Category: East Asia & Pacific

  • Tayfun Eren vs. Dimitris Dollis (Papandreou’s senior adviser)

    Tayfun Eren vs. Dimitris Dollis (Papandreou’s senior adviser)

    Avustralya’da eski Labor milletvekilerinden Tayfun E. Eren dostumuzun hasmı ve Türk davasına 1999’dan beri aktif bir şekilde sürekli köstek olan Dollis ile ilgili arkaplan aşağıda…  En son Assyrian “Genocide” ve Pontus konusunu planlayan ve yürürlüğe sokan kişi bu Dollis… 1999 dan evvel de Avusturalya meclisinde Yunanistan’ın ‘köstebek’ görevini yapıyordu. Şu anda Papandreou’nun danışmanlarından oluyor kendileri…  Ve 1999’dan beri de Yunanistan’ın Dışişlerinde çalışıyor… İlgililerin dikkatine sunulur… Detaylı bilgi isteyenler Turkish Forum’a başvurabilirler…

    Saygılar,

    Tayfun E. Eren

    Haluk Demirbag

    George Papandreou faces early test after winning Greek elections

  • Peter Wilson, Europe correspondents
  • From:The Australian
  • October 05, 2009 1:57PM
  • Papandreou
    Greek socialist party leader George Papandreou after being elected prime minister of Greece. Picture: Getty Images Source: The Australian

    GREEK voters have thrown out their five-year-old conservative government and made centre-left leader George Papandreou prime minister, a post previously held by both his father and grandfather.

    Mr Papandreou, a US-born former foreign minister, will follow his father Andreas and grandfather George in heading Greece’s government but he faces urgent economic challenges and a major battle to curb corruption.

    AUDIO: Peter Wilson talks to George Papandreou

    The PASOK socialist party that his father founded in 1974 is expected to win about 160 seats in the 300-seat parliament, reassuring markets by securing a stable majority at a time when urgent government reforms are needed.

    Mr Papandreou pledged to “turn a page” on scandals and economic malaise associated with the outgoing conservative government.

    “We stand here united before the great responsibility which we undertake,” Mr Papandreou told cheering supporters in central Athens when the result became clear.

    “We have a mandate to turn a new page,” Mr Papandreou said as supporters of his Pasok party celebrated the socialists’ return to power after more than five years in opposition.

    “Today we start together the great national effort of placing the country back on a course of revival, development and creation. We don’t have a day to waste.”

    He said PASOK had waged “a good fight to bring back hope and smiles on Greeks’ faces … to change the country’s course into one of law, justice, solidarity, green development and progress”.

    PASOK won by a larger than expected margin of 44per cent to 34per cent over the conservative New Democracy party.

    Mr Papandreou, 57, told The Australian last week that if elected he would make several reforms to help members of the Greek diaspora in Australia and elsewhere, making it easier for them to work in Greece and to vote in Greek elections.

    He said he would change Greece’s tough education rules so as to recognise three-year bachelor degrees issued by Australian universities as the equivalent of four-year Greek degrees, removing a hurdle that has long frustrated Australians wanting to work in Greece.

    He also vowed to allow the one million-plus registered Greek voters who live overseas to vote by mail or at local consulates instead of the current system which requires them to travel to Greece to cast a ballot.

    Often criticised in Greece for speaking English more fluently than Greek, Mr Papandreou has fought PASOK’s old-style party chieftains in a bid to modernise the party, dropping from its candidate list several factional heavies including the former prime minister Costas Simitis.

    The defeated prime minister, Costas Karamanlis beat Mr Papandreou in elections in 2004 and 2007 but yesterday resigned the leadership of New Democracy to accept responsibility for his failed gamble of calling a snap election just half way into a four-year term of parliament.

    Dora Bakoyannis, the 55-year-old foreign minister who served as mayor of Athens during the 2004 Olympic Games, is the frontrunner to replace him as leader of the conservative party, a post once held by her father Constantine Mitsotakis.

