1/24/2009
Police Raid in Munich
By Holger Stark
German investigators on Tuesday morning searched the residences of four suspected Chinese spies. According to information obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE, the suspects had been spying on Munich's Uighur community on orders from the Chinese government.
Unlike China's imposing embassy in Berlin, the general consulate in Munich is no symbol of power. The representative office in the Bavarian capital is located in the upmarket district of Neuhausen in an inconspicouous corner building close to Nymphenburg Palace.
If you believe the consulate's own PR, the institution deals with pleasant issues such as business and travel visas, the Olympic Games or German-Chinese trade relations. But if German investigators are to be believed, this idyll is merely a facade behind which the Chinese intelligence service is operating a network of spies.
On Tuesday morning, officers from Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office and the Bavarian police searched the homes of four Chinese nationals in the Munich area, SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned. They are under suspicion of being intelligence service agents for the Chinese government tasked with spying on Munich's large expatriate community of Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic minority in China that has been engaging in violent protests this year against perceived discrimination.
A Center for Expatriate Uighurs
Several hundred Uighurs live in exile in Munich, and many of them are politically active. Munich has one of the world's largest exile communities of Uighurs and the World Uighur Congress is based there. The government in Beijing is interested in everything the Uighurs think, talk about or plan. The Uighurs are one of the "five poisons" the Communist government is fighting against with all the means at its disposal.
To read the article in full, please click on:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,663090,00.html
Showing posts with label Uighurs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Uighurs. Show all posts
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Who Are the Six Uighurs Released From Guantánamo to Palau?
by Andy Worthington, November 04, 2009
http://original.antiwar.com/worthington/2009/11/03/who-are-the-six-uighurs-released/
Over the weekend, six of the remaining 13 Uighurs in Guantánamo – Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province – were released to resume new lives in the tiny Pacific nation of Palau (population: 20,000).
I have written at length about the plight of Guantánamo’s Uighurs, innocent men caught up in the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, who were mostly seized and sold to U.S. forces by Pakistani villagers after fleeing a settlement in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains where they had been living Spartan lives for several months, free from Chinese oppression.
Some were hoping to make their way to Turkey, to find work, but had found their way hard and had been advised to seek out the settlement; others nursed futile dreams of rising up against the Chinese government, and, while working to make the settlement habitable, occasionally shot a few rounds on their only weapon, an aged Kalashnikov.
I have also written about how the U.S. authorities knew, almost immediately, that these men had no connection to either al-Qaeda or the Taliban, but how, nevertheless, they flew them to Guantánamo, allowed Chinese interrogators to visit them, and tried, in their tribunals at Guantánamo, to make out that they were connected to a Uighur separatist group, which obligingly had been designated by the Bush administration as a terrorist group to secure leverage with the Chinese government in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.
Article continued on :
http://merryabla64.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/who-are-the-six-uighurs-released-from-guantanamo-to-palau/
http://original.antiwar.com/worthington/2009/11/03/who-are-the-six-uighurs-released/
Over the weekend, six of the remaining 13 Uighurs in Guantánamo – Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province – were released to resume new lives in the tiny Pacific nation of Palau (population: 20,000).
I have written at length about the plight of Guantánamo’s Uighurs, innocent men caught up in the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, who were mostly seized and sold to U.S. forces by Pakistani villagers after fleeing a settlement in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains where they had been living Spartan lives for several months, free from Chinese oppression.
Some were hoping to make their way to Turkey, to find work, but had found their way hard and had been advised to seek out the settlement; others nursed futile dreams of rising up against the Chinese government, and, while working to make the settlement habitable, occasionally shot a few rounds on their only weapon, an aged Kalashnikov.
I have also written about how the U.S. authorities knew, almost immediately, that these men had no connection to either al-Qaeda or the Taliban, but how, nevertheless, they flew them to Guantánamo, allowed Chinese interrogators to visit them, and tried, in their tribunals at Guantánamo, to make out that they were connected to a Uighur separatist group, which obligingly had been designated by the Bush administration as a terrorist group to secure leverage with the Chinese government in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.
