One year later, China's crackdown after Uighur riots haunts a homeland

Image via Wikipedia

By Lauren Keane
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 15, 2010; A01

URUMQI, CHINA -- A hulking shell of a department store towers over this city's Uighur quarter, a reminder of what can be lost here by speaking up.

For years, it was the flagship of the business empire of Rebiya Kadeer, an exiled leader and matriarch of the Uighur people. If Chinese government accounts are accurate, she helped instigate fierce ethnic riots that killed hundreds and injured thousands here last July -- an accusation she vehemently denies.

Still a prominent landmark even in its ruin, the Rebiya Kadeer Trade Center was partially confiscated by the government in 2006 when Kadeer's son was charged with tax evasion, although tenants were allowed to stay. After the riots, it was shuttered and slated for destruction. The government said the building had failed fire inspections, but it seems in no hurry to set a demolition date.

The forsaken structure makes for an effective deterrent. Last summer's chaos has been replaced with a level of fear that is striking even for one of China's most repressed regions. Residents are afraid of attracting any attention, afraid of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But they seem most terrified of talking.

"Every single family on this block is missing someone," said Hasiya, a 33-year-old Uighur who asked that her full name not be used. Her younger brother is serving a 20-year prison sentence for stealing a carton of cigarettes during the riots. "Talking about our sorrow might just increase it. So we swallow it up inside."

Fear is not unwarranted here. For years now, those caught talking to journalists have been questioned, monitored and sometimes detained indefinitely. More striking is that residents now say they cannot talk even with one another.

The Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs consider Xinjiang their homeland but now make up only 46 percent of the region's population, after decades of government-sponsored migration by China's Han ethnic majority.

The riots started as a Uighur protest over a government investigation into a Uighur-Han brawl at a southern Chinese factory. Several days of violence brought the official death toll to 197, with 1,700 injured, though observers suspect the casualty count was much higher. Most of the dead were Han, according to authorities. The government officially acknowledged detaining nearly 1,500 people after the riots. As of early March, Xinjiang had officially sentenced 198 people, with 25 death sentences. Of those 25, 23 were Uighur.

The events forced China's national and regional governments to address, at least superficially, taboo issues of ethnic conflict, discrimination and socioeconomic inequality. The central government in April named a different Communist Party secretary for Xinjiang, Zhang Chunxian, who promptly announced that he had "deeply fallen in love with this land." In May, the government announced a new development strategy to pour $1.5 billion into the region. It also restored full Internet and text-messaging access to the region after limiting or blocking it entirely for 10 months.

The riots "left a huge psychic trauma on the minds of many people of all ethnicities. This fully reflects the great harm done to the Chinese autonomous region by 'splittist' forces," said Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in the United States.

The ability to confront what happened last July, and why, still eludes people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang. White-knuckled, they hold their spoons above steaming bowls of mutton stew, poking nervously at the oily surface. They fiddle with their watchbands until they break. They repeat questions rather than answer them. They glance through doorways, distracted, and shift side to side in their chairs. Summer's full swelter has yet to arrive, but everyone starting to speak to a reporter begins to sweat. One man leaves the table six times in half an hour to rinse the perspiration from his face. He returns unrefreshed.

When asked what changes the riots had brought, Mehmet, a former schoolteacher who resigned last year because he opposed requirements that he teach his Uighur students primarily in Chinese, took a long glance around the room before pointing halfheartedly out the door. "They built a new highway overpass," he said.

Suspicion of fellow citizens is still common throughout China but seems especially acute here. Academics accept interviews only if they can avoid discussing the conflict's lingering effects. An apologetic professor backed out of a planned meeting after his supervisor discovered his plan, called him and threatened his job. A businessman said that he believed government security agents often trained as journalists, and asked how he could be sure that he would not be turned in.

"We're seeing increasingly intrusive modes of control over religious and cultural expression," said Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. "They live in fear of being overheard."

The Kadeer Trade Center is at the center of a protracted conflict. The Urumqi government said that compensation talks with tenants were still ongoing, and that it had moved the tenants to a nearby location. A spokesman for Kadeer, who now lives in Fairfax, said she had not been offered compensation.

Although the government says it is striving for stability, getting there is uncomfortable. On a single street near this city's main bazaar, four types of uniformed police were on patrol one recent day -- not counting, of course, an unknown number of plainclothes security guards. They marched haphazardly along the sidewalks, the different units so numerous that they sometimes collided. Late into the evening, they perched on rickety school desk chairs placed throughout the bazaar, watching. On the corner outside Xinjiang Medical University, armed police in riot gear peered out the windows of an olive green humvee or leaned on riot shields under the afternoon sun.

"It's quiet here on the surface," said Yu Xinqing, 35, a lifelong Han resident of Urumqi whose brother was killed by Uighurs during the riots. He now carries a knife with him everywhere, avoids Uighur businesses and rarely speaks with Uighur neighbors he previously considered friends. He says he is saving money to leave Xinjiang behind for good.

"We don't talk about these things, even within our families," he said. "But our hearts are overwhelmed; we hold back rivers and overturn the seas."

Still, every once in a while, when a resident is safely alone with a neutral observer, months' worth of stifled thinking tumbles out. That was the case for Ablat, a Uighur businessman who sells clothing near the main bazaar; he would not allow his last name to be mentioned. Ablat had been speaking in vague, evasive terms for three hours, and then -- ensconced in his car, speeding north out of town -- something finally released.

"Give us jobs, stop holding our passports hostage, and let us worship the way we want to," he said. "That would solve these problems. That is all it would take."

Related articles by Zemanta

• China Announces Development Plan for Xinjiang (nytimes.com)
• Xinjiang Official Removed in China (online.wsj.com)
• China restores internet to Xinjiang (guardian.co.uk)

China Lifts Xinjiang Internet Ban at Last

Image by dreamX via Flickr

After a 10-Month Ban, Western China Is Back Online - NYTimes.com

By EDWARD WONG

BEIJING — Full Internet service was restored to the vast western Chinese region of Xinjiang on Friday, 10 months after it was blocked following deadly ethnic rioting that convulsed the regional capital, Urumqi. The blockage was the longest and most widespread in China since the Internet became readily available throughout the country a decade ago.

