| Islam Online, July , 9 2009
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Watching China’s 2008 Olympic Mascots jumping around in their colorful customs and fireworks lightning the sky of the massive country, you would be witnessing the bright side of the communist regime.On the other side stands a picture painted with red and green. In its dark green uniform, the Chinese army is filling up lakes with the blood of inhabitants of the Muslim-majority region of East Turkistan (Xinjiang) butchering 156 protestors, wounding hundreds, and arresting 1,400. Muslims in Xinjiang (Uighurs) have been suffering under the Chinese occupation for a long time. The region is rich with oil, gas reserves, and about 121 minerals out of the 148 that China produces. Accordingly, the communist regime has given itself a freehand to suppress the Muslim population, burn their Islamic books, tear down mosques, and work on erasing the Muslim identity off the region. The Chinese government has been ruling with iron fist for long time and all is taking place under the silence of the international community. Must it be that Xinjiang Muslims have a charismatic leader in exile like that of Buddhists of the Tibet to get international attention? What are the motives of the Chinese government? And who are the Xinjiang Muslims? IslamOnline.net presents this collective folder in an attempt to present a more comprehensive picture of the status of the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. |
Archive for the ‘Muslims’ Category
Xinjiang Muslims’ Struggle for Freedom
July 9, 2009Muslim states ‘deeply concerned’ by China unrest
July 8, 2009Middle East Online, July 7, 2009
At least 156 people were killed in Urumqi unrest
OIC deplores disproportionate use of force, firepower against China’s Muslim Uighurs.
JEDDAH – Muslim states said they were “deeply concerned” on Tuesday by riots which left at least 156 people dead in China’s Xinjiang region, where Muslim Uighurs form the largest ethnic group.
The Organisation of the Islamic Conference deplored the “disproportionate use of force,” calling upon Beijing to open an “honest probe over the seriously dangerous events and to bring those responsible to justice”.
“It seems from the huge number of civilian casualties that there has not been cautious and proportionate use of force and firepower,” the Jeddah-based grouping of 57 Muslim countries said in a statement.
It called on Beijing to address the “problem of Muslim groups and communities in China in a broad manner that would address the roots of the issue.”
At least 156 people were killed and more than 1,000 wounded when violence erupted in the capital of China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, Urumqi, on Sunday after decades of simmering tensions between Uighurs and Han Chinese.
Several human rights groups have expressed concern over the fate of 1,434 people who were taken into police custody, saying they could be tortured or mistreated.
What if the Uighurs were Christian rather than Muslim?
July 7, 2009By Glenn Greenwald
According to The New York Times this morning, violent clashes between Chinese government forces and Muslim Uighurs — that country’s long-oppressed minority — have left at least 140 people dead and close to 1,000 injured. This incident in Western China highlights an important fact about America’s “War on Terror.”
Just imagine if the Uighurs were a Christian — rather than Muslim — minority, battling against the tyrannical Communist regime in Beijing, resisting various types of persecution, and demanding religious freedom. They would be lionized by America’s Right, as similar Christian minorities, oppressed by tyrannical regimes, automatically are. Episodes like these — where a declared Tyranny like China violently acts against citizens with whom we empathize — are ones about which, in general, the American political class loves to sermonize.
But the Uighurs are Muslim, not Christian, and hostility towards them thus easily outweighs the opportunity they present to undermine the Chinese Government. Rather than support and venerate them, we instead spent this decade declaring them to be “enemy combatants” and locking them up in Guantanamo — despite the fact that they have never evinced any interest in doing anything other than resisting Chinese persecution, and have certainly never taken actions against the U.S. (as even the Bush administration ultimately admitted). Yet even now, both Congress and the administration actively block release into the U.S. even of those Uighurs we wrongfully imprisoned for years, while the Right screams with outrage — and fear — over the administration’s commendable efforts to find a home for them elsewhere.
For all the Serious analysis about the War on Terror, so much of it has been driven by nothing more complex or noble than sheer hostility towards Muslims. Muslims generally — not just Al Qaeda — replaced Communists as our New Enemy and became the new enabling force for our endless state of War and never-ending expansions of executive power. Rather obviously, the Uighurs were swept into the Enemy category solely by virtue of their status as Muslims. What more compelling evidence of that could be imagined than the fact that we imprisoned — and continue to imprison — people at Guantanamo whose only political interest is in resisting oppression by the Chinese government?
