Tag: Uighurs

Blast Kills 7 In Area Of China Plagued By Ethnic Strife

by The Associated Press

August 19, 2010

A bomb attack killed seven people and wounded 14 Thursday in China’s far west region of Xinjiang, an area beset by ethnic conflict and separatist violence.

The target of the attack wasn’t known, although an overseas activist for the region’s native Uighur ethnic group said the victims included members of the security forces.

The blast went off after a man drove a three-wheeled vehicle laden with explosives into a crowd of people in a suburb in Aksu city in southwestern Xinjiang, said Hou Hanmin, a spokeswoman for the Xinjiang government.

“Police say it was an intentional act because the suspect was carrying explosive devices,” Hou told a hastily arranged news conference in the regional capital of Urumqi, about 400 miles from Aksu.

She said the suspect, who was injured, was captured immediately.

Some of the wounded were in serious condition. “The casualties are innocent civilians of different ethnic minority backgrounds,” she said.

Xinjiang has been the site of ethnic conflict in recent years, including riots last summer when long-standing tensions between the Turkic Muslim Uighurs and China’s majority Han flared into open violence in Urumqi. The government said 197 people were killed, while hundreds of people were arrested and about two dozen sentenced to death. Many other Uighurs remain unaccounted for and are believed to be in custody.

While the riots marked China’s worst ethnic violence in decades, Xinjiang has seen a series of bombings and other violence, including attacks on security forces around the time of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The government also says it has broken up several groups intent on carrying out attacks, including a bomb-making operation near Aksu in 2009 and a gang last month that it said was linked to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a banned militant organization advocating independence for Xinjiang.

Anti-government sentiments among Uighurs are fed by the ruling Communist Party’s heavy-handed controls over their language, culture and Islamic faith, along with resentment of Chinese migrants and a perception that they are being favored economically to the detriment of Xinjiang’s native population.

The government claims attacks are often planned by exile Uighurs overseas, including across the border in Central Asia or Pakistan.

The target of Thursday’s attack remained unclear and it wasn’t known whether it was motivated by separatist or extremist views. Homemade bombs are used throughout China to seek revenge over personal or property disputes, and the country this year has seen a series of gory rampage attacks by people using knives, guns and construction equipment.

In contrast, past separatist attacks in Xinjiang have almost always been aimed clearly at government targets or other symbols of Han Chinese influence.

Germany-based Uighur activist Dilxat Raxit said security forces were the apparent target, with reports saying victims included one policeman and 14 members of a uniformed auxiliary force charged with monitoring the Uighur population. He declined to give the source of the information other than to say it was highly reliable.

Xinjiang Governor Nur Bekri, speaking at a news conference Thursday before the explosion was reported, said the government was battling separatist forces in Xinjiang.

“I believe we face a long and fierce and very complicated struggle. Separatism in Xinjiang has a very long history, it was there in the past, it is still here now and it will continue in the future,” Nur said.

Raxit said the authorities’ security crackdown may be encouraging further violence.

“Since last year’s riots, we have seen … systematic oppression and provocation,” said Raxit, whose World Uyghur Congress officially opposes violence.

August 19, 2010
Uyghur Evictee Detained

2010-08-10

Chinese authorities hold an elderly Uyghur farmer in Beijing.

RFA

Abdurehim Mollek says his land in Onsu county was sold to a resettled Han Chinese farmer by local officials.

HONG KONG-Authorities in Beijing are holding an 84-year-old Uyghur farmer after he traveled to the capital to lodge an official protest over the loss of his farmland, the man and his son said.

Abdurehim Mollek, a Muslim Uyghur from Aksu prefecture in the troubled northwestern region of Xinjiang, was being held by police after being taken from his motel room in the eastern Beijing suburb of Weigongcun, he said.

Traveling with his 29-year-old son, Abdurehim Mollek said Sunday he had already been detained without trial for two years by authorities in Aksu’s Onsu (in Chinese, Wensu) county after he tried to petition over the actions of local officials.

“We are in the Xinjiang Affairs Department’s motel with dozens of other Uyghur petitioners. I am allowed go out to the yard of the motel, but my father is not. There are two guards at the motel door who are always watching us. Probably in the next few days the police will come from Aksu to return us there,” his son said.

