| 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. |
Posts Tagged ‘China’
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.
President Hu skips G8 over China unrest
July 8, 2009
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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?
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
Image :1 of 3
Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo formally arrested
June 24, 2009Times Online/UK, June 24, 2009
(Unknown)
Liu Xiaobo
Jane Macartney in Beijing
Palau to take Guantanamo Uighurs
June 10, 2009| Al Jazeera, June 10, 2009 |
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The tiny Pacific island nation of Palau has agreed to a US request to temporarily resettle 17 Chinese Muslim ethnic Uighurs held at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre for more than seven years. In a statement on Wednesday Johnson Toribiong, the country’s president, said he had agreed to resettle the Uighur detainees “subject to periodic review”. The 17 were cleared for release from Guantanamo four years ago after US officials ruled there was no evidence to hold them as “enemy combatants”. Last year a US federal judge ordered the men released into the US, but an appeals court halted the order, and they have been in legal limbo ever since. The US state department has said the Uighurs cannot be returned to China, despite requests from Beijing that they be handed over, because of fears they will face persecution and possible execution. Instead US officials have been trying to find a third country willing to take them in, but in the meantime they have been kept in Guantanamo, spending up to 22 hours a day locked in their cells. ‘Injustice’
In 2006 Albania agreed to accept five Uighur detainees from Guantanamo, but has said it will not take others due to fears of possible diplomatic repercussions from China, one of its main trading partners and investors.Germany had been considered a possible destination as it has a large Uighur community, but no agreement was reached. Last month two US congressmen called for the Uighur men to be allowed to resettle within the Uighur community in the US, saying that their continued detention without trial and after being cleared of any wrongdoing was an injustice. However, that call was met with fierce opposition from other members of congress. Earlier this month Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, formally asked Palau to accept some or all of the detainees. In a statement on Wednesday Toribiong, the Palau president, said his country was “honoured and proud that the United States has asked Palau to assist with such a critical task”. “Palau’s accommodation to accept the temporary resettlement of these detainees is a humanitarian gesture intended to help them be freed of any further unnecessary incarceration and to restart their lives in as normal a fashion as possible,” he said. Toribiong said Palau officials would travel to review the situation at Guantanamo Bay, which Barack Obama, the US president, has said he intends to close. Palau, with a population estimated at about 21,000 is one of the world’s smallest and youngest countries having gained its independence in October 1994. Trusteeship Prior to that date it was governed as a United Nations trusteeship administered by the US, which remains responsible for Palau’s defence and the country’s principal source of aid. The country, made up of eight main islands and dozens of smaller islets, is located 800km east of the Philippines and 3,200km south of Tokyo. Palau is one of a handful of countries that does not recognise China and maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan. The Uighur detainees were captured by US forces mainly in Pakistan and Afghanistan during the war in Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001, attacks. Uighurs are mostly Turkic-speaking and Muslim, and many say they have long been repressed by the Chinese government. China says Uighur nationalists are leading a separatist movement in the country’s western Xinjiang region and are responsible for a series of terrorist attacks. |
China sentences rights activist to two years in prison
December 19, 2008Beijing – A Beijing court sentenced a rights activist to two years in prison on Thursday after convicting her of ‘obstructing public business,’ her husband said.
Dong Jiqin said he was not allowed into the courtroom to present his defence of his wife, Ni Yulan, who planned to appeal against the sentence.
’They didn’t let me in,’ Dong told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
He said Xicheng district court officials only allowed the couple’s adult daughter into the courtroom but apparently did not consider any of the evidence prepared in Ni’s defence.
’They didn’t let our daughter defend her [Ni] or accept her evidence,’ Dong said.
If she loses her appeal, Ni will have to serve the remaining 16 months of her two-year sentence after spending eight months in detention before the trial, he said.
Ni, 48, was arrested on April 15 when she tried to stop some two dozen people from knocking down a wall enclosing part of the yard outside their home, which they had refused to vacate for developers despite years of pressure and threats.
The police claimed that Ni caused serious injury to a worker while she was trying to stop them from damaging her property.
’This was an excuse to arrest her,’ Dong, 56, said in an earlier interview. ‘They didn’t have any evidence.’
The police later accused Ni of kicking an officer while in custody, he said.
The authorities did not allow Dong to visit Ni during her detention, but a lawyer who made several visits reported that she was in poor health and complained of mistreatment during police interviews.
Ni was left disabled following alleged abuses during an earlier spell of police detention.
Dong said their daughter was not allowed to speak to Ni on Thursday but reported that she appeared in poor health.
’My daughter saw her and said she was extremely thin,’ he said.
Ni’s career as a lawyer was first interrupted in 2002 when police illegally detained her for 75 days for filming a forced relocation.
During that detention, Dong said, Ni was beaten and not given medical treatment.
She was left with permanent back and leg injuries and now walks with the aid of crutches, he said.
Ni then lost her right to practise law following a criminal conviction in late 2002 on the same charge of ‘obstructing public business.’
Ni told her lawyer that the police had confiscated her crutches and made her crawl to use the bathroom during her latest detention, Dong said earlier.
Xicheng district authorities razed the family home last month as part of a local government redevelopment plan, following several years of wrangling over legal issues and compensation.
Hundreds of thousands of people have moved over the past 20 years to allow the demolition of most of Beijing’s traditional one-storey housing, which has made way for vast new commercial and residential complexes.
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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