Article continued on :
http://merryabla64.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/who-are-the-six-uighurs-released-from-guantanamo-to-palau/
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
Iraqi Turkmens commemorated the massacre of Uighurs by the Chinese authorities
Turkmens gathered in Avcı Mosque in Kerkuk (Iraq) on 17/07/2009 to commemorate the massacre of their Uighur brethren by the Chinese authorities.Kerkükte'ten Dogu Türkistan'a destek!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdpZueCjIME
Iraqi Turkmen Front (Irak Türkmen Cephesi) Representatives from Europe and the Middle East
Turkey: Mr. Saadun Köprülü,
U.K.: Mrs. Sündüs Abbas
Belgium: Dr. Hassan Aydinli
Germany: Mr. Ghanem Authman
Syria : Dr. Suphı N. Tavfık
were in Iraq (Kerkuk) to take part in the commemorations (14th-20th July) of the 50th anniversary of the massacre of Iraqi Turkmen leaders by communist Kurds in Kerkuk on 14th July 1959.
They visited the Turkmen town of Taza Khurmatu where the inhabitants were targeted in a car bomb explosion outside a mosque on June 20th 2009. Many Turkmens were killed and hundreds were severely wounded and had to be airlifted to hospitals in Turkey for treatment. The explosion also caused the destruction of the town center, leaving hundreds of people homeless.
Please see: http://turkmenfriendship.blogspot.com/2009/06/bomb-explosion-in-turkmen-city-of-taza.html
On 17th July, Turkmens gathered in Avcı Mosque in Kerkuk to commemorate the Uighur victims who were killed by the Chinese authorities in East Turkestan and to show their solidarity with their Uighur brothers who, like them, continue to suffer from ethnic cleansing.
Friday, 11 July 2008
FIVE UYGHURS KILLED IN RAID IN CHINA
Radio Free Asia (10.07.2008)
—Chinese police used smoke to force open a flat in the restive northwestern region of Xinjiang before shooting dead five ethnic Uyghurs inside who the official media said were planning a “holy war,” a witness to the incident has said. “They threw a smoke bomb at the apartment. Then police got into the apartment and during this time one of the police was hurt by the one of the Uyghurs,” a neighbor and witness said. “After this first injury, the police began to fire their guns.
Five of the Uyghurs ended up dead. Women were also occupying the apartment at this time. All of these Uyghurs were young men and women,” the man, who asked to be identified only as Duan, said. “They were only equipped with knives,” he said of the Uyghurs. “Now the situation is pretty peaceful in our neighborhood and normal. The police told us that they were terrorists.”
On Tuesday, July 8, police in the Xinjiang capital, Urumqi, raided an apartment where 15 Uyghurs—a distinct Muslim minority—were hiding, the official Xinhua news agency said. It said they had rushed out wielding knives and shouting “sacrifice for Allah.” Police opened fire, killing five and injuring two, Xinhua said. The incident comes just weeks before the opening of the Beijing Olympics under extremely tight security. “The injured were sent to hospital and the other nine people were captured,” it quoted a police officer as saying. “The suspects confessed they had all received training on the launching of a ‘holy war.’ Their aim was to kill Han people, the most populous ethnic group in China whom they took as heretics, and found their own state,” it said.
‘Terrorist actions’
A Uyghur police officer, contacted by telephone, said only that the raid was “related to terrorist actions.” He said he didn’t know where the nine Uyghurs who were arrested or the two who were wounded were being held. Another neighbor who asked to be identified as Li confirmed the five shooting deaths but downplayed its significance. “It was an ordinary robbery case. Let’s not exaggerate it,” he said, adding that he believed the use of deadly force was appropriate. Another neighbor described the area as peaceful, with Uyghurs accounting for about 30 percent of the population of the building. “The environment is pretty good,” he said, adding that he had never witnessed tensions between Han Chinese and Uyghur residents.
A police officer also reported that Xinjiang police had recently stepped up their own security. “We have even been afraid to take a siesta,” he said. Asked if they were feared retaliation, he replied, “Yes.” An officer on duty at the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau denied any knowledge of the incident. “I cannot talk about these things,” the officer said. “I don’t know anything about it.” He then hung up the phone.
Long history
Dilxat Raxit, exiled spokesman of the World Uyghur Congress, sharply criticized the shootings. “To shoot and kill has become a new method of cracking down on Uyghurs in China. We call on the United Nations to send international lawyers and give effective legal assistance to those Uyghurs in detention so that the truth can be known,” he said. Uyghurs, like Tibetans, have a long history under Beijing’s heavy-handed rule-which has at times erupted in violence. But exiled Uyghurs deny the existence of an organized terrorist campaign and say previous incidents have been fabricated or exaggerated to secure international support for a crackdown.
