana, a separate prison of enclosed wooden huts, perched high on a rocky cliff overlooking the ocean.

But when the United States denied them refuge and no other country would accept them, they were trapped in a legal limbo until last week.

Another 13 Uighur detainees, heading for the tiny Pacific island of Palau, still remain in Guantanamo, as does Canadian Omar Khadr.

Some residents here were angry that Bermuda accepted men other Western nations refused to take, while others say the men will integrate well.

"I feel people need somewhere to go. These guys haven't done anything wrong and have been locked up," said Carol Turini, a 70-year-old cab driver who retired from a job in the immigration department eight years ago.

"Why not?"

Their American lawyer, Sabin Willet, said one of the most poignant moments for him came when they were shopping for new clothes as a local talk radio show was airing irate callers saying Bermuda was harbouring terrorists.

Hearing the radio, and then recognizing the men, the storeowner looked at them and said, "Well, I welcome you here."

After 7 years at Gitmo, resettled Uyghurs grateful for freedom

2009-06-13T16:47:00.002-04:00

After 7 years at Gitmo, resettled Uyghurs grateful for freedom

Story Highlights
Two Uyghurs relocated from Guantanamo spoke Friday with CNN's Don Lemon
Both denied having been terrorists, and expressed gratitude toward U.S. president
Four of the Chinese Muslims were relocated to Bermuda; 13 remain at Gitmo
Incident has had international repercussions centering on where to relocate men

updated 10:32 p.m. EDT, Fri June 12, 2009

HAMILTON, Bermuda (CNN) -- Two of four Uyghurs relocated to Bermuda after seven years of detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, denied Friday that they had ever been terrorists, and expressed gratitude toward President Obama for working to free them.
Salahidin Abdalahut and Kheleel Mamut were two of four Uyghurs released from Gitmo. Thirteen remain there.

Salahidin Abdalahut and Kheleel Mamut were two of four Uyghurs released from Gitmo. Thirteen remain there.

Asked what he would say to someone who accused him of being a terrorist, one of the men, Kheleel Mamut, told CNN's Don Lemon, "I am no terrorist; I have not been terrorist. I will never be terrorist. I am a peaceful person."

Speaking through an interpreter who is herself a Uyghur who said she was sympathetic toward the men, the other man -- Salahidin Abdalahut -- described the past seven years as "difficult times for me ... I feel bad that it took so long for me to be free."

The two Chinese Muslims were among four relocated from Guantanamo to Bermuda; another 13 remain in detention on the island.

He said he had traveled to Afghanistan not to attend any terrorist training camps, but because -- as a Uyghur -- he had been oppressed by the Chinese government. "We had to leave the country to look for a better life, a peaceful life, and Afghanistan is a neighboring country to our country and it's easy to go," he said. "It is difficult to obtain a visa to go to any other places, so it was really easy for us to just travel to Afghanistan."

Asked what he hoped to do next, he said, "I want to forget about the past and move on to a peaceful life in the future."

In addition to the four relocated from Guantanamo to Bermuda, another 13 Uyghurs remain in detention on the island.

The four were flown by private plane Wednesday night from Cuba to Bermuda, and were accompanied by U.S. and Bermudian representatives as well as their attorneys, according to Susan Baker Manning, part of the men's legal team.

The men, who are staying in an apartment, are free to roam about the island.

Mamut accused the Bush administration of having held them without cause, and lauded Obama for having "tried really hard to bring justice and he has been trying very hard to find other countries to resettle us and finally he freed us."
Don't Miss

* Bermuda should have 'consulted' UK, official says
* Uyghur Gitmo detainees resettle in Bermuda
* Palau to take Uighur detainees from Gitmo

He appealed to Obama to carry out his promise to shut Guantanamo Bay within a year. "I would like President Obama to honor that word and to free my 13 brothers who were left behind and all of the rest of the people who deserve to be free," Mamut said.

Asked how he had been treated in Guantanamo Bay, Mamut said, "It is a jail, so there will be difficulties in the jail that we have faced and now, since I am a free man today, I would like to forget about all that. I really don't want to think about those days."

He cited a proverb from his homeland that means, "What is done cannot be undone."

Asked if he had anything to say to anyone watching, he said, "Thank you very much for those people who helped me to gain freedom."

He said he had spoken earlier in the day with his family. "They told me, "My boy, my son, congratulations on your freedom.' "

The move has had international repercussions, including causing a rift between the United States and Britain.

A British official familiar with the agreement but not authorized to speak publicly on the matter told CNN the United States had informed London of the agreement "shortly before the deal was concluded."

A U.S. official, speaking on background, said the British feel blindsided.

Bermuda is a British "overseas territory."

The four were twice cleared for release -- once by the Bush administration and again this year, according to a Justice Department statement.

The issue of where they go is controversial because of China's opposition to the Uyghurs being sent to any country but China.

Uyghurs are a Muslim minority from the Xinjiang province of far west China. The 17 Uyghurs had left China and made their way to Afghanistan, where they settled in a camp with other Uyghurs opposed to the Chinese government, the Justice Department said in its statement.

They left Afghanistan after U.S. bombings began in the area in October 2001, and were apprehended in Pakistan, the statement said.

"According to available information, these individuals did not travel to Afghanistan with the intent to take any hostile action against the United States," the statement said.

However, China alleges that the men are part of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement -- a group the U.S. State Department considers a terrorist organization -- that operates in the Xinjiang region. East Turkestan is another name for Xinjiang.

China on Thursday urged the United States to hand over all 17 of the Uyghurs instead of sending them elsewhere.
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The United States will not send Uyghur detainees cleared for release back to China out of concern that they would be tortured by Chinese authorities. China has said no returned Uyghurs would be tortured.

A senior U.S. administration official told CNN that the State Department is working on a final agreement with Palau to settle the 13 remaining Uyghur detainees.

'We'd never heard of al Qaeda'

2009-06-13T12:56:00.003-04:00

Freedon:Abdulla Abdulqadir, Salahidin Abdulahad, Khalil Manut, and Ablikim Turahun spent more than seven years in the United States' prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Photo by Mark Tatem

Salahidin Abdulahad and Ablikim Turahun.
Photo by Mark Tatem

Abdulla Abdulqadir
Photo by Mark Tatem

'We'd never heard of al Qaeda'

By Jonathan Kent

The four Chinese Muslims released from Guantánamo Bay to come to Bermuda say they had never even heard of al Qaeda until they arrived at the US prison camp where they have been confined for the past seven years.

And in an interview with The Royal Gazette, the ethnic Uighurs said they had never seen pictures of what happened on September 11, 2001, but they did not approve of the terrorist attacks that killed about 3,000 people in the US.

The four men — Abdulla Abdulqadir, Salahidin Abdulahad, Ablikim Turahun and Khalil Mamut — spoke last night of their excitement at being free in Bermuda and that their experience since arriving at 3 a.m. on Thursday morning had been of "a small country of people with big hearts".

Bleary-eyed, weary but elated with the excitement of their liberation, the men denied ever having been terrorists and spoke of long stretches of solitary confinement in the spartan cells of Guantánamo.

