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Monday, August 31, 2009

[chottala.com] China: Uighur exile airs prison killing allegation



Uighur exile airs prison killing allegation

 
Rebiya Kadeer, the leader of China's Uighur minority in exile, is pictured here in Melbourne on August 8. Kadeer has highlighted a report that nearly 200 inmates were "tortured" to death in prison.

Rebiya Kadeer, the leader of China's Uighur minority in exile, has highlighted a report that nearly 200 inmates were "tortured" to death in prison.

The allegations came as a war of words intensifies between Beijing and the 62-year-old former businesswoman. China has accused her of instigating recent unrest in northwestern Xinjiang region, charges she adamantly denies.

AFP/File – Chinese paramilitary police patrol a street in the Uighur district of Urumqi in China's Xinjiang …

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Rebiya Kadeer, the leader of China's Uighur minority in exile, has highlighted a report that nearly 200 inmates were "tortured" to death in prison.

The allegations came as a war of words intensifies between Beijing and the 62-year-old former businesswoman. China has accused her of instigating recent unrest in northwestern Xinjiang region, charges she adamantly denies.

Kadeer, who lives in the Washington area, said Monday she received a fax from a Uighur policeman who fled to nearby Kyrgyzstan and gave a grim account of Urumbay prison south of the city of Urumqi.

The policeman said that 196 Uighurs detained in a clampdown in the region "were tortured and killed" at the detention center, according to Kadeer.

"One of the Uighurs, named Erkin, couldn't stand the torture and killed himself," she said during a recording of a segment on the current affairs cable network C-Span about her memoir, "Dragon Fighter," which was published in May.

The World Uighur Congress leader said it was impossible to verify the account as phone lines had been cut.

"I'm sure that as soon as this is made public, China will say that it's not true," she said. "We cannot prove it because everything is down."

China's worst ethnic violence in decades broke out on July 5 in Urumqi, pitting Han Chinese against Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking and predominantly Muslim people. At least 197 people died, according to official figures.

Local officials on Tuesday denied a front page report in the state-run China Daily that the People's Intermediate Court in Urumqi was preparing to place more than 200 people on trial amid tight security.

"At present, there is no scheduled date for the trial," Xinjiang government spokesman Li Hua told AFP about the report published Monday.

"I don't know how China Daily got that information, but it's not true. We will announce it to the media when there is a trial."

Kadeer, who spent some six years in a Chinese prison before her release under US pressure in 2005, denounced the China Daily report as "another sham to deceive the world about what's actually going on behind closed doors."

The Chinese government, she said, "already decides the lawyers who are going to 'defend' the Uighurs."

Lawyers who do not act in accordance with the Chinese government's expectations, "will suffer the same fate as those being tried," she added.

Kadeer voiced appreciation for the receptions she received on recent visits to Japan and Australia, which came despite Chinese pressure to block her entry. She said she was startled at the number of reporters who showed up to her news conference in Australia.

"I have never been hopeless in my life," said the mother of 11. "I believe that democratic societies will not just watch this happen, because our movement is peaceful."

China on Saturday freed high-profile activists in a sudden move that came shortly after the new US ambassador, Jon Huntsman, arrived in Beijing and said that President Barack Obama would visit in November.

Among those freed was Ilham Tohti, a Beijing-based academic who was apparently detained over his website Uighur Online, which included writings on the unrest in Xinjiang.

In an interview with Radio Free Asia, Tohti said that police knocked on his door late Monday to warn him against speaking out about how the violence was handled.

"They told me I could soon be sentenced -- be sentenced to death, be 'dealt with,'" Tohti said.

The Uighur activist said he was detained partly at his home but for two weeks was held at a hotel.

The police were "courteous" and "civilized," Tohti said, but grilled him endlessly at the hotel, where he spent more than 20 hours a day with three or four policemen.

"I was unable to tell day from night. My head was spinning," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090825/wl_asia_afp/chinaunrestxinjiangkadeerus

An ethnic minority Chinese resident walks past a checkpoint with heavily armed paramilitary police along a street of Urumqi, northwestern China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Monday.

Associated Press

 

Related:

http://www.bangladeshnews24.com/nayadiganta/newspaper/2009/08/26/news0308.php

UNPO Press Release on Kadeer 's Visit to Brussels

UNPO - ‎21 minutes ago‎
 
The Uyghur activist Ms. Rebiya Kadeer will be visiting the European Parliament in Brussels to address the Subcommittee on Human Rights.
Notes
Ms. Kadeer was jailed for six years because of her nonviolent activism on behalf of Uyghurs and many of her children that remain in East Turkestan have been the target of retribution. Her life and struggle has been documented in a film, 'The 10 Conditions of Love' and Ms. Kadeer was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and was awarded the Rafto Memorial Prize for Human Rights in 2004.

UNPO is an international, nonviolent, and democratic membership organisation. Its members are indigenous peoples, minorities, and unrecognised or occupied territories who have joined together to protect and promote their human and cultural rights.

China denies Xinjiang inmates killed: state media - Yahoo! News

... that nearly 200 inmates were killed in a prison in the restive Xinjiang region, ... The Global Times carried the denial two days after Rebiya Kadeer, .... The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, ...
news.yahoo.com/.../afp/20090826/...afp/chinaunrestxinjiangkadeerus_20090826065106
 
 



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