In March, Chinese authorities said they had broken up and arrested members of a group that were threatening to sabotage the Beijing Olympics. China has waged a campaign over the last decade against what it says are violent separatists and Islamic extremists who aim to establish an independent state in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which shares a border with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia.
After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Beijing took the position that Uyghur groups were connected with al-Qaeda and that one group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), was a “major component of the terrorist network headed by Osama bin Laden.” The ETIM has denied that charge.
Original reporting by RFA’s Mandarin, Cantonese, and Uyghur services. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Cantonese service director: Shiny Li. Uyghur service director: Dolkun Kamberi. Written and produced in English by Sarah Jackson-Han.
—Chinese police used smoke to force open a flat in the restive northwestern region of Xinjiang before shooting dead five ethnic Uyghurs inside who the official media said were planning a “holy war,” a witness to the incident has said. “They threw a smoke bomb at the apartment. Then police got into the apartment and during this time one of the police was hurt by the one of the Uyghurs,” a neighbor and witness said. “After this first injury, the police began to fire their guns.
Five of the Uyghurs ended up dead. Women were also occupying the apartment at this time. All of these Uyghurs were young men and women,” the man, who asked to be identified only as Duan, said. “They were only equipped with knives,” he said of the Uyghurs. “Now the situation is pretty peaceful in our neighborhood and normal. The police told us that they were terrorists.”
On Tuesday, July 8, police in the Xinjiang capital, Urumqi, raided an apartment where 15 Uyghurs—a distinct Muslim minority—were hiding, the official Xinhua news agency said. It said they had rushed out wielding knives and shouting “sacrifice for Allah.” Police opened fire, killing five and injuring two, Xinhua said. The incident comes just weeks before the opening of the Beijing Olympics under extremely tight security. “The injured were sent to hospital and the other nine people were captured,” it quoted a police officer as saying. “The suspects confessed they had all received training on the launching of a ‘holy war.’ Their aim was to kill Han people, the most populous ethnic group in China whom they took as heretics, and found their own state,” it said.
‘Terrorist actions’
A Uyghur police officer, contacted by telephone, said only that the raid was “related to terrorist actions.” He said he didn’t know where the nine Uyghurs who were arrested or the two who were wounded were being held. Another neighbor who asked to be identified as Li confirmed the five shooting deaths but downplayed its significance. “It was an ordinary robbery case. Let’s not exaggerate it,” he said, adding that he believed the use of deadly force was appropriate. Another neighbor described the area as peaceful, with Uyghurs accounting for about 30 percent of the population of the building. “The environment is pretty good,” he said, adding that he had never witnessed tensions between Han Chinese and Uyghur residents.
A police officer also reported that Xinjiang police had recently stepped up their own security. “We have even been afraid to take a siesta,” he said. Asked if they were feared retaliation, he replied, “Yes.” An officer on duty at the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau denied any knowledge of the incident. “I cannot talk about these things,” the officer said. “I don’t know anything about it.” He then hung up the phone.
Long history
Dilxat Raxit, exiled spokesman of the World Uyghur Congress, sharply criticized the shootings. “To shoot and kill has become a new method of cracking down on Uyghurs in China. We call on the United Nations to send international lawyers and give effective legal assistance to those Uyghurs in detention so that the truth can be known,” he said. Uyghurs, like Tibetans, have a long history under Beijing’s heavy-handed rule-which has at times erupted in violence. But exiled Uyghurs deny the existence of an organized terrorist campaign and say previous incidents have been fabricated or exaggerated to secure international support for a crackdown.
In March, Chinese authorities said they had broken up and arrested members of a group that were threatening to sabotage the Beijing Olympics. China has waged a campaign over the last decade against what it says are violent separatists and Islamic extremists who aim to establish an independent state in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which shares a border with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia.
After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Beijing took the position that Uyghur groups were connected with al-Qaeda and that one group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), was a “major component of the terrorist network headed by Osama bin Laden.” The ETIM has denied that charge.
Original reporting by RFA’s Mandarin, Cantonese, and Uyghur services. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Cantonese service director: Shiny Li. Uyghur service director: Dolkun Kamberi. Written and produced in English by Sarah Jackson-Han.
Tuesday, 1 July 2008
Uighurs at Guantanamo
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Uighurs at Guantanamo
By Joanne Mariner,
terrorism and counterterrorism director, published in FindLaw
June 30, 2008
In a ruling that is years late, but is nonetheless brave and important, a federal appellate court held last week that a prisoner at Guantanamo has been wrongly deemed an “enemy combatant.” Huzaifa Parhat, the prisoner whose fate was at issue in the case, has been in US custody at Guantanamo for over six years.Parhat is an ethnic Uighur, part of a Muslim minority from western China.