    Mr Karamanlis had called for an austere series of government cuts to rein in the deficit and national debt but he was hampered by the fact that he had made little progress in the previous five years on his vows to fight corruption and reform an outdated government bureaucracy.

    Mr Papandreou campaigned on a promise of a 3 billion Euro ($5b) stimulus package but faces immediate talks with Euro zone officials concerned that Greece’s budget deficit is already twice the 3 per cent of GDP allowed under the rules of the common currency.

    The socialist leader has vowed to increase wages and pensions and fund the extra spending by increasing taxes on the rich and cracking down on tax evasion.

    Raised in Sweden and the US when his father was in political exile, Mr Papandreou promised to appoint an advisory panel of foreign economic experts and tackle Greece’s high levels of corruption and its tradition of new governments handing out state jobs and contracts to their own cronies.

    A senior job in the new administration is certain to go to close Papandreou advisor Demetri Dollis, a former Victorian Labor MP who served as deputy leader of the state opposition before being stripped of his ALP preselection by then leader Steve Bracks in 1999 for spending too much time overseas.

    Mr Dollis held a high-level job in the foreign ministry when Mr Papandreou was foreign minister and has worked in Mr Papandreou’s personal office over the past five years.

    , October 05, 2009

    [2]

    Papandreou looks to Greek diaspora as he forms new cabinet

    George Papandreou is expected to tap international talent for his government to help tackle Greece’s multiple crises

    • Helena Smith in Athens
    • guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 6 October 2009 10.50 BST
    Papandreou2
    George Papandreou is expected to announce his cabinet later today. Photograph: Simela Pantzartzi/EPA

    Greece‘s socialist leader George Papandreou was sworn in as prime minister this morning amid clear indications that the new government he will lead will seek to tap talent in the diaspora to address the multiple crises facing the country.

    The English-speaking prime minister, propelled into office following an overwhelming victory in Sunday’s elections, is expected to announce a cabinet this afternoon to take on Greece’s financial and economic crisis and social malaise.

    US-born Papandreou was educated in Sweden, England and Canada and is a Harvard University fellow. His closest aides include English-speaking Greeks born and brought up in Africa, America and Australia. The 57-year-old politician is himself more comfortable speaking English than Greek.

    “Part of my identity is being a Greek of Greece and a Greek of the diaspora,” Papandreou told the Guardian. “I think in many ways being Greek is being ecumenical, open to the world. We are a country that has always been open with ideas and contact with the rest of the world as a shipping nation and tourist destination.”

    Through his network of connections as head of Socialist International, the global grouping of leftwing parties, Papandreou has already embarked on talks with renowned experts in the fields of economy and public health. The Nobel economics laureate Joe Stiglitz is in touch with him “on a daily basis”, offering advice on how to rescue Greece’s debt-ridden economy from the brink of bankruptcy.

    Also a Harvard professor and international health expert now sits in the Greek parliament following his appointment as a non-elected MP with Papandreou’s Pasok party.

    “George has always said there is an untapped world and that is the other Greece in the diaspora that he is going to work with, talk to and take advice from to help us get the country out of this situation,” said Dimitris Dollis, a Greek Australian who is among Papandreou’s senior advisers. “Ties with the diaspora are going to be much stronger.”

    Among candidates for prominent cabinet roles are George Papaconstantinou, a graduate of New York University and the London School of Economics who worked at the OECD in Paris, and Louka Katseli, a former economics professor at Yale.

    After years of introspection under the outgoing centre-right government, Greece is also expected to become far more “open and outward looking” in its foreign policy under Papandreou, who won international plaudits back in the 90s when he almost single-handedly improved relations with Turkey by daring to pursue reconciliation.