Their worst moments in the camp in the US-owned enclave of Cuba, they said, had come when the Americans allowed a visit by Chinese military officials to interrogate them for two weeks. The Uighurs say they were persecuted in their homeland by the Chinese authorities and fled over the border into Afghanistan to escape. They denied ever having gone to a terrorist training camp there.

"That is a totally false accusation," said Mr. Abdulahad, speaking through an interpreter. "We were just fleeing Chinese suppression when we went to Afghanistan.

"We did not go to a military or terrorist training camp. We were in a little village and stayed in some abandoned buildings there. If you saw it you would know it's ridiculous to call this place a military training camp."

The Uighurs had their own country until it was seized by China in 1949, the men said, and they have been an oppressed minority for decades.

One example of this oppression was that a mother who had two children and who was pregnant would be subject to a forced abortion at the hands of the authorities. Abortion is against their religion. "We wanted to go to a peaceful country in Europe, but because of the difficulties with visas and passports, we had to do the next best thing, which was to cross the border into Afghanistan, which was much easier to do," Mr. Abdulahad said.

When the American bombing of Afghanistan started after 9/11, they fled into Pakistan and say they were tricked by Pakistani tribesman, who handed them over to the US military for cash. They vigorously denied that they had ever had any association with the terrorist group behind the 9/11 attacks, al Qaeda.

"We had not seen anything of the 9/11 attacks, but from what we have heard, it was a terrible tragedy that happened to the American people," Mr. Abdulahad said.

"We are very sympathetic with the families of those who lost their lives.

"We'd never heard of al Qaeda until we came to Guantánamo and heard about them from our interrogators. "From what we have heard about them, they are an extremely radical group, with totally different ideals from ours. We are a peace-loving people."

The men said for a year of their imprisonment they were held in solitary confinement for 22 hours a day in a cramped cell with no natural light, and were allowed outside for a couple of hours a day in a three-metre by five-metre "recreation area".

They believed the Americans soon realised they were not terrorists and the men said they were not tortured at the hands of the US guards. In 2002, things got worse for a short period, when Chinese officials were allowed into the camp to question them. The men's lawyer, Sabin Willett, of Bingham McCutchen in Boston, believes the Americans allowed the Chinese in to try to secure the support of China, a fellow member of the UN Security Council, for the US invasion of Iraq, which took place in 2003.

Mr. Abdulahad recalled: "The Chinese delegation treated us very badly.

"They brought me out and interrogated me for six hours straight with no food or rest.

"They took me back to my cell and I was extremely tired. But then they came straight back to my cell and took me out for another six hours of interrogation. It went on that way for one-and-a-half days."

Mr. Turahun added: "When the Chinese came they wanted to take my picture, but I didn't want them to, because I was afraid they would harm my family.

"But one of the American guards grabbed my beard and the other held my hands behind my back so they could take the picture."

The men did not want to talk about their families.

The men were detained long after the US military had cleared them for release and won a legal challenge before the US courts last year.

After that, they were moved to a less restrictive existence at Camp Iguana, a separate camp in the Guantánamo complex.

The men are delighted to be in Bermuda and grateful to the Government for taking them when many larger countries refused.

"Bermuda had the courage to step up and do this, "Mr. Abdulahad said. "It's a small place but the people have extremely big hearts.

"We want to live a peaceful and beautiful life here and we are ready to work hard.

"People know we have been in Guantánamo and they have a picture of us which is very different from who we are. When people get to know us they will know what kind of people we are. We are peace-loving people."

Mr. Willett told a story about how the men had gone into a local store to buy clothes.

The radio was on inside and voices on a talk show were complaining about "terrorists" not being welcome in Bermuda.

The storekeeper looked at the men and quickly realised who they must be and said: "Well, I welcome you here."

Who Are the Four Guantanamo Uighurs Sent to Bermuda?

2009-06-13T00:22:00.002-04:00

Who Are the Four Guantanamo Uighurs Sent to Bermuda?

Andy Worthington

Journalist and author of "The Guantanamo Files"
Posted: June 11, 2009 07:59 PM

While everyone was looking at a map, trying to work out exactly where Palau is, following the announcement on Tuesday that Guantánamo's 17 Uighur prisoners were to be resettled there, it now transpires that four of the men have been quietly flown to Bermuda instead.

This is rather a surprise, to put it mildly. The Uighurs -- Muslims from China's oppressed Xinjiang province, who were cleared of being "enemy combatants" last year -- have, as I have reported at length, been in a disturbing legal limbo since Barack Obama took office, as the new administration repeatedly failed to find the necessary courage to do the right thing and resettle them in the United States (as ordered by District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina last October).

Instead, senior officials cowered in the face of the poisonous -- and, to be honest, libelous -- venom spewed forth by Guantánamo's many defenders in Congress and in the right-wing media, who have popped up to trail around behind Dick Cheney like a zombie reenactment of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Moreover, the administration also resorted to defending a ruling that overturned Judge Urbina's stout defense of Constitutional values, siding with Judge A. Raymond Randolph in the court of appeals and in a petition to the Supreme Court asking the highest court in the land not to look at the Uighurs' case. This was in spite of the fact that Judge Randolph, who would rather eat his own gavel than allow a judge to order the government to allow wrongly imprisoned men into the United States, defended every wayward proposal put his way by the Bush administration, only to see them all overturned by the Supreme Court.

Why Bermuda?

What's astonishing about the choice of Bermuda as the new home for four men from north western China is not its location -- it is, after all, not a million miles away from Cuba, and the Uighurs must be used to the climate by now -- but the fact that it is a British Overseas Territory.

According to London's Times, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office reacted with ill-disguised fury to the news of the men's resettlement, because Bermuda, "Britain's oldest remaining dependency, is one of 14 overseas territories that come under the sovereignty of the United Kingdom, which retains direct responsibility for such matters as foreign policy and security." An FCO spokesman said, "We've underlined to the Bermuda Government that they should have consulted with the United Kingdom as to whether this falls within their competence or is a security issue, for which the Bermuda Government do not have delegated responsibility." He added, "We have made clear to the Bermuda Government the need for a security assessment, which we are now helping them to carry out, and we will decide on further steps as appropriate."

According to the Times, potential conflict with China, which has made repeated demands for the return of the Uighurs, means that the Bermuda government "could now be forced to send them back to Cuba or risk a grave diplomatic crisis" -- although I must admit that it seems possible to me that the Uighurs' resettlement may actually have been negotiated between the governments of the U.S., the U.K. and Bermuda, and that the FCO's "fury" is actually a cover for a pretty watertight case of "plausible deniability."

Before this apparent spat blew up, news of the men's unexpected move to Bermuda leaked out on Thursday morning, after the Uighurs' lawyers reported that the men had arrived in Bermuda shortly after 6 a.m., and were accompanied on a charter flight from Guantánamo by two of their lawyers, Sabin Willett and Susan Baker Manning. After disembarking, one of the men, Abdul Nasser, who, throughout his detention, was described by the Pentagon as Abdul Helil Mamut, thanked their new hosts for accepting them. "Growing up in communism," he said, "we always dreamed of living in peace and working in a free society like this one. Today you have let freedom ring."