The announcement was made in the morning, and many residents in cities across Xinjiang took the day off from school or work to rush to Internet cafes, where they pored through months of unread e-mail messages or chatted via instant messaging. Some also dived back into online gaming, one of China’s most popular pastimes (“World of Warcraft” imitators being the most played).

In the violence in Urumqi on July 5, 2009, ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people that is the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, rampaged through the streets after security forces tried to break up a protest over social injustices. The government says at least 197 people were killed and 1,600 injured, most of them ethnic Han, the majority in China. Many Uighurs resent discrimination by the Han, who are migrating in large numbers to Xinjiang and hold the top positions of power.

The Chinese government blamed overseas Uighur groups for using the Internet to stir up hostilities, and in particular they pointed at Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur exile living in the Washington area. Ms. Kadeer has denied the accusations. After the initial rioting, the government cut off Internet service and cellphone text messaging across Xinjiang, which makes up one-sixth of China’s territory.

On Friday, the regional government Web site carried a brief statement on the restoration of service: “For the stability, economic development and the needs of people from all ethnic backgrounds of the autonomous region, the Communist Party and the government of Xinjiang decided to fully resume Internet services beginning May 14.”

The restoration of Internet service comes before a major central government meeting this month that is aimed at setting new policy in Xinjiang. In late April, the government announced it was replacing the most powerful official in Xinjiang, Wang Lequan, who had been regional party secretary for 15 years. A hard-liner on ethnic issues, he has been widely blamed by Uighurs and Han for creating a poisonous atmosphere.

Mr. Wang’s replacement, Zhang Chunxian, party secretary of Hunan Province, is nicknamed the “Internet secretary” for his use of online tools to communicate with people.

One travel agent in Kashgar, an ancient Silk Road oasis town, said he came into his office Friday morning to find all his co-workers on Yahoo.

“Yes, I am excited, but I have already forgotten all my passwords,” the travel agent, Kasim, said in a telephone interview.

He said he knew people who had moved out of Kashgar — even as far away as Guangdong Province in southeastern China — to ensure they had Internet access. This was especially true of those who needed to use e-mail for their jobs or businesses, Kasim said.

“I’m happy to know that I can recover my old friends, I can finally write to all my friends,” he said.

Late last year, the Xinjiang government slightly relaxed the ban on the Internet, first allowing access to some propaganda-heavy news sites created for the region’s residents. After that, some Chinese e-mail services were reopened. Last month, the government began allowing limited text messaging.

The Internet in Xinjiang, however, is still subject to China’s complicated censorship apparatus, nicknamed the Great Firewall, which blocks social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, as well as a vast number of Web pages devoted to delicate subjects (the Dalai Lama, Falun Gong or the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre).

The Chinese government has taken a hard line against Internet freedom in the last year. This spring, Beijing created a new department, Bureau Nine, to help police social networking sites and other user-driven forums.

Xiyun Yang contributed reporting.

Related articles by Zemanta

• China: Internet Fully Restored in Xinjiang (time.com)
• China's Xinjiang to get $1.5 billion boost (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Leader of China's Xinjiang Region Is Replaced (nytimes.com)
• China police boss says Xinjiang getting better (sfgate.com)

After Expelling Uighurs, Cambodia Approves Chinese Investments

Image via Wikipedia

By SETH MYDANS

BANGKOK — China signed 14 deals with Cambodia on Monday worth approximately $1 billion, two days after Cambodia deported 20 ethnic Uighur asylum seekers under strong pressure from Beijing.

The deportation, in defiance of protests by the United States, the United Nations and human rights groups, came on the day before a visit to Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, by Vice President Xi Jinping of China.

The package of grants and loans was signed at the end of Mr. Xi’s visit. The Cambodian Foreign Ministry quoted Mr. Xi as saying: “It can be said that Sino-Cambodia relations are a model of friendly cooperation.”

The exact value of the agreements was not announced, but the chief government spokesman, Khieu Kanharith, said they were worth $1.2 billion. “China has thanked the government of Cambodia for assisting in sending back these people,” he said. “According to Chinese law, these people are criminals.”

Members of a Turkic-speaking ethnic minority living mostly in western China, the 20 Uighurs said they were fleeing persecution in a crackdown that followed riots in which the Chinese government said at least 197 people were killed.

Hundreds of Uighurs have been detained since then and several people have been executed for involvement in the rioting. At least 43 Uighur men have disappeared, according to Human Rights Watch.

Image by Stuck in Customs via Flickr

Twenty-two Uighurs entered Cambodia about a month ago, aided by a Christian group that has helped North Koreans fleeing their country. Two of the Uighurs have disappeared, the Cambodian government said.

Before being deported, several of the asylum seekers told the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Cambodia that they feared long jail terms or even the death penalty, according to statements reported by The Associated Press. In the statements, which had been provided to the United Nations in support of asylum applications, the Uighurs described chaotic and bloody scenes during the rioting.

“If I am returned to China, I am sure that I will be sentenced to life imprisonment or the death penalty for my involvement in the Urumqi riots,” said a 29-year-old man.

Another man, a 27-year-old teacher, said: “I can tell the world what is happening to Uighur people, and the Chinese authorities do not want this. If returned, I am certain I would be sent to prison.”

China is Cambodia’s leading investor, committing hundreds of millions of dollars for projects including dams, roads and a headquarters for the government Council of Ministers in Phnom Penh. In October, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China met Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Sen, in Sichuan, China, and concluded a deal worth $853 million.

Related articles by Zemanta

• US concern after Cambodia deports 20 Chinese Uighurs (starting-points.blogspot.com)
• China deflects criticism over Uyghurs (cnn.com)
• The Uighurs Have Nowhere to Flee (online.wsj.com)

US concern after Cambodia deports 20 Chinese Uighurs

The US has expressed deep concern about the fate of 20 Uighur asylum seekers deported from Cambodia back to China.