    “Being parochial is a state of mind and we want to get out of it,” said a source close to Papandreou who will be one of his senior foreign affairs advisers. “The [outgoing] conservatives chose to tread water in a turbulent sea, no initiatives were taken and relations with out neighbours gradually stalled. Our approach is going to be a lot more cosmopolitan, open and creative which is George’s natural inclination.”

    The change in style has been welcomed by western diplomats startled by the rise of nationalism and xenophobia in Greece in recent years.

    And amid speculation that Papandreou will assume responsibility for foreign affairs – at least initially – many are hopeful that relations with neighbouring Turkey, Macedonia and the rest of Europe will improve. In Istanbul and Ankara there were scenes of jubilation with some Turks cracking open bottles of champagne when news of Pasok’s victory came through. In recent months ties with Turkey have worsened with tensions in the Aegean rising noticeably.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/oct/06/george-papandreou-sworn-greek-pm, 6 October 2009

    [3]

    Greek NGO teacher Lerounis returns to Greece after release by Afghan Taliban militants

    Greek teacher and NGO worker Athanassios Lerounis arrived in Athens on Saturday following his release earlier in the week by Afghan Taliban militants seven months after they kidnapped him in the Chitral region in northern Pakistan.

    Lerounis, chairman of the non-governmental organisation Greek Volunteers, was kidnapped outside his museum in the remote Kalash valley last September, while his guard was fatally shot. He had been working on a cultural project in the area since 2001.

    Professor Lerounis, a Greek teacher and social worker, was kidnapped on September 8, 2009 following an attack on the Kalash village of Brun, in Pakistan, where he lived. He was abducted outside the ethnological museum Kalash-Dur he had created himself in Pakistan to preserve and showcase the culture of the Kalash people. Lerounis has also founded two primary schools, three motherhood centers and the Kalash Cultural Center in Bumburate Valley.

    Lerounis was released in Nooristan province in Afghanistan on Wednesday, and Pakistani officials took him to Chitral later that night. He was taken to the Greek embassy in Islamabad on Friday morning to await transportation back to Greece arranged by the Greek government.

    A visibly moved and relieved Lerounis arrived Saturday at Athens’ ‘Eleftherios Venizelos’ International Airport, where he thanked everyone who had helped in securing his release.

    “I am very happy to be standing on Greek ground after so many months. A big thank you to the people in Pakistan, the Greek government and the personal interest of the prime minister, who acted as a human being and not a politician,” Lerounis told waiting reporters.

    Lerounis also thanked prime minister George Papandreou’s personal envoy to Islamabad, ambassador-at-large Dimitris Dollis, and the Greek ambassador in Islamabad Petros Mavroidis, who accompanied the NGO volunteer on his flight to Greece, as well as all people who were supportive throughout his ordeal.

    Dollis confirmed a statement by Wazir on Thursday that no ransom was paid, adding that Lerounis’ release was a big success of the Greek government, Greek diplomacy and the country, and called Lerounis “an example of perseverance”.

    Asked if he would return to the Kalash tribe, Lerounis said that “with the support of the Greek and Pakistani government, I would like to return there some day and continue my work”.

    http://www.hri.org/news/greek/ana/2010/10-04-12.ana.html#10, 12 April 2010

    [4]

    Yunan Avusturalyan gazetelerinde Avustralya Turkleri ile ilgili yazilar

    [5]

    scan0002

    [6]

    scan0003

    [7]

    scan0004
    Bearded Dollis

    [8]

    scan0002 2

    [9]

    scan0005

    [10]

    scan0006

    [11]

    scan0007

    [12]

    scan0008

    [13]

    scan0009

    [14]

    scan0010

    [15]

    scan0011

    [16]

    scan0012

    [17]

    scan0014

  • Hundreds Dead in Earthquake in Northwest China

    Hundreds Dead in Earthquake in Northwest China

    By ANDREW JACOBS

    BEIJING — A powerful earthquake in northwest China killed at least 300 people, injured 8,000 and left many others buried under debris on Wednesday, Chinese state media reported.