“The Xinjiang Affairs Department usually holds us until the local officials come to take us away. That’s how it has worked most of the previous 10 times,” he said, referring to earlier trips his father had made to Beijing to petition.

Abdurehim Mollek’s son said they had been planning to petition publicly at Tiananmen Square or at an international news bureau to make their voices heard.

An officer who answered the phone at the Wanshousi police station in Beijing confirmed Abdurehim Mollek’s detention.

“Yes, yes, that’s right … He is a petitioner. It says so in the system,” the officer said. “The system has identified him as a key petitioner.”

Taken from motel

He described their detention Monday by regular police officers at their motel in the capital.

“Three Beijing policemen came to our motel room in the morning [at 9 a.m.] and checked our documents,” Abdurehim Mollek’s son said.

“Abdurehim Mollek showed the police our IDs and papers about our case. Then the police took us to their office.”

“They asked no questions and conducted no investigation. We were not allowed to have any food to eat. We were finally released at 6 p.m.,” he said.

The father and son were placed in the custody of two police officers, a Uyghur and Han Chinese, who brought them to the Xinjiang Affairs Department and placed them, under guard, in a motel room at the department’s headquarters.

“Regardless of whether the authorities agree to solve our problem, we will stay here. If we go back [to our hometown], we might be detained or sentenced. The last time [my father] was brought back home, he was detained in a mental hospital for 60 days. [The police said] if we petition again, we will be detained in a mental hospital permanently,” his son said.

Years of petitioning

Abdurehim Mollek has been petitioning ever since local officials in Kizil [in Chinese, Qingnian] village took over 220 mu (36 acres) of his farmland in 1997.

His property was part of a total 3,000 mu (494 acres) of land which belonged to 20 Uyghur farmers, taken by local officials and sold to a Chinese farmer surnamed Chen who had recently settled in the village from another province.

The land was later resold to another Chinese farmer surnamed Lu, who is the current owner.

Abdurehim Mollek said the two Chinese farmers are close relatives of village chief Han Guoming, although calls to the village office to confirm this went unanswered.

After being provided only a portion of his promised compensation, Abdurehim Mollek petitioned local and provincial authorities for 10 years.

In 2007, he began to petition the central government and has since traveled to Beijing 11 times to plead his case.

In 2008, he was held without trial in a detention center in Onsu county for two years. His most recent visit to Beijing was his second trip in three months, and the second since his release.

After his previous trip to the capital, Abdurehim Mollek was forcibly repatriated to Aksu prefecture and held in a local mental hospital for 60 days.

He has been returned to Xinjiang under police guard nearly every time he has petitioned the central government.

Other petitioners targeted

Mamut Rozi, a Uyghur from Yarkent county, in Xinjiang’s western Kashgar prefecture, is also currently in Beijing petitioning the central government over the forced sale of his land by local officials to a resettled Chinese farmer.

In a telephone interview, Mamut Rozi said he feared being forcibly repatriated to Yarkent by local authorities.

Two of his Uyghur roommates in Beijing were arrested by Xinjiang provincial police and taken to Aksu prefecture.

The roommates, former workers at an Aksu sugar factory, had been chosen as representatives by a group of 200 workers recently fired by the plant to petition authorities in the capital over the loss of their jobs.

“[The police] said to my roommates, ‘Why are you organizing others to petition? Why don’t you just take care of your own case? We’re arresting you for illegal organizing,’” Mamut Rozi said.

“I couldn’t hold back my tears as I saw them handcuffed by the police.”

‘Cause for concern’

Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, said petitioners like Abdurehim Mollek are highly vulnerable to arbitrary detentions by Beijing authorities if they try to complain about their local government in the capital.

“And after they get sent back [to Xinjiang] they become a real cause for concern,” Raxit said.

“Every time a Uyghur is sent back to Xinjiang, they are either sentenced to labor camp, or they suffer some kind of economic punishment.”

Dilxat Raxit said this is routine. “All Uyghurs in this situation who get sent back home end up suffering for it to a greater or lesser degree.”

“Many petitioners who travel to Beijing to complain from all over China are picked up by officials from their hometowns, who run representative offices in the capital for this purpose, and are escorted back home, where they can face beatings, surveillance, and further detention.