As a Justice Department press release explained, "These detainees, who were subject to release as a result of court orders, had been cleared for release by the prior administration, which determined they would no longer treat them as enemy combatants. The detainees were again cleared for release this year after review by the interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force," which, the press release noted, included "a threat evaluation." The DoJ also made a point of stating, "According to available information, these individuals did not travel to Afghanistan with the intent to take any hostile action against the United States."

In a statement on the website of the Uighurs' lawyers, who had been tireless in promoting their clients' innocence, Sabin Willett wrote, "We are deeply grateful to the government and the people of Bermuda for this act of grace. Nations need good friends. When political opportunists blocked justice in our own country, Bermuda has reminded her old friend, America, what justice is." Susan Baker Manning, added, "These men should never have been at Guantánamo. They were picked up by mistake. And when the U.S. government realized its mistake, it continued to imprison them merely because they are refugees. We are grateful to Bermuda for this humanitarian act."

The lawyers also explained that the men will probably have an easier time adapting to their new life than the five other Uighurs who were rehoused in Albania in 2006. Unlike Albania, Bermuda is a wealthy country, and, in addition, the men "have been approved to participate in Bermuda's guest worker program for foreigners."

Who are the four Uighurs?

So who are these men, whose proposed release into the United States caused such a virulent response? As the lawyers explained, in addition to Abdul Nasser, they are Huzaifa Parhat, Abdul Semet (identified by the Pentagon as Emam Abdulahat) and Jalal Jalaladin (identified by the Pentagon as Abdullah Abdulquadirakhun).

Of the four, Parhat is the only one whose name was known outside Guantánamo. In his Combatant Status Review Tribunal (a one-sided military review board, convened to assess whether, on capture, he had been correctly designated as an "enemy combatant," who could be held without charge or trial), he explained that he arrived at the settlement in Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains (where the Uighurs had been living until it was bombed by U.S. forces following the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan) in May 2001, and refuted allegations that it was a facility operated by a militant group that was funded by Osama bin Laden and Taliban.

He also made a heartfelt statement about the Uighurs' support for the United States, explaining that, "from the time of our great-grandparents centuries ago, we have never been against the United States and we do not want to be against the United States," and adding, "I can represent for 25 million Uighur people by saying that we will not do anything against the United States. We are willing to be united with the United States. I think that the United States understands the Uighur people much better than other people." In addition, he was one of several Uighur prisoners to mention threats made by Chinese interrogators who had been allowed to visit Guantánamo, and also to point out that he had had no contact whatsoever with any members of his family.

However, Parhat's story is particularly significant, because last June, after the Supreme Court concluded years of stalling and legislative reversals on the part of the administration by ruling that the prisoners had constitutional habeas corpus rights, his case was finally reviewed by three judges in a U.S. District Court, who demolished the case against him (and, by extension, against the other Uighurs), by ruling as "invalid" the tribunal's decision that he was an "enemy combatant." The judges criticized the government for relying on flimsy and unsubstantiated allegations and associations (primarily to do with the alleged militant group), and in a memorable passage compared the government's argument that its evidence was reliable because it was mentioned in three different classified documents to a line from a nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

This led the government to concede that it would "serve no purpose" to continue trying to prove that any of the Uighurs were "enemy combatants," and, in turn, led to Judge Ricardo Urbina's ruling last October that the Uighurs were to be released into the United States, when he stated, simply, "Because the Constitution prohibits indefinite detentions without cause, the continued detention is unlawful" -- although this, of course, was subsequently reversed by the appeals court judges with whom, since coming to power, the Obama administration has maintained an unhealthy judicial alliance.

Abdul Semet told his tribunal that he left home "to escape from the torturing, darkness and suffering of the Chinese government," and "wanted to go to some other country to live in peace." He added, "The government, if they suspect us for anything, would torture and beat us, and fine us money. Lately, the young Uighurs would get caught just doing exercising. They would stop us and say it was not our culture, and put us in jail for it." He also explained, "For the females, if they have [more than] one child, they open them up and throw the baby in the trash."

Speaking of the Uighurs' settlement in the Afghan mountains, he explained that he spent most of his time in "construction," mending the settlement's decrepit buildings, and indicated that he and his compatriots would have been happy to assist the United States if their home had not been bombed. "If the Americans went to Afghanistan and didn't bomb our camp," he said, "then we would be happy and support America; we would've stayed there continuously. The reason we went to Afghanistan doesn't mean we have a relationship with al-Qaeda or some other organization; we went there for peace and not to be turned back over to the Chinese."

Jalal Jalaladin was one of several of the Uighur prisoners to explain that he ended up in the settlement because he had been thwarted in his attempts to get from Pakistan to Turkey to look for work, and where he also believed that the government would give him citizenship. He explained to his tribunal that he got no further than Kyrgyzstan, where he found a job in a bazaar, and that some locals then gave him an address in Pakistan, where a Uighur businessman told him about the settlement. As he was having difficulties getting a visa for Iran, he decided to go to there instead.

And finally, Abdul Nasser gave an explanation about the "training" at the settlement that ought to make the fearful politicians and Conservative pundits in the United States ashamed. He explained that he had arrived at the settlement in June 2001, and that, during his time there -- until it was bombed -- he trained on the camp's one and only gun for no more than a few days. "I don't know if it was an AK-47," he said. "It was an old rifle, and I trained for a couple of days."

Moreover, Abdul Nasser reinforced what another of the men, Abdulghappar (who is still held in Guantánamo), had explained, when asked if it had ever been his intention to fight against the U.S. or its allies. "I have one point: a billion Chinese enemies, that is enough for me," Abdulghappar said. "Why would I get more enemies?" Abdul Nasser explained, "I went to the camp to train because the Chinese government was torturing my country, my people, and they could not do anything. I was trying to protect my country, my country's independence and my freedom. From international law, training is not illegal in order to protect your freedom and independence. I did it for my country."

While waiting to see how Guantánamo's critics respond to this story of a young man training to protect his freedom and independence (which is something they should surely recognize), and while also wondering if Palau is still prepared to take the other 13 Uighurs (before June 25, presumably, when the Supreme Court is scheduled to meet to discuss whether the courts have any authority to order Guantánamo prisoners to be released into the U.S.), I'd like to wish these four men the best of luck in settling into their new home. For those of us who have studied the story of Guantánamo closely, it has actually been apparent all along that the Uighurs should never have been held at all, and that the Pentagon was only interested in them because of the intelligence that they thought they might provide about the activities of the Chinese government.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison

Kaua‘i group: Send us Gitmo detainees

2009-06-13T00:21:00.001-04:00

Kaua‘i group: Send us Gitmo detainees

*
By The Garden Island
Published: Friday, June 12, 2009 1:59 AM HST
LIHU‘E — A Kaua‘i group on Thursday sent a letter to Gov. Linda Lingle and the state’s congressional delegation requesting that the 17 Uighur nationals that are to be sent from the U.S. Detention Facility in Guantanamo Bay to Palau instead be routed to Hawai‘i Islands.