    Enlarge This Image

    14quake 337 395 articleInline

    Zhang Hongshuan/Xinhua, via Reuters

    A photo taken by a mobile phone showed destroyed houses after an earthquake hit the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Yushu, northwest China’s Qinghai province on Wednesday.

    15quake tempmap articleInline
    The New York Times
    Enlarge This Image

    15quake inline2 articleInline

    Zhang Hongshuan/Associated Press

    Rubble from destroyed houses fills the streets.

    Enlarge This Image

    15quake inline3 articleInline

    Zhang Hongshuan/Associated Press

    People gathered in open areas after the quake hit.

    The quake, which struck at 7:49 a.m. in Qinghai Province, had a magnitude of 7.1 according to China’s earthquake administration.

    According to the China Earthquake Networks Center, the earthquake struck in Yushu County, a remote and mountainous area sparsely populated by farmers and herders, most of them ethnic Tibetans. The region is pocked with copper, tin and coal mines and rich in natural gas. A government Web site said the county’s population was around 80,000.

    China National Radio said that more than 80 percent of the homes in the area had collapsed but that schools and government buildings had largely remained standing.

    Karsum Nyima, an employee of a local television station in Yushu, told the national television broadcaster, CCTV, that the quake had sent people running into the streets.

    “All of a sudden, the houses collapsed,” he said. “It was a terrible earthquake. In the park, a Buddhist pagoda fell down. Everyone is in the street in front of their houses. They are trying to find family members.”

    In the same broadcast, Wu Yong, an officer in the Chinese Army, said that the road to the airport was impassable and that soldiers were digging out people from collapsed homes by hand.

    “The most important thing now is that this place is far from everything, with few accessible rescue troops available,” Mr. Wu said. “I feel like the number of dead and injured will keep going up.”

    Local officials said that phone service was limited and that rescue efforts were stymied by a lack of heavy equipment. Medical supplies and tents, they added, were in short supply.

    State news media reported that 700 paramilitary officers were already working in the quake zone and that another 3,000 troops would be sent to the area to assist in search and rescue efforts. The civil affairs ministry said it would also send 5,000 tents and 50,000 blankets.

    Last August, Golmud was hit by a 6.2 magnitude earthquake that destroyed dozens of homes but caused no deaths. Qinghai is an ethnic melting pot of Tibetans, Mongols and Han Chinese. It is adjacent to Sichuan Province, where at least 87,000 people died in a powerful earthquake in 2008.

    Xiyun Yang contributed research.

  • Xinjiang – Where China’s Worry Intersects the World

    Xinjiang – Where China’s Worry Intersects the World

    The recent killing of a Uighur terrorist in Afghanistan has brought new focus on the ethnic group in China’s western border region.of Xinjiang. The situation of the Uighurs – an ethnic Turkic, Muslim minority – reveals much about China’s internal conduct and external worries, according to China expert Christopher M. Clarke. Hailing from Xinjiang province, Uighurs have seen their majority in that province erode and income inequality expand as Beijing populated the area with Han Chinese and supported the growth of state-owned enterprises. There is little wonder that violence erupts in the province. But even without such violence, China would still be leery of developments in Xinjiang, which borders a number of unstable Central Asian states as well as Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan. Plus, the province hosts vast natural resource wealth and many nuclear testing installations. Any one of these situations could add to the vulnerability of the province. China has attempted to ease tensions in the region, cooperating with neighbors over natural resource exploration. But the US military presence in Afghanistan adds a further wrinkle to an already crumpled tapestry. In the end, Xinjiang is likely to remain a sore spot for Beijing as it worries about pressure from all sides regionally and tries to dampen unrest internally. – YaleGlobal

    Xinjiang – Where China’s Worry Intersects the World

    Regional instability adds to concerns about restive Muslim minority

    Christopher M. ClarkeYaleGlobal , 19 March 2010

    Boiling anger: A Uighur protester confronts Chinese security forces in Urumqi, July, 2009.