China’s army of petitioners say they are repeatedly stonewalled, detained in “black jails,” beaten, and harassed by authorities if they try to take a complaint against local government actions to a higher level of government.

Millions of Uyghurs—a distinct, Turkic minority who are predominantly Muslim—populate Central Asia and Xinjiang.

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.

Those frustrations erupted in July 2009 in deadly riots that left nearly 200 people dead, by the Chinese government’s tally.

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.

Original reporting in Uyghur by Shohret Hoshur and in Mandarin by Qiao Long. Translated by Luisetta Mudie and Shohret Hoshur. Written in English by Joshua Lipes and Luisetta Mudie.

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/farmer-08092010142338.html

August 12, 2010
China ‘arrests Xinjiang plotters’

Ethnic Uighurs accuse Beijing of marginalising them in favour of Han Chinese migrants [File: AP]

Chinese police have arrested more than 10 “hardcore terrorists” who allegedly planned to carry out attacks in the Xinjiang region during unrest between ethnic Uighurs and Han Chinese last year, officials said.

Wu Heping, a spokesman for the ministry of public security, said on Thursday that the suspects were linked to the banned East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM).

“The uncovering of this major terrorist group again proves that the ETIM
and other terrorist organisations constitute the gravest terrorist threat
that our nation faces at this present time and in the future,” Wu said at a news conference.

Wu said that the members of ETIM, a banned group that advocates independence for Xinjiang, had fled to different parts of China and overseas after last July’s violence.

Although he did not specify what countries they fled to, he said three of those whose arrest was announced on Thursday were among a group of Uighurs deported back to China in December.

Cambodia repatriated 20 Uighurs in December, saying they had entered the country illegally, but it was not clear if any of them were those referred to by Wu.

Wu did not disclose any dates of the arrests and or any reason for why his statement was issued now.

‘Politically motivated’

Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the World Uighur Congress, which is based in Europe, said the timing of Wu’s announcement was politically motivated.

IN depth

101 East: China’s Uighur dilemma

Uighur leader speaks out

Warning over Uighur executions

China executes Uighur activist

“Announcing this now just before July 5 [the anniversary of the ethnic unrest] shows China wants to push the perception that all Uighurs and all Muslims are terrorists,” Raxit told the AFP news agency.

Raxit has also told The Associated Press news agency that “China associates all Uighur causes with the ETIM, although no one seems to know what this group is or where they are located”.

Among those detained were the group’s alleged ringleaders who are accused of launching attacks against against police and paramilitary troops around the time of the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008.

Wu said those who fled last July had subsequently travelled through China preaching religious “extremism”, recruiting members, raising funds, and rehearsing further planned attacks.

Xinjiang tensions

Simmering tensions between Han Chinese migrants and the Turkic-speaking majority Muslim Uighurs over the government’s allegedly discrimnatory policies spilled over into violence that left at least 200 people dead.

However, many analysts have said that ETIM is significantly less influential in the western region than the Chinese government suggests.

Nicholas Bequelin, a senior Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch and an authority on Xinjiang, said there were some in region advocating violence but that links between individual acts were likely limited.

“It mostly looks like these events [in Kashgar and Kuqa] were the product of very heavy pressure ahead of the Olympic Games prompting people to try and bring attention to the situation in Xinjiang,” he said.

“But it doesn’t mean there is a link behind them, the only link to me is that the government has a theory that it faces separatist, extremist, terrorist groups and lumps it all together to make it look like it’s a conspiracy.”

June 25, 2010
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.

March 19, 2010
Exiled Activist Says Uyghur Issue Crucial For Central Asia

Rebiya 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

December 10, 2009
Uyghur Pressed to Spy

2009-12-02

An exiled Uyghur returns home and finds himself in Chinese custody.

Undated photo of Kamirdin Abdurahman. Photo: RFA

HONG KONG—Authorities in China’s troubled northwestern region of Xinjiang detained a Pakistani national and member of the Muslim Uyghur ethnic minority for “harming public order” before asking him to infiltrate Uyghur groups back in Pakistan, the man said in a recent interview.