A statement by the US embassy in Phnom Penh came a day after the Uighurs were put on a plane to China, despite pleas from the UN refugee agency.

The agency condemned the expulsions, saying Cambodia had committed a grave breach of international refugee law.

The Uighurs fled to Cambodia after mass ethnic riots in China in July. Beijing has referred to the group as criminals.

Human rights organisations have warned that the asylum seekers are likely to face persecution on return to China.

Intense pressure

"The United States is deeply concerned about the welfare of these individuals, who had sought protection under international law," the US embassy in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh said in Saturday's statement.

"We are also deeply disturbed that the Cambodian government decided to forcibly remove the group without appropriate participation by the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees."

The embassy also urged China to "uphold international norms and to ensure transparency, due process and proper treatment of persons in its territory".

Friday's expulsions followed intense pressure by China and came just two days before a visit to Cambodia by Chinese Vice-President Xi Jingping.

There has been no immediate comment from the Chinese foreign ministry.

Death sentences

At least 197 people died as violence flared in July, amid protests by Uighurs in the city of Urumqi, in Xinjiang region.

Shops were smashed and vehicles set alight while passers-by were set upon by Uighur rioters in the city, whose population is mostly from China's dominant Han group.

Groups of Han later went looking for revenge as police struggled to restore order.

Most of those killed in the unrest were Han, according to officials, and Urumqi's Han population had demanded swift justice.

Twelve people were sentenced to death after the riots.

Tensions between the mainly-Muslim Uighurs of Xinjiang and Han have been growing in recent years. Millions of Han have moved to the region in recent decades.

Many Uighurs want more autonomy and rights for their culture and religion than is allowed by Beijing's strict rule.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Cambodia to Expel Uighur Asylum-Seekers from China (time.com)
• 20 Uighurs deported back to China (telegraph.co.uk)

BBC - Guantanamo Uighurs sent to Palau

Image via Wikipedia

Six Chinese Uighur prisoners from the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay have been transferred to the Pacific island nation of Palau, officials say.

Lawyers for three of them said they had "arrived to freedom" early on Sunday.

Palau agreed in June to take up to a dozen Uighurs who were captured during the US-led war in Afghanistan but not later classified as "enemy combatants".

China wants them to be returned there, but the US says it cannot repatriate them due to the risk of mistreatment.

Beijing has frequently cracked down on Uighur dissidents, who it accuses of seeking an independent homeland in the western province of Xinjiang.

Four other Uighur detainees were resettled in Bermuda earlier this year, and another five went to Albania in 2006.

'Safe from oppression'

A law firm representing three of the six Uighurs released from Guantanamo on Saturday confirmed that they had arrived safely at their new home in the main town of Koror.

“ The men are happy at long last to be free ”
Eric Tirschwell Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel

"These men want nothing more than to live peaceful, productive lives in a free, democratic nation safe from oppression by the Chinese," Eric Tirschwell of Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel told the Associated Press.

"Thanks to Palau, which has graciously offered them a temporary home, they now have that chance," he added.

Mr Tirschwell said the men had already begun learning English and looked forward to become productive members of the community.

The men will live in a three-storey building which is a five-minute walk from Koror's only mosque, one of two on the island.

The President of Palau, Johnson Toribiong, told the BBC that the Uighers would be given a temporary home for as long as two years.

"Initially, they will be attending a crash course in the English language and of our culture and history for a couple of months. We'll interview them to find out about their skills, and then try to place them where they'll be gainfully employed," he said.

Palau has a Muslim population of about 500, mostly migrant workers from Bangladesh. Many face being deported due to lapsed work permits.

In addition to the six Uighurs who arrived on Sunday, the island nation has offered to take six of the seven others still being held at Guantanamo. One did not receive an invitation because of concerns about his mental health.

The American defence department decided last year that the Uighur detainees were not enemy combatants, but they were refused the right to settle in the US. China has demanded that the men be extradited but the US says they would face persecution.

Palau, a former US trust territory, is an archipelago of eight main islands plus more than 250 islets that is best known for diving and tourism and is located some 800km (500 miles) east of the Philippines.

The tiny nation has retained close ties with Washington since independence in 1994 when it signed a Compact of Free Association with the US. It relies heavily on the US for aid and defence, and does not have diplomatic relations with China.

The latest departures from Guantanamo occurred after the US Supreme Court, rejecting the government's position, said it would hear an appeal by the Uighurs, who have argued that they should be released onto US soil.

There are now 215 detainees remaining at the prison camp, which President Barack Obama has pledged to close by 22 January.

"We Are Afraid to Even Look for Them" - Human Rights Watch

Image via Wikipedia

"We Are Afraid to Even Look for Them"

Enforced Disappearances in the Wake of Xinjiang’s Protests

October 20, 2009

Read the Report
ISBN: 1-56432-556-3

Get the Report

• Download report (PDF, 620.04 KB)
• Download report with cover (PDF, 891.55 KB)
• Download summary and recommendations in CHINESE (PDF, 289.99 KB)
• 
  

Table of Contents

• “We Are Afraid to Even Look for Them”
• Map of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region
• Map of Urumqi
• Summary
• Methodology
• I. Background
• II. Official Data on Arrests and Due Process Concerns
• III. Enforced Disappearances and Unlawful Arrests
• IV. Legal Standards
• V. Recommendations
• VI. Acknowledgments
• VII. Appendix

China: Detainees ‘Disappeared’ After Xinjiang Protests - Human Rights Watch

Image by sheilaz413 via Flickr

Chinese Government Should Account for Every Detainee

October 20, 2009

(New York) - The Chinese government should immediately account for all detainees in its custody and allow independent investigations into the July 2009 protests in Urumqi and their aftermath, Human Rights Watch said in a new report on enforced "disappearances" released today.