    WASHINGTON: The February 15 killing of militant Uighur leader Abdul Haq al-Turkistani by an American drone in the border regions of Pakistan highlights China’s continued sensitivity about its remote and vulnerable western region, Xinjiang. It also brings into focus the role of the Afghanistan-Pakistan region as an international sanctuary for Islamic militants and the reasons for China’s worries about social stability and potential terrorist threats in Xinjiang. China’s neuralgia about security in Xinjiang will continue – and perhaps even increase – as big power competition for influence and resources in Central Asia and its ties to the rest of the world continue to expand.

    China’s troubles with the minority Uighurs are not new. But with the break up of the Soviet Union and the rising Islamist Taliban in once Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, the regional dynamic has changed. Since the early 1990s, China has faced recurrent waves of unrest in Xinjiang and widespread acts of violence, some of which seem to have been terrorist acts by disgruntled Uighurs. The 2008 attempted hijacking of an airplane in China by three people armed with flammable liquid was one of the latest – and scariest – examples. There also have been several attacks against perceived Uighur collaborators in China and against Chinese interests outside the country. The capture of Uighurs fighting against coalition forces in Afghanistan, some two dozen of whom were imprisoned in Guantanamo, also indicate that China faces a real threat of terrorist acts against its interests at home and abroad.

    China’s neuralgia about security in Xinjiang will continue as big power competition for influence and resources in Central Asia and its ties to the rest of the world continue to expand.

    The Chinese, however, have aroused skepticism by dubiously attributing dozens of explosions and incidents of civil unrest to instigation by “East Turkistan terrorist forces.”   Officials, for example, blamed an August 2008 attack on a military police unit out for its morning jog, in which 16 officers were killed, on a Uighur terrorist group, despite the fact that the officers apparently were run down by a truck and attacked by a taxi driver and a vegetable vendor, hardly the modus operandi of a sophisticated terrorist organization. Even last July’s massive race riot in Urumqi – set off by rumors that a Uighur woman had been raped and several Uighur men killed by Han Chinese in far-away Guangdong – was labeled as an “organized, violent action against the public” and an act of terrorism.

    So, while China does face periodic upsurges in politically motivated violence by Uighurs, one has to ask, why? The answer: Beijing has engaged in a systematic, multi-decade program of marginalizing Uighurs in their own homeland, fostering economic growth that favors the Han majority of eastern China and that encourages the exploitation of Xinjiang’s wealth of natural resources for Han areas. Beijing has organized and encouraged an influx of Han into Xinjiang, changing the ethnic ratio since 1949 from about 5 percent Han to more than 40 percent today. Moreover, Uighur culture and the Muslim religion are contained under tight restrictions. Beijing proudly points out that Xinjiang in recent years has been among the fastest growing economies in the country, with per capita income higher than all regions except China’s southeast coast. Most of that growth, however, has accrued to State-owned enterprises, Han entrepreneurs, or the government; not to Uighurs. And income inequalities there have actually expanded significantly in recent years. The region also suffers from some of the worst environmental degradation in China. It is hardly surprising that frustration occasionally boils over into civil unrest – or that such conditions breed terrorist groups intent on taking action against the regime. 

    Beijing has engaged in a systematic, multi-decade program of marginalizing Uighurs in their own homeland, fostering economic growth that favors the Han majority.

    That many of China’s problems with terrorism and unrest are largely of its own making has reduced international trust and sympathy for the situation. China’s concerns also have both shaped its approach to the broader region and reduced China’s willingness to cooperate with the US in counter-terrorism, negatively affecting the overall US -China relationship.