The letter, sent by Ed Coll on behalf of the Kaua‘i Alliance for Peace and Social Justice, asked Lingle, U.S. Sens. Daniel Akaka and Daniel Inouye and U.S. Reps. Neil Abercrombie and Mazie Hirono to “invite the $200 million in federal money offered by the federal government to the Republic of Palau for accepting the innocent former detainees, and this money would supplement Hawai‘i’s current budget shortfall.”

“Moved by the presumption that you fully trust the determination of the federal judge, who ordered the 17 former detainees (Uighur nationals) released ... after the Pentagon determined that they are not ‘enemy combatants,’ the Kaua‘i Alliance for Peace and Social Justice calls for you, as Hawai‘i state officials, to extend an invitation to the Uighur national former detainees to come and settle on the Hawaiian Islands,” the letter said.

“We presume that you all are moved by aloha to extend welcome to the mistreated individuals and help them resettle and become useful members of the Hawaiian society, therefore the Kaua‘i Alliance for Peace and Social Justice urges you to negotiate with the U.S. Federal government on the terms and conditions for the resettlement in the State of Hawai‘i.

“These men have been ordered released by a federal court and the State of Hawai‘i could benefit greatly form the potential infusion of up to $200 million federal dollars in development and budget assistance for the resettlement of these men. After more than six years of illegal confinement, the United States owes these men more than their freedom, it owes them an apology and we can offer them the aloha spirit.

“What better aloha than this humanitarian gesture from Hawai‘i already known for its rich and diverse ethnic population? Hawai‘i can much more easily absorb these men than our Pacific Island neighbors in Palau. By helping these innocent men rebuild their shattered lives you, the elected representatives of the State of Hawai‘i will confirm your belief in serving justice and supporting valuable Hawaiian traditions of aloha with action.

“Inspired by this action, other countries such as Australia, Germany, and others may reconsider and accept other former detainees once it has been determined they are not enemy combatants. The Kaua‘i Alliance for Peace and Social Justice urges other progressive, peace, justice, religious and sovereignty groups and organizations to support our efforts in serving true justice.”

There had been no formal announcements made by any Hawai‘i government offices regarding the proposal as of press time.

Obama won't rule out releasing detainees in US

2009-06-12T17:11:00.000-04:00

Obama won't rule out releasing detainees in US

2 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — A White House spokesman says the Obama administration hasn't decided whether or not to release Guantanamo Bay detainees in the United States.

Spokesman Robert Gibbs said President Barack Obama has made clear "we're not going to make any decision about transfer or release that threatens the security of this country."

Asked if that meant he was ruling out releasing any detainees in the United States, Gibbs said: "I'm not ruling it in or ruling it out."

A tentative plan to release some Guantanamo detainees in the United States drew fierce opposition from Republicans and many Democrats in Congress, forcing the Obama administration to shelve the plan to bring some Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs to Virginia. The Uighur detainees at Guantanamo were found not to be enemy combatants by the Pentagon, but few nations have been willing to accept them, out of fear of angering China.

This past week, four of the 17 Uighurs being held at Guantanamo were sent to Bermuda, and the Pacific islands nation of Palau said it would accept others.

Gibbs told reporters progress has been made this week in the administration's goal of closing the detention center in Cuba by early next year.

Seven detainees have been shipped out of Guantanamo so far this week.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Chinese Muslims face culture shock in Palau

2009-06-12T17:10:00.002-04:00

Chinese Muslims face culture shock in Palau

By TOMOKO A. HOSAKA and WILLIAM FOREMAN – 56 minutes ago

KOROR, Palau (AP) — They came from a land of scorching deserts, snowcapped mountains, camels and mosques. Now after several miserable years imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, 13 Muslims from China will try to resettle on the tiny Pacific nation of Palau — a land of lush beach resorts.

Some residents said Friday they are afraid of the former prisoners, while others worried they won't adjust to life here.

"It's good to be humanitarian and all, but still these people to me are scary," said Natalia Baulis, 30, a mother of two, in Palau's laid-back capital, Koror.

The detainees were captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001, but the Pentagon determined last year that they were not "enemy combatants."

They have been treated like global untouchables since the U.S. decided to free them, saying they weren't a danger to the country. No nation agreed to take the 13 men until Palau — a former U.S. trust territory — welcomed them to the tropical tourist getaway, about 500 miles east of the Philippines.

Sending them back to China wasn't an option for Washington because of concerns that Chinese authorities would immediately arrest the men who belong to the minority ethnic Uighur group. The restive Turkic people live in China's far western region of Xinjiang — a territory three times the size of Texas that shares borders with Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other Central Asian nations.

Most Uighurs are Muslim and many want Xinjiang to become independent. In recent years, they've staged bombings and other attacks, mostly against Chinese police, government and military targets. The Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gurs) detained in Guantanamo were accused of being militants seeking training in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Dru Gladney, an expert on Uighurs, applauded Washington's decision not to send the detainees back to China, where he said they would be treated worse than at Guantanamo. Resettling them in the U.S. — especially in the Washington area where there's a subtantial Uighur population — would have been ideal, but Congress opposed that idea, he said.

Palau will be tough for them because there aren't many Muslims in the predominantly Christian nation of 20,000 people, he said.

"They are going to have a very difficult time of it for sure," said Gladney, a professor at the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College in California.

When the Uighurs arrive, this balmy island nation will likely seem like an alien planet, with bikini-clad women on white sand beaches, meals of fresh saltwater fish and people snorkeling with dolphins in clear blue water.

Back in the Uighurs' desert home, camels haul cargo across dusty deserts, cold winds blow off snowy mountains, and women usually cover up with head scarves. Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi, is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most remote city from any sea in the world.

Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Germany-based World Uighur Congress, a pro-independence group, was also worried about the detainees' ability to adapt.

"I'm concerned about their mental health," Raxit said by phone from Sweden. "They have been detained for a long time and they will need the help of psychologists. I hope the Palau government can provide the counseling and other help they need."

Raxit added that China probably won't allow the Uighurs' families to visit or join them, so the men will experience intense isolation and loneliness. But he added that Palau would be better than Xinjiang, where about 9 million Uighurs live.

"I'm extremely thankful that the U.S. government decided not to hand them over to China," he said.

China still insists the Uighurs are terrorism suspects who should be repatriated. But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang declined to say Thursday whether China would pressure Palau to return the men.

Sending them back to China sounded like a great idea to some in Palau. Some worried they would scare away tourists, leading to problems with the multimillion-dollar hotel industry.

Fermin Nariang, editor of the Palau newspaper Island Times, said people were stopping him in the streets in the capital of Koror and venting their anger.

"This is a very small country," Nariang said, "and some are saying if the whole world doesn't want these folks, why are we taking them?"

Palau President Johnson Toribiong said the country has a strong tradition of hospitality and the Uighurs were "international vagabonds" who deserved a new home. He denied the move was influenced by any massive aid package from Washington, but he said, "Palau's people are always on the side of the U.S. government."

It was unclear when the detainees would arrive in Palau. Toribiong said a delegation would be sent to Guantanamo to assess the Uighurs.