The 44-page report, "‘We Are Afraid to Even Look for Them': Enforced Disappearances in the Wake of Xinjiang's Protests," documents the enforced disappearances of 43 Uighur men and teenage boys who were detained by Chinese security forces in the wake of the protests.

"The cases we documented are likely just the tip of the iceberg," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The Chinese government says it respects the rule of law, but nothing could undermine this claim more than taking people from their homes or off the street and ‘disappearing' them - leaving their families unsure whether they are dead or alive."

Last week, Xinjiang judicial authorities started trials of people accused of involvement in the protests. Nine men have already been sentenced to death, three others to death with a two-year reprieve, and one to life imprisonment.

Human Rights Watch research has established that on July 6-7, 2009, Chinese police, the People's Armed Police, and the military conducted numerous large-scale sweep operations in two predominantly Uighur areas of Urumqi, Erdaoqiao, and Saimachang. On a smaller scale, these operations and targeted raids continued at least through mid-August.

The victims of "disappearances" documented by Human Rights Watch were young Uighur men. Most were in their 20s, although the youngest reported victims were 12 and 14 years old. It is possible that some Han Chinese also became victims of "disappearances" and unlawful arrests. However, none of the more than two dozen Han Chinese residents of Urumqi interviewed by Human Rights Watch provided any information about such cases.

According to witnesses, the security forces sealed off entire neighborhoods, searching for young Uighur men. In some cases, they first separated the men from other residents, pushed them to their knees or flat on the ground, and, at least in some cases, beat the men while questioning them about their participation in the protests. Those who had wounds or bruises on their bodies, or had not been at their homes during the protests, were then taken away. In other cases, the security forces simply went after every young man they could catch and packed them into their trucks by the dozens.

Twenty-five-year-old Makhmud M. [name changed] and another 16 men "disappeared" as a result of one of these raids in the Saimachang area of Urumqi. His wife and another witness told Human Rights Watch that at around 7 p.m. on July 6 a group of some 150 uniformed police and military sealed off the main street in their neighborhood:

They told everybody to get out of the houses. Women and elderly were told to stand aside, and all men, 12 to 45 years old, were all lined up against the wall. Some men were pushed on their knees, with hands tied around wooden sticks behind their backs; others were forced on the ground with hands on their heads. The soldiers pulled the men's T-shirts or shirts over their heads so that they couldn't see.

Police and the military were examining the men to see if they had any bruises or wounds. They also asked where they had been on July 5 and 6. They beat the men randomly, even the older ones - our 70-year-old neighbor was punched and kicked several times. We couldn't do anything to stop it - they weren't listening to us."

In this and other cases documented by Human Rights Watch, the families' attempts to inquire about their relatives proved futile. Police and other law enforcement agencies denied having knowledge of the arrests, or simply chased the families away.

Human Rights Watch called on the Chinese government to immediately stop the practice of enforced disappearances, release those against whom no charges have been brought, and account for every person held in detention. Human Rights Watch urged the Chinese government to allow for an independent, international investigation into the Urumqi unrest and its aftermath and called on the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to take the lead in such an investigation.

"China should only use official places of detention, so that everyone being held can contact family members and legal counsel," said Adams. "‘Disappearing' people is not the behavior of countries aspiring to global leadership."

The protests of July 5-7, 2009, in Xinjiang's capital of Urumqi were one of the worst episodes of ethnic violence in China in decades. The protests appear to have been sparked by an attack on Uighurs in the southeast part of the country, which became a rallying cry for Uighurs angry over longstanding discriminatory policies toward the Uighur minority. The initially peaceful Uighur demonstration quickly turned into a violent attack against Han Chinese, leaving scores dead or injured.

Instead of launching an impartial investigation into the incidents in accordance with international and domestic standards, Chinese law enforcement agencies carried out a massive campaign of unlawful arrests in the Uighur areas of Urumqi. Official figures suggest that the number of people detained by the security forces in connection with the protests has reached well over a thousand people.

Under international law, a state commits an enforced disappearance when its agents take a person into custody and it denies holding the person or fails to disclose the person's whereabouts. "Disappeared" persons are often at high risk of torture or extrajudicial execution. Family members and friends experience ongoing anxiety and suffering, as they do not know what has happened to the person.

"The United States, the European Union, and China's other international partners should demand clear answers about what happened to those who have disappeared in Xinjiang," said Adams. "They should not let trade relations or other political considerations lead them to treat China differently than other countries which carry out this horrific practice."

Also available in:

• 中文
• 日本語
• Deutsch

Justices to Decide if Detainees Can Be Released Into U.S. - NYTimes.com

Image via Wikipedia

By ADAM LIPTAK

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to decide whether federal courts have the power to order prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay to be released into the United States.

The case concerns 17 men from the largely Muslim Uighur region of western China who continue to be held although the government has determined that they pose no threat to the United States.

Last October, a federal judge here ordered the men released. But a federal appeals court reversed that ruling in February, saying that judges do not have the power to override immigration laws and force the executive branch to release foreigners into the United States.

An appeal from the Uighurs has been pending in the Supreme Court since April, and it is not clear why the justices acted on it now. The Obama administration has sent some of the prisoners to Bermuda, and Palau has said it will accept most of the rest. But one prisoner apparently has nowhere to go.

The prisoners have said they fear they will be tortured or executed if they are returned to China, where they are viewed as terrorists.

The case presents the next logical legal question in the series of detainee cases to reach the court. Last year, in Boumediene v. Bush, the court ruled that federal judges have jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus claims from prisoners held at Guantánamo.

Lawyers for the Uighur prisoners say the Boumediene ruling would be an empty one if it did not imply giving judges the power to order prisoners who cannot be returned to their home countries or settled elsewhere to be released into the United States.

The new case, Kiyemba v. Obama, 08-1234, is likely to be argued early next year. But if the administration is successful in settling all of the Uighur prisoners abroad, it may turn out to be moot.