    Xinjiang, more than any other area of China, is strategically vulnerable, partially as a result of its location in one of the most fractious neighborhoods outside the Middle East. Representing one-sixth of China’s territory, Xinjiang is rich in oil, gas, and mineral deposits and contains numerous sensitive military installations, including some of the country’s premier nuclear research and testing facilities. It borders the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, all of which are less than politically stable.*

    Complicating China’s relations with the Central Asian states is the fact that as many as 500,000 Uighurs – and sizable populations of other Chinese “minorities” – live across relatively porous borders and engage in extensive trade and contacts. Several of these countries contain anti-China Uighur separatist organizations, both peaceful and terrorist. And China is very afraid of the potential contagion of “color revolutions” from Central Asia – like the 2005 “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan – destabilizing China’s control in Xinjiang. Uighur activities – including violent attacks – have complicated China’s relations with Turkey, a country with which China seeks closer relations but where public and official sentiment is highly critical of China’s treatment of the ethnically-related Uighurs.

    Xinjiang, more than any other area of China, is strategically vulnerable, partially as a result of its location in one of the most fractious neighborhoods outside the Middle East.

    To control this potentially chaotic situation and to manage Sino-Russian competition for influence, China launched the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which includes Russia, China, the Central Asian republics, and a growing number of observers from around the region. China has pushed hard to keep the focus of the SCO on cooperative activities against the “three evils” of “separatism, fundamentalism, and terrorism,” a fear all the member states have in common. 

     Along some of Xinjiang’s most remote and sensitive borders are Tibet, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the disputed state of Kashmir – any one of which could quickly embroil China in an international crisis. China also tested its “all-weather” friendship with Pakistan pressuring Islamabad to crackdown on Uighur militants seeking refuge in Pakistan. Pakistan reportedly has responded by sending a number of Uighur militants to China for prosecution. Its recent stepped up attacks on terrorist groups – and especially the killing of Abdul Haq and more than a dozen other Uighur militants –  has among other things assuaged relations with China.

    The US intervention in Afghanistan in October 2001 introduced another variable of vulnerability for China with regard to Xinjiang.

    The US intervention in Afghanistan in October 2001 introduced another variable of vulnerability for China with regard to Xinjiang. In the conflict that followed, global support for Al Qaeda drew in more militants to the region, including some Uighurs (as Abdul Haq’s death proved) but it also changed the strategic landscape for China. The introduction of massive US forces into the region, and especially the use of bases such as Manas in Kyrgyzstan, raised visceral and long-standing fears of encirclement by a hostile US intent on “dividing and Westernizing” China. Beijing has put pressure on Central Asian neighbors to expel or severely limit any US military presence and has refused to allow US forces to use Chinese territory for staging or overflights in the war in Afghanistan. China is also working hard to enhance cooperation with its neighbors on energy exploration, exploitation, and transportation as a way of keeping the US and Russia from monopolizing Central Asia’s voluminous oil and natural gas resources.

    These competing interests, and the residual worry that the US and Russia seek to supplant or minimize Chinese influence in Central Asia will continue to contribute to Beijing’s neuralgia about assuring stability in its far Western extremity, even if the real terrorist threat to China has diminished.

    * Beijing is some 1,500 miles from Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi; Urumqi is nearly another 700 miles from Kashgar on the far Western border. By contrast, Kashgar is only 250 miles from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and 500 miles from Kabul.
    ——————————————————
    Dr. Clarke is an independent China consultant. He retired in 2009 after 25 years as a China analyst and head of the China Division of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. 

  • Azerbaijani and Turkish Diasporas commemorate Khojaly victims in Australia

    Azerbaijani and Turkish Diasporas commemorate Khojaly victims in Australia

    Sidney. Elmin Ibrahimov – APA. 18th anniversary of Khojaly Genocide was commemorated in Sidney, Australia. Before the Friday prayer, nearly 3500 people at the Gelibolu Mosque, the largest mosque in Australia, were informed about the genocide in details by Vice President of Azerbaijan-Turkish Friendship Society and Turkic Associations Federation Imammaddin Gasimov. Then they prayed for the souls of Khojaly victims.