Four other Uighurs left Guantanamo Bay on Thursday for a new home in Bermuda — a move that displeased some residents of the North Atlantic island. Even Britain, which handles Bermuda's defense, security and foreign affairs, expressed unhappiness at the deal, saying Bermuda's leaders failed to properly consult with them.

A British Foreign Office spokesman, who declined to be named in keeping with department policy, said British authorities will be working with Bermudan officials to determine how much of a security threat the Uighurs are and that any next steps would be based on that.

Bermuda Premier Ewart Brown said the men will be allowed to live in Bermuda initially as refugees but they would be permitted to pursue citizenship and would have the right to work, travel and "potentially settle elsewhere."

Three years ago, the U.S. freed five Uighurs who were detained at Guantanamo and resettled them in Albania. Less than two weeks after they arrived in their new home country, lawyers for two of them filed a motion demanding they be moved to a more suitable place, like Washington.

The lawyers said the men were afraid to venture out of the U.N. refugee compound in Albania where they lived because the local media had branded them "terrorists." They also couldn't find jobs in one of Europe's poorest countries, the attorneys said.

But one of the former detainees, Abu Bakker Qassim, 40, told The Associated Press on Friday that he has learned the local language and likes living in Albania. The government pays his rent, and he even gets $330 a month for food and clothes.

However, he's jobless and hasn't been able to reunite with his wife and three children in Xinjiang.

"It is hard to find a job at this difficult time. I took a training course for making pizza and Albanian cooking. The two other (Uighurs) are also learning how to make pizza," said Qassim, who hopes to open a restaurant.

Another Uighur is studying computer science, while one was granted political asylum in Sweden, where he had family.

Qassim said he spent two hours Thursday chatting on the Internet with the four Uighurs in Bermuda. "They told me they were very pleased with the living conditions there," he said.

Associated Press writers Nancy Zuckerbrod in London and Llazar Semini in Tirana, Albania, contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Bermuda: Refugees and Reaction: A Few Thoughts

2009-06-12T17:10:00.001-04:00

Bermuda: Refugees and Reaction: A Few Thoughts

By: Senator Walton Brown, Bermuda

HAMILTON, Bermuda - The Bermuda Government’s decision to take in Four Chinese nationals of Uyghur ethnicity was a bold humanitarian gesture that I hope all residents will come to embrace. These men, who sat languishing in the U.S. military's Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility for eight years, have committed no crime and were meant to be released under the Bush administration.

While we have a series of challenges here, with our own citizens in need of housing support and work opportunities, for example, we have never step away from our moral obligation to provide support to those in need around the world. We have done so with tsunami victims, hurricane victims and with people ravaged by war. We have sent our Bermuda Regiment soldiers, millions of dollars in donations and food and supplies.

This is what members of a global community do and we can expect to receive similar offers of support should we find ourselves in difficulties, natural or otherwise. We undertake such actions in spite of the challenges that exist here because the only logical alternative is an untenable one: that we help no one else until we fix all of our local problems first.

On the specific issues involving these four men, the US Justice Department, which conducted a detailed investigation of the Uyghurs detained at the US base had long ago concluded the following: Uyghurs are a Muslim minority from the Xinjiang province of far-west China; a total of seventeen Uyghurs had left China, arrived in Afghanistan, where they stayed in a camp with other Uyghurs opposed to the Chinese government; when they left Afghanistan after U.S. bombings began in the area in October 2001 they were captured in Pakistan.

The Justice Department does not believe they traveled to Afghanistan with a view to taking any hostile action against the US.

The Justice Department also pointed out that since 2002 more than 540 detainees have been released without incident and settled in 31 other countries, including Australia, Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Russia, Spain and Sweden. We are making a small contribution to this global undertaking in tandem with our size and capacity.

The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Governor Gozny have expressed concern they were not involved in this decision, indeed, they have asserted it should have been their decision in the first place, given the foreign policy and security implications. Government’s response is that they view the matter as an immigration issue, for which responsibility rests with them.

But the British themselves portended such disputes over constitutional responsibilities two years ago when the FCO, in the document “Overseas Territories: Relationship with the UK” observed the following: “More generally we are moving into a world which is becoming ever-more interconnected, in which the distinction between domestic and foreign policy will become less and less clear.” This is certainly one of those cases which is “less clear.” My view is that this humanitarian gesture, this inherently ethical decision by our government, trumps any discomfort or fraying of British sensibilities

Diplomatic firestorm

2009-06-12T17:06:00.001-04:00

Diplomatic firestorm

Fury in China and U.K. as BDA goes out on a limb to accept Guantanamo detainees
Bermuda has been thrust into an international political firestorm by allowing four former prisoners of Guantanamo Bay to take refuge on the island. The move is likely to garner favour with President Obama, who has been desperate to find homes for former inmates after promising to close Guantanamo by January.

However, the Chinese government is furious, and says the U.S. should extradite what it calls "suspected terrorists" to China. The British Government, and Governor Sir Richard Gozney, are also less than impressed, and say Bermuda should have consulted with them before giving the four men a home.

Welcome to paradise: The four Chinese Muslims spent years in harsh captivity - and years more in political limbo - before Bermuda offered them a home. The men understandably say they are delighted to be here.

"We were not involved in the negotiations, and we should have been. The Government of Bermuda should have consulted Government House at every stage and through me the British government. They didn't do that. This is an issue that goes far wider than these four individuals. We now need to assess these four individuals." He said London has launched urgent talks with Washington yesterday.
The Justice Department in the States insists it has done full checks on the men's background and character and is convinced they have never been involved in terrorism. Three years ago, the four prisoners were among those cleared by an American court of fighting U.S. troops. Since then, over 100 countries have refused to give them asylum, partly through fear of angering China.
However, Sir Richard said the assessments on the men needed to be done by Britain before they were allowed into Bermuda: "These men are on British territory. Our view is that [the assessments] need to be done by Bermuda and Britain and we can't rely on a third party assessment. If we are taking four people from Guantanamo, clearly there is a security issue there, and we need to know we have done our homework." Sir Richard said only yesterday was Government House given the paperwork for the four men. He said: "Now we have started to do that homework, and we can do it quickly. But it should have been done before now. It would have been had we been involved from the start."
The four men - named as Abdul Nasser, Huzaifa Parhat, Abdul Semet and Jalal Jalaladin - are members of the Uighur Muslim ethnic sect. The Chinese claim they were part of an army fighting for independence in the northwest of the country.
Sir Richard said the men are not just refugees, they are political refugees and a special case both because of their country of origin and where they were held in prison. He said the political ramifications are huge, as evidenced by the fact that no other countries have previously come forward to house them. "That's why they have been trapped in Guantanamo," said Sir Richard.
'An immigration issue'
Premier Ewart Brown said last night that it was not Britain's place to get involved at all. He said the Bermuda Government is viewing it as an immigration issue - which falls to the Government - as opposed to a foreign affairs and security issue - which falls to the Governor. He also denied that Bermudians should have been kept informed of the plan so that they could challenge it if they felt uncomfortable. He said the plan would have ground to a halt if the public had been involved. He said: "You can see why the talks have to be private and somewhat restricted...Otherwise it wouldn't have been able to happen."
He also addressed a concern shared by many Bermudians: why is the island offering housing and jobs to these men when there are so many on the island who are going without. Dr. Brown said: "We have our problems. We have our problems with or without these people, and we will continue to have our challenges without these four people." He said with 10,000 guest workers here, "four people isn't even a ripple in the water."
Bermudians are also asking: why can't the men be sent home? Experts point out that China has one of the worst human rights records in the world. The men would almost certainly be tortured and killed if they were sent home.
Dr. Brown said that meant Bermuda has a moral responsibility to give the men a home. The U.S. Government yesterday thanked the island for stepping in. Attorney General Eric Holder of the Justice Department said: "By helping accomplish the president's objective of closing Guantanamo, the transfer of these detainees will make America safer." He added that the department was "extremely grateful to the government of Bermuda for its assistance."
However, the Chinese Government has condemned the move. Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said: "The 17 Uigurs are members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which is on the United Nations list of terrorist groups and China holds the unswerving stand that the U.S. should stop handing over the terrorists to any third country, so as to expatriate them to China at an early date."