Kamirdin Abdurahman, 41, a second-generation Uyghur Pakistani, had returned to Xinjiang for the first time since the regional capital Urumqi was rocked by ethnic violence in July.

“I have traveled to my homeland many times since the 1980s, but this time I was surprised, shocked, and scared by what I encountered,” he said.

He said he was traveling with a group of 30 people, only some of whom were Uyghurs, who entered China via the Khonjrap border crossing on Oct. 18.

“We [Uyghurs] were isolated from the others, and waited two more hours outside. The weather was so cold,” Abdurahman said.

“Then we were checked by immigration police with a special attention that we had never met before.”

Detained 15 days

Later, police in the former Silk Road city of Kashgar, still a major center of Uyghur history and culture, confiscated his passport and blindfolded, handcuffed, and interrogated him before detaining him for 15 days, he said.

“Police said that I had spoken in negative ways, which had harmed public order,” Abdurahman said.

“I was held in detention for 15 days and fined 5,000 yuan (U.S. $732).”

After his detention, Abdurahman, who had come to visit family in the oasis town of Yarkand, near Kashgar, said he was asked by a Uyghur police officer to go back to Pakistan and spy on exiled Uyghur groups for the Chinese government.

“The day I completed my detention, three police officers, two Han Chinese and one Uyghur came to visit me,” he said.

Spying request

Abdurahman’s allegations come after Swedish security police charged a 61-year-old ethnic Uyghur man with spying for China in June, and expelled a Chinese diplomat from Stockholm, which is home to a large ethnic Uyghur community.

Exiled Uyghur groups say that China prefers to employ Uyghurs to spy on other Uyghurs because Han Chinese with a strong understanding of Uyghur language and culture are rare.

Abdurahman said the Uyghur police officer who approached him said he had paid the 5,000 yuan fine on his behalf.

“He asked me to be their friend and cooperate with them,” he said. “If I did, I would be allowed to travel freely throughout China, and my business and family visits would go more smoothly.”

Adburahman said he had agreed to cooperate in order to get out of his immediate situation, but that he had since refused to accept two subsequent phone calls.

“One of my duties was to join the Omer Uyghur Trust and report their activities, and the second duty was to watch the Uyghur community in Pakistan and submit a list of people who had attended or who might attend anti-Chinese activities,” he said.

Repeated bids to close

The Omer Uyghur Trust is a cultural organization based in Pakistan, set up with the aim of educating exiled Uyghur youth about their own culture.

The organizers say that Beijing has made repeated attempts to have the group shut down, mostly through the use of diplomatic pressure on Pakistan.

“The attempt was supported by government officials, but the courts rejected it, so we are continuing to walk towards our goal,” the group’s founder, Omer, said.

Pakistani-based Uyghurs said Abdurahman wasn’t the first to be harassed by police on visits to China.

“We have a list of Uyghurs who have been targets of threats and attempts at coercion into spying [for China],” said Akber, who is currently head of the Uyghur Trust.

“There are females and older persons among them,” he said.

“One guy, Imin Niyaz, was tortured badly. He didn’t feel safe after his return to Pakistan, so he moved to Afghanistan and is living there now,” he said.

“Abdurahman…is the only one who has revealed to the media what he encountered [in China],” Akber added.

Deadly clashes

Fierce clashes in the Xinjiang region in July between the local Muslim Uyghur community and China’s majority Han ethnic group left 197 people dead and more than 1,600 injured, according to an official toll.

China said Nov. 10 it had executed nine people over the unrest.

According to statements by the Xinjiang government, those executed included eight Uyghurs and one Han Chinese. A total of 21 people were convicted in October.

Uyghurs declared a short-lived East Turkestan Republic in Xinjiang in the late 1930s and 40s but have been ruled by Beijing, which many bitterly oppose, since 1949.

Beijing blames Uyghur separatists for sporadic bombings and other violence in the Xinjiang region.

But international rights groups have accused Beijing of using the U.S. “war on terror” as a pretext to crack down on nonviolent supporters of Uyghur independence.

Original reporting and translation by Shohret Hoshur for RFA’s Uyghur service. Director: Dolkun Kamberi. Written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

Copyright © 1998-2009 Radio Free Asia. All rights reserved.

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/spy-for-china-12022009093045.html

December 4, 2009