    Nearly 150 representatives of the Azerbaijani, Turkish, other Turkic organizations and local community, as well as Azerbaijani students of the Australian universities gathered at the Turkish House to commemorate Khojaly tragedy. Izzet Anmak, Deputy Chairman of Auburn municipality, dense-populated by the Turkic-speaking people, attended the ceremony. Local Diaspora representatives showed video tapes sent by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation at the event organized by the Australian Azerbaijan-Turkish Friendship Society and Radio Voice of Azerbaijan, broadcasting in Sidney.

    Head of the Turkish House Beshir Karasu and president of Turkic Associations Federation Dursun Candemir condemned the Armenian atrocities committed against Azerbaijani Turks.

  • Australian Tatars Mark 60th Anniversary Of First Immigrants

    Australian Tatars Mark 60th Anniversary Of First Immigrants

    CA80BE07 744F 4D86 8CD0 5713BD91CD2B mw270 sTatar children dance at a celebration of the 60th anniversary of Tatar immigration to Australia in Adelaide.

    February 13, 2010
    ADELAIDE, Australia — Ethnic Tatars living in Australia marked the 60th anniversary of their immigration to Australia this week with a series of events, RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service reports.

    The majority of the estimated 500 Tatar-Australians are concentrated in Adelaide, South Australia, where they came to settle after World War II.

    Special events were held by Tatar organizations in Adelaide to mark the anniversary. Michael Atkinson, South Australia’s minister for multicultural
    affairs, attended events along with other local officials.

    Tatars also have a cultural center in Adelaide where children can study the Tatar language and culture.

    https://www.rferl.org/a/Australian_Tatars_Mark_60th_Anniversary_Of_First_Immigrants/1957128.html
  • Exiled Activist Says Uyghur Issue Crucial For Central Asia

    Exiled Activist Says Uyghur Issue Crucial For Central Asia

    D2AD3AB6 883A 46AE BEBE DFCBB961140E mw270 sRebiya Kadeer, president of the World Uyghur Congress
    December 09, 2009
    PRAGUE/VIENNA — World Uyghur Congress President Rebiya Kadeer has told RFE/RL she is urging European politicians to focus on the fate of Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang Province who continue to be persecuted and jailed, RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service reports.

    Kadeer told RFE/RL by phone from Vienna that thousands of Uyghurs have been arrested, sentenced, and jailed in Xinjiang since interethnic clashes in July in the region’s capital, Urumchi, when at least 197 people were killed.

    “[The Europeans] understand our problems very well — all the [European] politicians I met with said they would put Uyghur issues on their agenda,” Kadeer said. “Peace for Uyghurs means peace in Central Asia and peace in the world. And politicians in European governments, parliaments, and EU institutions said that’s why they think it’s important to put Uyghur problems on their agenda.”

    Kadeer, who was imprisoned by Beijing for five years before being released in 2005, is meeting with government officials and human rights activists on a tour of European capitals that includes Rome, Berlin, Vienna, Stockholm, Brussels, and Paris.

    She said that she is unable to travel to Central Asian countries because those governments are afraid of angering China with her visit.

    Kadeer, 62, told RFE/RL that the Uyghurs — who are considered the province’s indigenous people — are currently trying to leave China for other countries in order to avoid persecution, which has worsened since the riots.

    Kadeer stressed that the issue of the Uyghurs in China is important for neighboring Central Asian countries, a message she is bringing to European officials.

    Xinjiang, which means “New Frontier” in Mandarin Chinese, is called East Turkestan by Uyghurs after the republic that was established on the territory of Xinjiang in 1933 and 1944.

    In both cases the republic was dissolved and the territory was annexed by China.

    Uyghurs are a Muslim, Turkic-speaking ethnic group.

    Hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs live in Central Asia’s post-Soviet republics.

    https://www.rferl.org/a/Exiled_Activist_Says_Uyghur_Issue_Crucial_For_Central_Asia/1899753.html