At a glance — the key questions
Will the men be under any restrictions in Bermuda?

No. They will be free members of society, helped to gain employment and found housing.

Government claim the men have "skills in the mechanical trade" and at least two speak good English.

The men will get the chance to "become naturalized Bermudians". The only restriction on them will be travel - they must get clearance from foreign authorities before traveling to the U.S. or U.K.

Why were the men sent to Guantanamo in the first place?

They were living in a self-contained camp in Afghanistan when the U.S. invasion began in October 2001.

American troops rounded up anyone they thought was an enemy combatant. The prisoners claimed they had fled to Afghanistan to avoid persecution as Muslims in their own country.

After more than four years in Guantanamo Bay, an American court found they were not enemy combatants and cleared of all wrongdoing.

Why can't the men be sent back to China?

The Chinese believe they were part of a Muslim guerilla army fighting for independence in the northwest of the country. This has not been proved.

China has an appalling human rights record and the men would be unlikely to receive a fair trial. Instead, they would likely be tortured and executed.

Why aren't these men given a home in the States, since it was America who locked them up?

An original plan to take the men to Virginia met with fierce opposition from Congress.

At one point, the Justice Department argued they should never be admitted into the country because they "sought to wage terror" in China.

A district judge ruled the men should be freed in the States, only to be overruled by an appeals court, which said the judge had assumed too much power. That final ruling left the men in legal limbo.

Why have so many other countries declined to take the men?

It may have been simply that there are few political points to be won giving a home to former suspected terrorists.

Just as importantly, countries have been wary of making enemies of China.

"Bermuda just stepped up and did it, God bless them," said P. Sabin Willett, a lawyer for the four men. "They have put the bigger countries to shame."

What does Bermuda get out of the deal?

According to reports, Palau, a Pacific island that is taking 13 more former prisoners, was being offered hundreds of millions of dollars in aid money as a sweetener.

It does not appear that Bermuda will benefit from any such payment. Instead, the U.S. has agreed only to pay for all costs related to the relocation and resettlement of the men.

The most important boon to Bermuda may be the goodwill generated with President Obama, at a time when governments around the world are looking to clamp down on low-tax jurisdictions.

Research by Tim Hall

Obama Bows on Settling Detainees (Washington Post)

2009-06-12T00:24:00.001-04:00

Obama Bows on Settling Detainees
Administration Gives Up on Bringing Cleared Inmates to U.S., Officials Say

FILE - In this Monday, June 1, 2009 file photo reviewed by the U.S. military, Chinese Uighur Guantanamo detainees, who at the time were cleared for release but had no country to go to, show a home-made note to visiting members of the media, at Camp Iguana detention facility, at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba. Palau, an archipelago in the Pacific ocean, has agreed to accept 17 Chinese Uighurs, the last remaining Uighurs at Guantanamo Bay, indicating a resolution to one of the thorniest issues facing the Obama administration's decision to close the prison camp. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, Pool, File) (Brennan Linsley - AP)

Chinese Uighurs detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, hold a sign for visiting journalists this week. They had been cleared for release but had nowhere to go. Now, four of them have been sent to Bermuda. (By Brennan Linsley -- Pool)

By Peter Finn and Sandhya Somashekhar
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 12, 2009
The Obama administration has all but abandoned plans to allow Guantanamo Bay detainees who have been cleared for release to live in the United States, administration officials said yesterday, a decision that reflects bipartisan congressional opposition to admitting such prisoners but complicates efforts to persuade European allies to accept them.
Four Uighur detainees, Chinese Muslims who were incarcerated at the U.S. military prison in Cuba for more than seven years, arrived early yesterday in Bermuda, where they will become foreign guest workers. An administration official said the United States is engaged in negotiations with other countries, including Palau, an island nation in the western Pacific, to find places for the remaining 13 Uighurs held at Guantanamo.
The Uighurs, who were ordered released by a federal judge last year, never counted America as an enemy, according to the men's lawyers and human rights groups, giving the administration grounds to argue that they should live in the United States. Picked up in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2002, the Uighurs were later cleared of the "enemy combatant" label but remained in minimum-security confinement at Guantanamo.
Attempting to settle non-Uighur detainees in the United States would generate even greater congressional opposition, and the administration has decided not to pursue it broadly, an administration official said yesterday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. But he said there may yet be "a few" candidates for settlement in the United States among the dozens of Guantanamo detainees who have been cleared for release.
Congressional Democrats yesterday reached agreement on a war-funding bill that would allow detainees to be sent to the United States for trial. The draft bill included no provision for prolonged detention without trial, a step that President Obama has said will be necessary to incarcerate detainees who are too dangerous to release but who cannot be prosecuted.
The four released Uighurs -- Huzaifa Parhat, 38, Abdul Semet, 32, Abdul Nasser, 32, and Jalal Jalaladin, 29 -- were flown out of Guantanamo on a chartered plane early yesterday and are staying in a guesthouse in Bermuda.

"They are thrilled to be free and trying to get a sense of where they are," said Susan Baker Manning, a lawyer for the four men who accompanied them on the flight. "They are understandably very eager to put their lives back together."
Nasser thanked the government and people of Bermuda, which is a British territory. "Growing up under communism," he said, "we always dreamed of living in peace and working in free society like this one. Today you have let freedom ring."
British officials, however, expressed displeasure that they were not consulted about the transfer. A Foreign Office spokesperson in London questioned "whether this falls within [Bermuda's] competence or is a foreign affairs or security issue for which the Bermuda Government do not have delegated responsibility."
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton later discussed the matter with Foreign Secretary David Miliband to assuage British concerns.
Shortly before the announcement of the transfer to Bermuda, Qin Gang, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, called the Uighur detainees "terrorist suspects" and insisted they be returned to China. The Obama administration has ruled that out, fearing they could be tortured or executed.
Two other Guantanamo detainees, an Iraqi and a Chadian, were released and arrived in their countries yesterday. The Chadian, Mohammed El Gharani, was the youngest detainee at Guantanamo. He was 14 when he was picked up in Pakistan in 2001 and turned over to U.S. authorities.