The Obama administration has so far avoided confrontation with the court over its detention policies. After the court agreed last year to hear the case of Ali al-Marri, a Qatari student held as an enemy combatant, the administration transferred him to civilian court, mooting his appeal. Mr. Marri later pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges.

In urging the court not to hear the new case, the Justice Department said that the Uighurs were “free to leave Guantánamo Bay to go to any country that is willing to accept them, and in the meantime, they are housed in facilities separate from those for enemy combatants under the least restrictive conditions practicable.”

But, the Justice Department’s brief continued, “there is a fundamental difference between ordering the release of a detained alien to permit him to return home or to another country and ordering that the alien be brought to and released in the United States without regard to immigration laws.”

Lawyers for the Uighurs, who were captured in Pakistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, argued that the appeals court’s ruling rendered the writ of habeas corpus an empty gesture. It made courts “powerless to relieve unlawful imprisonment, even when the executive brought the prisoners to our threshold, imprisons them there without legal justification, and — as seven years have so poignantly proved — there is nowhere else to go,” the Uighurs’ brief said.

China Court Sentences 6 to Death in Rioting - NYTimes.com

Image via Wikipedia

By EDWARD WONG

BEIJING — A Chinese court sentenced six men to death and a seventh to life in prison on Monday for their roles in the deadly ethnic rioting that convulsed the western regional capital of Urumqi in July, according to Xinhua, the state news agency.

All seven had names that suggested they were Uighurs, the largest ethnic group in the vast region of Xinjiang. All were convicted of murder, and some were also found guilty of arson and robbery, Xinhua reported.

The sentences were the first to be handed down by a court in response to the rioting of July 5, in which enraged Uighurs went on a rampage against Han, the dominant ethnic group in China, in the streets of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. At least 197 people were killed, most of them Han civilians, and 1,600 injured, the government announced. The ethnic rioting was the worst in decades in China and prompted cycles of retaliation as well as protests against the regional government.

Uighurs in Xinjiang have long complained of discrimination against them and of mass migrations to Xinjiang by the Han that have changed society in parts of the region they once dominated.

The six sentenced to death by the Intermediate People’s Court in Urumqi were Abdukerim Abduwayit, Gheni Yusup, Abdulla Mettohti, Adil Rozi, Nureli Wuxiu’er and Alim Metyusup, according to Xinhua. The seventh, Tayirejan Abulimit, was given a life sentence because he had confessed to murder and robbery and helped in the arrest of Alim Metyusup, Xinhua reported.

The English-language version of the Xinhua report did not provide details of the crimes. However, the Chinese-language version said that Abdukerim Abduwayit killed five people by stabbing them or beating them with an iron pipe, and that he helped set fire to buildings that forced 13 people to jump from their windows. Most of the men were convicted of similar crimes, according to the Xinhua report.

The trial on Monday was held without any prior announcement. In late August, China Daily, an official English-language newspaper, reported that trials would start that week, but regional authorities quickly said after the article appeared that a trial date had not been set.

The sentences in Urumqi were handed down just two days after two courts in southern China sentenced 11 people for their roles in the ethnic melee at a toy factory that served as a spark of the Xinjiang rioting. Xiao Jianhua, a Han man identified by a court as the “principal instigator” of that brawl, received a death sentence, another man received life in prison and nine others were given shorter prison terms.

Zhang Jing contributed research.

Al Qaeda urges Uighur jihad in China. So what? |- csmonitor.com

Image via Wikipedia

Another day, another Al Qaeda video. This time it was from the prolific jihad video star Abu Yahya al-Libi, a militant preacher and seasoned guerrilla fighter who some Al Qaeda watchers think is the likely eventual replacement for Osama bin Laden.

His pitch? For China’s Muslim Uighur minority to “prepare for jihad in the name of God” and expel the Beijing “thugs” from Xinjiang, the Chinese province where most Uighurs live. It’s a pitch he’s made to a number of nations before (Pakistan, Somalia, Palestine come to mind). In each case the response has been, well, a resounding silence.

His appeal to the Uighurs has Al Qaeda on well-trod ground. Since the wealthy Saudi Bin Laden teamed up with Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader Ayman al-Zawahiri to form the “Islamic front against crusaders and Jews” (Al Qaeda’s formal name) in 1998, they have pitched their propaganda and outreach efforts to places where Muslims feel marginalized or oppressed.

Al Qaeda has dispatched operatives to encourage religious wars in Indonesia, to infiltrate Muslim separatist groups in the Southern Philippines, to fight in Yemen’s civil wars, and to recruit operatives from the Muslim minorities in country’s like Kenya. Bin Laden and his lieutenants bang their drum continuously about the Israeli occupation of Palestine for similar reasons. Al Qaeda has reasoned, not without justification, that it’s easier to raise recruits from among Muslim populations who have grievances against their own governments.

The Uighurs have plenty of grievances. There are roughly eight million of them living under Chinese rule in a region many of them would like to see independent. Anger at the influx of Han Chinese - the country’s dominant ethnic group - into Xinjiang led to bloody riots in June that claimed about 200 lives (mostly Han Chinese) and saw Chinese troops dispatched to the streets of Urumqi, the provincial capital.

But just as Al Qaeda has managed to encourage some bomb attacks but failed rather spectacularly in its broader goal of converting large numbers of Muslims to its zero-sum game/ world-view in places like Indonesia, so Mr. Libi is likely to be disappointed in his efforts to recruit the Uighurs into the global jihad camp. Even the Sunni Islamist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, has turned a deaf ear to Libi’s entreaties (Hamas recently crushed a group seeking to create an Al Qaeda style Islamic emirate in Gaza).

While separatist sentiment is undeniably strong amongst Uighurs, it generally takes the form of ethno-nationalism, not a desire to convert the world and unite it under a single, Sunni Muslim caliph. After all Rebiya Kadeer, a key exiled Uighur separatist leader, constantly speaks of the need to save “Uighur civilization,” not Islam.