RIGHTS: Muslims Under Scrutiny Despite Waning of ‘Terror War’
July 7, 2009By Thalif Deen | Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 6 (IPS) – When the administration of President Barack Obama formally abandoned the longstanding U.S. “war on terror” – perceived by some as a codeword for “war against Islam” – there were hopes of a new relationship between the United States and the Muslim world after eight long years of political friction.
A significant shift in U.S. policy was also articulated by Obama when he told a predominantly Muslim audience in Egypt last month that “America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam.”
The sentiments he expressed, including an appeal for “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world”, were applauded globally.
But the ground realities, both in the United States and in Western Europe, have not caught up with the widespread political euphoria.
Riot police battle protesters as China’s Uighur crisis escalates
July 7, 2009Times Online/UK, July 7, 2009
(AP) A Uigher woman confronts armed police in Urumqi
Death toll in Uighur crackdown rockets to 140 and rising
July 6, 2009Times Online/UK, July 6, 2009
(Reuters/CCTV via Reuters TV )
A video grab from CCTV shows people turning over a police car in Urumqi, capital of China’s Xinjiang region where the ethnic unrest occurred on the weekend
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Detainee says he gave false story after harsh interrogation
June 17, 2009Suspected Sept. 11 organizer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told U.S. military officials he gave false information to the CIA even after undergoing…
By Julian E. Barnes and Greg Miller | The Seattle Times, June 16, 2009
Tribune Washington Bureau
Sept. 11 suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
WASHINGTON — Suspected Sept. 11 organizer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told U.S. military officials he gave false information to the CIA even after undergoing punishing bouts of interrogation, according to documents made public Monday, a claim likely to intensify the debate over the Bush administration’s use of harsh techniques to gain information from terrorism suspects.
Mohammed made the assertion during hearings held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where the militant leader was transferred in 2006 after being held at secret CIA sites since his capture in 2003.
“I make up stories,” Mohammed said, describing in broken English an interrogation likely administered by the CIA concerning the location of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden.
“Where is he? I don’t know. Then, he torture me,” Mohammed said. “Then I said, ‘Yes, he is in this area.’ ”
The admission could amplify calls for the Obama administration to make public more information about the abuse of detainees or to allow a broader inquiry into the Bush administration’s interrogation policies. Monday’s disclosure, representing the first allegation by a detainee that he lied while being subjected to harsh practices, also could raise more questions about the effectiveness of the techniques.
The transcripts were released as part of a lawsuit in which the American Civil Liberties Union is seeking documents and details of the government’s terrorism-detainee programs.
Previous accounts of the military tribunal hearings had been made public, but the Obama administration reviewed the still-secret sections and determined that more could be released.
Most of the new material centers on the detainees’ claims of abuse during interrogations while being held overseas in CIA custody.
One detainee, Abu Zubaydah, told the tribunal that after months “of suffering and torture, physically and mentally, they did not care about my injuries.”
Zubaydah was the first detainee subjected to Bush administration-approved harsh interrogation techniques, which included a simulated form of drowning known as waterboarding, slamming the suspect into walls and prolonged periods of nudity.
Zubaydah claimed in the hearing that he “nearly died four times.”
Peace and Justice Post 
The Uighurs and China: lost and found nation
July 9, 2009Yitzhak Shichor, Open Democracy, July 6, 2009
The broader roots of the eruption of protest in China’s far-west region of Xinjiang lie in the experience of the Uighur people under Beijing’s rule, says Yitzhak Shichor.
The reports of violence and deaths in the city of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province in northwest China, draw renewed attention to this comparatively neglected region of China and of central Asia. The exact details of what happened there on the night of 5-6 July 2009 are unclear and (inevitably) disputed, though the background may include the assaults on Uighur migrant workers at a toy factory in Guangdong province on 26 June (in which two are reported dead and dozens injured).
Continued >>
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Tags:China, independence, turmoil in Urumqi, Uighur diaspora, Uighur migrant workers, Urumqi, World Uighur Congress, Xinjiang, Yitzhak Shichor
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