FILE - In this Monday, June 1, 2009 file photo reviewed by the U.S. military, Chinese Uighur Guantanamo detainees, who at the time were cleared for release but had no country to go to, show a home-made note to visiting members of the media, at Camp Iguana detention facility, at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba. Palau, an archipelago in the Pacific ocean, has agreed to accept 17 Chinese Uighurs, the last remaining Uighurs at Guantanamo Bay, indicating a resolution to one of the thorniest issues facing the Obama administration's decision to close the prison camp. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, Pool, File) (Brennan Linsley - AP)

Chinese Uighurs detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, hold a sign for visiting journalists this week. They had been cleared for release but had nowhere to go. Now, four of them have been sent to Bermuda. (By Brennan Linsley -- Pool)

"It could be a big week for Gitmo," said a second administration official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, adding that there is a possibility that as many as four more detainees could be transferred in the next couple of days. The administration is also finalizing a deal with Saudi Arabia to accept some of the nearly 100 Yemenis who are among the 232 detainees remaining at Guantanamo, U.S. and Saudi officials said.
The news that the Uighur detainees would not be transferred to the United States was greeted with a mix of relief and disappointment by Uighurs who reside in Northern Virginia, some of whom had been preparing for the arrival of the detainees.
"Here we have a big community," said Elshat Hassan, 47, a former university professor, who came to the United States in 2006. "We have lots of Uighurs and organizations. We are willing to help them in any aspect of their lives. It is much better if they were resettled in Virginia."
More than 300 Uighurs, believed to be the largest concentration in the country, live in the Washington area. They have trickled in over the past 40 years from Xinjiang, a Chinese province where their movements are closely tracked and outward religious displays are banned.
Hassan said he had left a one-bedroom apartment in McLean for a larger one in Alexandria in the hopes of hosting at least one of the detainees.
But opposition on Capitol Hill to freeing detainees has dramatically intensified since January, when Obama announced plans to close the military prison within a year. Virginia lawmakers, including Sen. James Webb (D) and Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R), say they oppose Uighur resettlement as a matter of national security. Some of the Uighur detainees had received rudimentary military instruction at an Afghan camp, which some critics have described as a terrorist training camp but which the detainees' lawyers have said was a village of Uighur refugees.
Wolf, whose Northern Virginia district is home to many Uighurs, has been among the community's closest allies in Congress. But he has found himself at odds with it over this issue.
"There is a clear distinction between those individuals who have received training as terrorists and the Uighurs who are here, who yearn for democracy and fundamental freedom and rights," Wolf told about 100 advocates last month at the Capitol during a meeting of the World Uyghur Congress, an international coalition of expatriate groups.

Obama said recently that 50 detainees have been cleared for release as part of an ongoing review of each detainee's case. Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, said the number cleared for release is now "substantially higher" than 50, but he was not able to provide an exact number.
State Department special envoy Daniel Fried visited Palau last week, and a delegation from the country is on its way to Guantanamo to interview other Uighur detainees this weekend. But military and administration officials said Palau would not be taking all of the remaining Uighurs at Guantanamo.
Fried also visited Australia last week, but officials declined to say if the United States is close to a deal with its Pacific ally to accept detainees.
Fried also negotiated with Germany, which has a Uighur population in Munich. But Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble balked at any transfer and pointedly asked U.S. officials why they were not accepting the Uighurs themselves if, as they insisted, they were not dangerous, according to German reports.

According to Sarah Mendelson, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who authored a report on closing Guantanamo, "Once it becomes clear no detainees will be settled in the U.S., potentially you could hear doors slamming all over Europe."
Staff writers Perry Bacon Jr., Del Quentin Wilber and Steve Hendrix and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

'BERMUDA SHOWS UNITED STATES WHAT JUSTICE IS'

2009-06-11T15:41:00.000-04:00

U.S. sends four Uighur detainees to Bermuda
Thu Jun 11, 2009 2:58pm EDT

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four Chinese detainees from Guantanamo Bay arrived in Bermuda on Thursday after being freed by U.S. authorities in the Obama administration's latest move to close the controversial prison camp for terror suspects.

Their release took place the same day China repeated its demand for repatriation of all 17 members of the Uighur ethnic group held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba. China said it opposed any third country accepting the men.

Attorneys for the four Muslim men, who were held for seven years before being cleared by U.S. authorities as terrorism suspects, said they will take part in Bermuda's foreign guest worker program.

They arrived at Bermuda's international airport on a charter aircraft Thursday morning.

Speaking for the group, one of the freed detainees thanked Bermuda's government and people. "Growing up under communism," Abdul Nasser said, "we always dreamed of living in peace and working in free society like this one. Today you have let freedom ring."

But Britain expressed concerns about the move and said it had asked for and would help Bermuda conduct a security assessment of the four men, who do not have travel documents and cannot leave the British overseas territory.

"We have underlined to the Bermuda government that it should have consulted the United Kingdom on whether this falls within their competence or is a foreign affairs or security issue for which the Bermuda Government do not have delegated responsibility," said a spokesperson for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London.

In a sign of the sensitivity of the issue, the State Department said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discussed the matter with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Thursday.

The U.S. government has said it could not return the Uighurs to China because they would face persecution, and it has searched for months for a nation willing to accept them.

Earlier this year the Obama administration said it was considering freeing them in the United States, but a political firestorm erupted, with many members of the U.S. Congress opposing such a transfer.

Speaking on condition of anonymity a State Department official said Washington negotiated the release of the four Uighurs directly with Bermuda's government on the understanding it was consulting Bermuda's British-appointed governor.

When asked if U.S. authorities had consulted the British government, the official said: "We did talk to them before the Uighurs got on the plane."

'BERMUDA SHOWS UNITED STATES WHAT JUSTICE IS'

The 17 Uighurs, who come from China's largely Muslim far west region of Xinjiang, had been captured by the U.S. government during the invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 hijacking attacks in the United Sates.

Their lawyers said the four men -- Huzaifa Parhat, Abdul Semet, Abdul Nasser and Jalal Jalaladiny -- never took hostile action against the United States and were sold to U.S. forces by bounty hunters.

"When political opportunists blocked justice in our own country, Bermuda has reminded her old friend America what justice is," said Sabin Willett, one of the American lawyers for the Uighurs.

The tropical Pacific island nation of Palau said on Wednesday it had agreed to temporarily take the Uighurs as a humanitarian gesture and to help President Barack Obama close the prison. The remaining 13 Uighurs could still go to Palau.

Germany's Spiegel Online reported that Palau Foreign Minister Sandra Pierantozzi said, "The final decision on whether the men want to come to us is their own decision. We will ask each one individually."

She was quoted as saying the United States had promised to pay $85,000 for each prisoner Palau accepts.

In one of his first acts in office in January, Obama ordered the closing within a year of the Guantanamo prison camp, which now holds 234 detainees following the departure of the four Uighurs.

"By helping accomplish the president's objective of closing Guantanamo, the transfer of these detainees will make America safer," said Attorney General Eric Holder, who is leading the administration's efforts to shut down the facility.

Guantanamo was opened in 2002 under then-President George W. Bush and has drawn international condemnation and criticism from human rights groups. Since 2002, more than 540 detainees have left Guantanamo for various foreign nations.