None of this is to say that some Uighurs aren’t sympathetic (and China would like, along with Libi, to classify most of the Uighurs as Al Qaeda sympathizers, though for different reasons). But Al Qaeda propaganda has failed time and again to attract large numbers of Muslims to its side - even in a troubled country like Iraq, where a devout Sunni minority is worried about domination by the country’s majority Shiites. While Al Qaeda fellow travelers won sympathy from Sunni fighters in the early years of the Iraq war, they eventually wore out their welcome in many communities with their strict version of Islamic law and demands that locals bow to their ways.

To be sure, Libi himself is a rising star in the jihadi world. A veteran of Afghanistan’s wars and about 40 years old, at most, the native Libyan has taken an increasingly public role for the group since famously escaping from US custody at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in July of 2005 (a fellow escapee, Omar al-Faruq was later killed by British forces while fighting near the Southern Iraqi city of Basra).

Like much of Iraq’s top leadership, Libi’s presumed to be in hiding along Pakistan’s lawless border with Afghanistan. Until he’s killed or captured, expect more videos and call for jihad from the ambitious young militant. Just don’t expect anyone to listen to him.

Al Qaeda may be angry about the status of Uighurs in China. But most Muslim regimes are keeping quiet.

BBC - Leaders axed after China rioting

Image by Remko Tanis via Flickr

A Communist Party leader and police chief in the troubled western Chinese region of Xinjiang have been sacked, the official Xinhua news agency says.

The moves follow days of ethnic unrest in the regional capital Urumqi in which at least five people have died.

No official reason has been given for the sackings.

Mass protests have followed a spate of stabbings with syringes blamed on Uighur Muslim separatists. Unrest in Urumqi in July left nearly 200 dead.

ANALYSIS
Michael Bristow, BBC News, Urumqi It is not entirely unusual for a communist party boss to be sacked in China following an accident, scandal or some kind of crisis. It is one of only a few ways the authorities can show ordinary people that they've taken their feelings into consideration.

But few officials have been sacked quite as publicly as Li Zhi, Urumqi's former party chief. The fact that he has been forced out while this current phase of unrest has yet to subside, reveals just how serious the situation is here.

It also shows how desperate the country's national leaders are to persuade Urumqi's Han Chinese population to calm down. But this sacking might not appease them: the protesters had called for Mr Li to step down, but many also want to see the back of Xinjiang's party boss, Wang Lequan.

Xinhua first announced that Urumqi Communist Party chief Li Zhi was to be replaced by Zhu Hailun, the head of Xinjiang region's law-and-order committee.

A later statement added that Liu Yaohua, director of the Xinjiang Autonomous Regional Public Security Department, had also been dismissed.

Correspondents say that protesters who have marched in their thousands through Urumqi in recent days have demanded Mr Li's dismissal for failing to provide public safety.

The BBC's Michael Bristow in Urumqi says the sacking is unusual as it shows the Chinese authorities believe they may have made mistakes in the handling of the unrest.

Tight security

Security in Urumqi has been tight this week, after thousands of Han Chinese demonstrated over the alleged hypodermic syringe stabbings.

In fresh unrest on Saturday, angry Han Chinese rushed to the city's main square following reports that three Uighur men had attacked a child with needles.

Video of the incident showed police driving the boy away and the crowd being dispersed.

China's top security official, Meng Jianzhu, arrived in the city on Friday to try to restore order.

He was quoted by Xinhua as saying the syringe attacks were a continuation of the July unrest in which 200 people - mostly Han Chinese - were killed in ethnic riots.

Xinjiang's population is evenly split between Uighurs and Han Chinese - the country's majority ethnic group. But Hans make up three-quarters of Urumqi's population.

Tension between the Uighur and Han communities has been simmering for many years, but July's ethnic unrest was the worst for decades.

It began when crowds of Uighurs took the streets to protest about mistreatment - but their rally spiralled out of control and days of violent clashes followed.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Police impose calm on China city (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Xinjiang protests: Five dead in Urumqi after syringe security clashes (telegraph.co.uk)
• China TV reports 476 people stabbed with syringes (ctv.ca)
• Han Protesters Paralyze Capital of Xinjiang (nytimes.com)
• China Dismisses Party Boss of Strife-Hit Western City (nytimes.com)

Migrants to China’s West Bask in Prosperity

By ANDREW JACOBS

SHIHEZI, China — They marched through the streets of Beijing, Shanghai and countless small towns propelled by patriotic cheers and thumping drums. It was 1956, and Mao Zedong was calling on China’s youth to “open up the west,” the vast borderland known as Xinjiang that for centuries had defied subjugation.

After a monthlong journey by train and open-air truck, thousands arrived at this Gobi Desert army outpost to find that the factory jobs, hot baths and telephones in every house were nothing but empty promises to lure them to a faraway land.

“We lived in holes in the ground, and all we did night and day was hard labor,” recalled Han Zuxue, a sun-creased 72-year-old who was a teenager when he left his home in eastern Henan Province. “At first we cried every day but over time we forgot our sadness.”

More than five decades of toil later, men and women like Mr. Han have helped transform Shihezi into a tree-shaded, bustling oasis whose canned tomatoes, fiery grain alcohol and enormous cotton yields are famous throughout China.

This city of 650,000 is a showcase of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a uniquely Chinese conglomerate of farms and factories that were created by decommissioned Red Army soldiers at the end of the civil war.

“Put your weapons aside and pick up the tools of construction,” one popular slogan went. “Develop Xinjiang, defend the nation’s borders and protect social stability.”

With a total population of 2.6 million, 95 percent of it ethnic Han Chinese, Shihezi and a string of other settlements created by the military are stable strongholds in a region whose majority non-Han populace has often been unhappy under Beijing’s rule. Last month, that discontent showed itself during vicious ethnic rioting that claimed 197 lives in Urumqi, the regional capital, which is a two-hour drive away.

The government says that most of the dead were Han Chinese bludgeoned by mobs of Uighurs, Muslims of Turkish ancestry whose presence in Xinjiang has been steadily diluted by migration from China’s densely populated east.

“Ever since we arrived they’ve resented us and had no appreciation for how we’ve improved this place,” said He Zhenjie, 76, who has spent his adult life leveling sand dunes, planting trees and digging irrigation ditches. “But we’re here to stay. The Uighurs will never wrest Xinjiang away.”

Even if many Uighurs view the settlers as nothing more than Chinese colonists, many Chinese consider the bingtuan, meaning soldier corps, a major success. In one fell swoop Mao deployed 200,000 idle soldiers to help develop and occupy a resource-rich, politically strategic region bordering India, Mongolia and the Soviet Union, a onetime ally turned menace.

Shihezi and other bingtuan settlements quickly became self-sufficient, a relief to a government lacking resources, and its “reclamation warriors” worked without pay those first few years, steadily turning thousands of acres of inhospitable scrubland into some of the country’s most fertile terrain.

With an annual output of goods and services of $7 billion, the settlements run by the bingtuan include five cities, 180 farming communities and 1,000 companies. They also report directly to Beijing and run their own courts, colleges and newspapers.

“During peaceful times, they are a force for development, but if anything urgent happens, they will step out and maintain social stability and combat the separatists,” said Li Sheng, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a former bingtuan member who writes about the region’s history.

In those early years, the ranks of the bingtuan were fortified by petty criminals, former prisoners of war, prostitutes and intellectuals, all sent west for “re-education.” During the mid-1950s, 40,000 young women were lured to Xinjiang with promises of the good life: they arrived to discover their main purpose was to relieve the loneliness of the male pioneers and cement the region’s Han presence through their progeny.

Demographics have always been a tactical element of the campaign to pacify the region. In 1949, when the Communists declared the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, there were just 300,000 Han Chinese in Xinjiang. Today, the number of Han has grown to 7.5 million, just over 40 percent of the region’s population. The percentage of Uighurs has fallen to 45 percent, or about 8.3 million.

Their grievances have multiplied even as Xinjiang has grown more prosperous, thanks in part to its huge reserves of natural gas, oil and minerals. Many Uighurs complain about the repression of their Islamic faith, official policies that marginalize their language and a lack of job opportunities, especially at government bureaus and inside the bingtuan.

During a recent visit to Shihezi, armed paramilitary policemen stopped every car and bus entering the city. But only Uighurs were made to step out of vehicles for identification checks and searches.

Neatly laid out on a grid, its sidewalks graced by apple trees and elms, the city is populated by the sturdy and defiantly proud who think of Xinjiang as China’s version of Manifest Destiny, the doctrine undergirding the westward expansion of the United States in the 19th century. But just beneath the self-satisfaction runs a deep vein of bitterness, especially among those who arrived in the 1950s and 1960s.

“I thought I was going to be a nurse, but I ended up sweeping the streets and cleaning toilets,” said Yue Caiying, who moved here in 1963, and, like many of those with an education, was forced to set aside personal ambition.

Lu Yiping, an author who spent five years interviewing women trucked into Xinjiang from Hunan Province, tells of girls lured with promises of Russian-language classes and textile-mill jobs. In an interview published online, he told the story of arriving women greeted by Wang Zhen, the famously hard-line general who helped tame the region. “Comrades, you must prepare to bury your bones in Xinjiang,” he quoted Mr. Wang as telling the women.

Still, for many early settlers, Xinjiang offered an escape from the deprivation that stalked many rural areas between 1959 and 1962, when Mao’s disastrous attempt to start up China’s industrialization led to famine that killed millions.

Early settlers like Ma Xianwu, who arrived here in 1951 and helped dig the first thatch-covered pits that served as shelter, offer a typical mix of conflicted emotions. He expressed wonder at the city he had helped create, but also sorrow over the hardship he and others had endured.

“People would lose ears and toes to frostbite,” said Mr. Ma, who is 94 and nearly toothless.

But any sense of bitterness has faded. “We were serving the motherland,” he said, waving off the adulation of a visitor. “The glory belongs to the party. I’m just one drop of water in the ocean.”

The Go-Between: Interpreting Life in Bermuda for Freed Gitmo Prisoners

By PAULO PRADA

HAMILTON, Bermuda -- Rushan Abbas climbed the stone steps of Camden, the official residence of Bermuda's premier, earlier this summer and led three island newcomers into a stately receiving room where the Rev. Al Sharpton was waiting.

"Thank you for your valuable time," said Ms. Abbas, after interpreting Rev. Sharpton's greeting to the three men into Uighur, an obscure language of central Asia.

Being Uighur Muslims from western China -- and having spent the past seven years as prisoners at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- the men really had no idea who the American civil-rights activist is.

Rushan Abbas

The task of explaining many such mysteries to the freed Uighurs has fallen to Ms. Abbas, a 42-year-old former office worker and mother of three in Fresno, Calif. Since 2002, her rare combination of language skills, passports and Uighur activism has made Ms. Abbas the primary link between Guantanamo's Uighur detainees and a world far removed from the Afghan hamlets where they were living just before the U.S. military captured them early in its hunt for al Qaeda.

The men say they were passing through the region at the time after fleeing China, where Uighurs, a people of Turkic descent, have long been an oppressed minority. In early July, clashes between Uighurs and residents from China's Han majority led to 197 deaths in Xinjiang province, which is home to most Chinese Uighurs.

Ms. Abbas had never worked as an interpreter before Sept. 11, 2001. She has since gone from a sales job in California, through the barbed wire of Guantanamo, to the private jet that Bermuda chartered to retrieve the Uighurs after the U.S. government freed them June 11. In the process, Ms. Abbas, a native Uighur and a naturalized U.S. citizen, went from helping the Defense Department interrogate prisoners to working for their release.

"She got into this expecting vicious, throat-slitting terrorists," says Sabin Willett, a Boston lawyer who helped free the Uighurs. "Now she's helping to demythologize those men."