Five Uighurs who were sent from Guantanamo to Albania in 2006 have not been engaged in criminal or terrorist activities since their release, the Justice Department said in announcing the release of the four other men to Bermuda.

(additional reporting by Andy Sullivan and Arshad Mohammed in Washington and Jane Sutton in Miami; editing by Paul Simao)

Bermuda Gives Safe Haven to 4 Uighur Guantánamo Detainees

2009-06-11T15:38:00.000-04:00

Bermuda Gives Safe Haven to 4 Uighur Guantánamo Detainees
Attorneys Urge Other Nations to Follow

June 11, 2009, New York – In response to news of the release of four Uighur men from Guantánamo to Bermuda, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) issued the following statement:

The Center for Constitutional Rights extends its heartfelt congratulations to Huzaifa Parhat, Abdusemet, Abdulnasser, and Jalal Jalaldin. They are safe and free at last.

We also offer our thanks to the government and people of Bermuda for extending humanitarian protection to four of Guantanamo's refugees. These men want nothing more than their freedom and a chance to restart their lives. We welcome Bermuda’s willingness to look beyond the stigma of Guantanamo and see this reality.

We hope that Bermuda’s humanitarian gesture will encourage Australia, Portugal, Ireland, Canada, Germany and other countries in Europe to open their doors to resettlement of the remaining men who need a place to restart their lives. Many of these countries have already said that they would be willing to take in victims of Guantanamo. It is time for other countries to step forward and help close Guantanamo. After more than seven years of imprisonment, action is needed more than words. This holds true for our congressional representatives at home as well. Congress should immediately support the President's pledge to close Guantánamo on schedule.

Guantanamo is America's gulag. The long nightmare for four of these innocent men is finally coming to a close. They cannot recover the years that they lost, but we hope that they will be able to start their lives again in freedom. The reality, however, is that at least 60 prisoners will remain at Guantánamo until other countries agree to resettle them. The issue now is not what the law requires, or what the United States itself should do, it is a moral issue.

Congratulations to our colleagues at Bingham McCutchen for their tireless work on behalf of their Uighur clients.

The Center for Constitutional Rights represents four of the remaining Uighur prisoners, Adel Noori, Ahmad Tourson, Abdulghappar and Abdur Razakah.

CCR has led the legal battle over Guantanamo for the last six years – sending the first ever habeas attorney to the base and sending the first attorney to meet with a former CIA “ghost detainee” there. CCR has been responsible for organizing and coordinating more than 500 pro bono lawyers across the country in order to represent the men at Guantanamo, ensuring that nearly all have the option of legal representation. In addition, CCR has been working to resettle the approximately 60 men who remain at Guantánamo because they cannot return to their country of origin for fear of persecution and torture.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.
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Bermuda's Premier Explains Uighurs In Their Midst

2009-06-11T14:58:00.001-04:00

Political Punch
ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper

Bermuda's Premier Explains Uighurs In Their Midst

June 11, 2009 10:56 AM

The Premier of Bermuda, Dr. the Hon. Ewart F. Brown, JP, MP, just released a statement on the four Uighur detainees resettled in Bermuda today.

Brown refers to the "infamous prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba," saying of 'the prisoners held there many are innocent men, held without trial or any form of due process; many are refugees from their own lands whose political views are contrary to the regimes in power there. They have committed no crime. They have laid no plans to harm innocent citizens of any nation, but have been caught in a web of reaction to tragic events which at the time of their happening were not well understood.

"In the eight years since these men have been detained the Government of the United States has been clear for some time of their innocence and moreover of their inability to return to their countries of origin. Their detention at Guantanamo Bay in the face of these facts has been termed by international human rights organizations as unjust. The decision to close the prison and to therefore relocate these men is not an easy one and the reluctance of many within the family of nations to absorb them into their populations is evidence of that fact.

"Those of us in leadership have a common understanding of the need to make tough decisions and to sometimes make them in spite of their unpopularity; simply because it is the right thing to do."

Brown says that the Uighurs "are landed in Bermuda in the short term, provided with the opportunity to become naturalized citizens and thereafter afforded the right to travel and leave Bermuda, potentially settling elsewhere...

"The nature of their arrest and detention is such that they are essentially stateless, without documentation and without the benefit of a fresh start will be condemned to languish as innocent men in some form of detention even after the closure of Guantanamo Bay.

"The United States Government will bear the cost surrounding this relocation and the Government of Bermuda will facilitate documentation, residence and employment. Bermuda has extended itself in this manner previously. In the 1980s in the wake of the natural disasters and political issues in Vietnam, Bermuda accepted Vietnamese families and they have, for the most part, become a part of this community or have settled overseas.

"It is important for everyone to understand that this process in not complete. I met with His Excellency the Governor this morning, and on behalf of the United Kingdom, he is seeking to further assess the ramifications of this move before allowing the Government of Bermuda to fully implement this action. Our colonial relationship with the United Kingdom certainly gives him license to do so.

"Therefore, this fast moving situation now rests at Government House and we await a decision… in many respects, the international community awaits a decision. But in the meantime, I can say on behalf of the Government, we are confident this decision is the right one from a humanitarian perspective."

Press release from Department of Justice

2009-06-11T14:54:00.002-04:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, June 11, 2009
WWW.USDOJ.GOV

AG
(202) 514-2007
TDD (202) 514-1888
United States Resettles Four Uighur Detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the Government of Bermuda

Four detainees, Chinese nationals of Uighur ethnicity who had been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, have been resettled in Bermuda. These detainees, who were subject to release as a result of court orders, had been cleared for release by the prior administration, which determined they would no longer treat them as enemy combatants. The detainees were again cleared for release this year after review by the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force.

As directed by the President’s January 22, 2009, Executive Order, the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force conducted a comprehensive review of the four, including a threat evaluation, and approved them for resettlement. The detainees left Guantanamo Bay today pursuant to an arrangement between the United States and the Government of Bermuda.

The Uighurs are a Turkic Muslim minority from the Xinjiang province of far-west China. The Uighurs currently at Guantanamo Bay left China and made their way to Afghanistan, where most eventually settled in a camp with other Uighurs opposed to the Chinese government. After the United States conducted aerial strikes in the area in October 2001, the Uighurs from that camp fled to Pakistan and were later apprehended. According to available information, these individuals did not travel to Afghanistan with the intent to take any hostile action against the United States.

This marks the first time since 2006 that the U.S. government has successfully resettled any of the Guantanamo Uighur population. In 2006, five Uighurs were transferred to Albania; there have been no reports of post-resettlement engagement in criminal behavior or terrorist activities.

"By helping accomplish the President’s objective of closing Guantanamo, the transfer of these detainees will make America safer," said Attorney General Eric Holder. "We are extremely grateful to the government of Bermuda for its assistance in the successful resettlement of these four detainees, and we commend the leadership they have demonstrated on this important issue."

Since 2002, more than 540 detainees have departed Guantanamo for other countries including Albania, Algeria, Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Belgium, Denmark, Egypt, France, Great Britain, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Libya, Maldives, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom and Yemen.