After the Uighurs were released, Ms. Abbas spent two weeks easing their transition. Now, after a recent move from Fresno to Washington, D.C., she is on standby to fly to Palau, in case a deal is finalized with the Pacific island nation to accept 13 remaining Guantanamo Uighurs.

"I have to explain almost everything," says Ms. Abbas. The visit from Rev. Sharpton, she explained to the men and to a fourth colleague who didn't make the meeting, was a show of support for Bermuda's government, which had caught political flak for accepting them.

In addition to interpreting, Ms. Abbas coordinated everything from meals to visits from Bermudan lawyers and government employees who are helping them find homes, English classes and work. On Monday, the Uighurs began jobs as landscapers at the state-owned Port Royal Golf Course.

As they settled in at the oceanside guesthouse where they first arrived, Ms. Abbas baked bread, fried flounder, and made halwa, a sweet confection. "She's our translator, our assistant, and our chef," says Abdullah Abdulqadir, 30, the most jovial of the four men.

Ms. Abbas was born in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province and the city where the recent violence erupted. Her father, a scientist, befriended an American researcher who invited Ms. Abbas to study in the U.S. once she had finished a biology degree at Xinjiang University. In 1989, she moved to Prosser, Wash., studied plant pathology at Washington State University, fell in love with a professor and married. Over the next seven years, Ms. Abbas had three children, became a U.S. citizen and grew active in Uighur-American circles.

In 1998, when U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia launched a Uighur language service, Ms. Abbas became the sole female voice on the channel, communicating world news to western China and other Uighur areas. In 2000, she quit radio to work in sales for an exporter of animal feed.

Then, as she recalls it, one Saturday morning a few months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the phone rang. "I've been looking for you for weeks," the voice on the line said.

It was an executive at Titan Corp., now owned by L-3 Communications Corp., which was providing interpreters for the U.S. military. The company needed her in Guantanamo, where a small group of captured Uighurs had recently been shipped.

Three weeks later, she was in Cuba, in fatigues, interpreting the interrogation of a Uighur detainee. After the interview, the detainee told interrogators he would like to speak with Ms. Abbas. "You are Rushan Abbas," the prisoner said. He and others recognized her voice from Radio Free Asia.

A U.S. government official said that some of the Uighurs before their capture lived at times in suspected terrorist training camps. Investigators, though, never had enough evidence to prove they were indeed "enemy combatants," the official said.

Frustrated with what she describes as fruitless and repetitive interviews, Ms. Abbas resigned from her Guantanamo post in 2002, and returned to another sales job in California.

In early 2003, the military transferred the Uighurs to a medium-security portion of Guantanamo. Since then, the U.S. has been unable to free most of them. They can't return to China, where the government considers them separatists. China has warned other countries not to accept them.

In 2005, a group of U.S. law firms launched a pro bono effort to free the Uighurs, but had trouble communicating with the detainees. "Get Rushan," one of the detainees told the lawyers.

Over the past three years, Ms. Abbas made more than 20 trips to Guantanamo. She left her job and $65,000 salary and now free-lances for the law firms.

Last October, a federal judge ruled that the U.S. must release the 17 Uighurs who remained at Guantanamo. The four in Bermuda were going to be sent in May to live in Virginia, but local and state officials protested.

Once Bermuda accepted them, Ms. Abbas helped the men understand that they would no longer be treated as prisoners. "I thought we would still be wearing shackles," says Salahidin Abdulahat, 32, recalling their surprise when they stepped into the chartered jet and saw couches, a phone and a microwave.

Before leaving Bermuda for home, Ms. Abbas made sure the Uighurs had some things they needed to adjust to a free life in the West. "I really liked the Wii," said Mr. Abdulahat, boasting how well he played a virtual bowling game the men had in their final week at Guantanamo. Ms. Abbas interpreted. Within seconds, a Bermuda government worker across the table was on the phone pricing gadgets.

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

China’s Tally of 718 Arrests in July Riots Is Questioned

By MICHAEL WINES

BEIJING — Chinese authorities said Tuesday that they had taken 718 people into custody in connection with last month’s ethnic riots in the western region of Xinjiang, but an official with an ethnic Uighur exile group said the true number was far higher.

The new report, released by the state-run Xinhua news agency, left it unclear whether the 718 detainees represented the total of suspects captured since the July 5 unrest, or were in addition to previous arrests and detentions. The government had previously said that more than 1,500 people had been detained after the riots.

Nor was it clear how many of the suspects had been charged with crimes. State radio, quoted by Reuters, reported on Tuesday that 83 suspects had been accused of crimes ranging from murder and arson to assault and disturbing the peace.

The Xinjiang riots in the regional capital, Urumqi, killed at least 197 people — most of them ethnic Han Chinese, officials said — and injured about 1,100 others. The violence broke out after Uighur residents, the area’s original settlers, marched to protest the treatment of Uighur factory workers involved in a disturbance in eastern China.

The resulting unrest was the worst ethnic violence in China in at least a decade. Tuesday’s Xinhua report, a summary of progress in the official inquiry into the riots, quoted the head of Urumqi’s Public Security Bureau, Cehn Zhuangwei, as saying that 718 “criminals who disturbed the peace” had been detained. Investigators were pursuing nearly 600 important leads, he said, and were examining hundreds of photographs and video clips, as well as DNA samples in an effort to track down those involved in the violence.

In Washington, Omar Kanat, the vice president of the World Uighur Congress, an exile group, said that the Chinese reports of detainees were understated, and that the new report of 718 detentions could only add to previously reported totals.

“Many people are calling us every day, and they say the number of arrests exceeds five, six thousand,” he said in a telephone interview. “We cannot confirm that. But we know that the numbers of arrests are much more than the Chinese figures.”

Most of the detained people are of Uighur descent, he said, adding that Uighurs in Xinjiang have told the organization in recent days about a wave of new detentions in Urumqi and surrounding areas.