Like the 16 other Uighurs who remain in military detention at Guantanamo, Parhat claims that he was never a combatant and that he ended up in US custody by mistake. Parhat says that he was living with a group of other Uighurs in Afghanistan when the 2001 war started, that his group was led across the border to Pakistan, and that the Pakistanis sold them to the United States for a bounty. US officials realized pretty quickly that the Uighurs were no threat. Indeed, Parhat and others were reportedly determined to be eligible for release from Guantanamo more than four years ago. The reason that they remained at Guantanamo was that they could not return to their home country, and no other country—including the United States—would agree to accept them. Parhat and the other Uighurs would risk serious persecution if returned to China. Since their continued imprisonment at Guantanamo represents an unjustifiable wrong, and they have nowhere else to go, they should be paroled into the United States.
Chinese Fears of “Splittism”
Uighurs in China face imprisonment, torture, and even execution for what the Chinese government deems to be “separatism” or “splittism.” Having fled to Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban would be sufficient, under the Chinese government’s standards, for the 17 Uighurs at Guantanamo to be viewed as a dangerous threat. The Uighur population of western China is under tight Chinese control. Because the Chinese fear that ethnic Uighurs want independence for their region of the country, the government has taken draconian steps to repress Uighur nationalist sentiment. As Islam is perceived as underpinning Uighur ethnic identity, the government also represses most outward expressions of Islam. For Uighurs to celebrate Muslim religious holidays, study religious texts, or show their religious identity through their personal appearance are acts that are strictly forbidden at state institutions, including schools.
The Chinese government vets who can be a cleric, what version of the Koran is acceptable, where religious gatherings may be held, and what may be said at such gatherings. Even the most peaceful Uighur activists, if they practice their religion in a way that the authorities deem inappropriate, face potential arrest and torture. Whether to Return the Uighurs to the Chinese US officials have made it clear that they will not send any of the Uighurs to China, but this option was once deemed within the range of possibility.
In a document that was released via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, an unnamed FBI official who worked at Guantanamo in late 2002/early 2003 mentioned the idea. “At the time of my TDY [temporary duty at Guantanamo],” he said, “US officials were considering whether to return the Uighurs to the Chinese, possibly to gain support for anticipated US action in the Middle East. The Uighur detainees at GTMO were convinced that they would be immediately executed if they were returned to China.” The next paragraph in the document was entirely censored. In a document contained in an earlier FOIA release, an unnamed FBI official described an interview with a Uighur detainee, stating that “[CENSORED] advised that he still has faith and trust in America and please do not return him to [CENSORED].”
The censor’s codes show that the first excision in the sentence was made to hide a person’s name, but that second excision was made because the information that would have been revealed—no doubt the word “China”—was considered classified. It is sad that US classification authority was used to protect the Chinese from embarrassment.
While no Uighurs were ever returned to China—and in fact the US managed to convince Albania to take five of them in 2006—the US did allow Chinese officials to visit Guantanamo at one point and interrogate the Uighur detainees. “They didn’t treat me good,” one Uighur explained, when asked about the visit in a 2004 administrative proceeding. Saying that the Chinese officials made threats, he described how they photographed him and said that he and the other Uighurs were going to be sent back to China.
Walking in Circles
The appellate court’s opinion in Parhat’s case has not yet been released because it, too, contains classified information, but a redacted version is being prepared. Importantly, in the one-page order that has so far been released, the court told the government either to release or transfer Parhat, or—in what would be a pointless and agonizing exercise at this point—to hold a new set of administrative proceedings for him. In the meantime, Parhat is living a life of useless tedium. He recently described his daily routine to his lawyer, who wrote:
Wake at 4:30 or 5:00. Pray. Go back to sleep. Walk in circles—north, south, east, west—around his 6-by-12 foot cell for an hour. Go back to sleep for another two or more hours. Wake up and read the Koran or look at a magazine (written in a language that he does not understand). Pray. Walk in circles once more. Eat lunch. Pray. Walk in circles. Pray. Walk in circles or look at a magazine (again, in a foreign language). Go back to sleep at 10:00 p.m.
Abdusemet, another Uighur at Guantanamo, has described days on end of doing nothing more than eating, praying, pacing, and sitting on his bed. “I am starting to hear voices, sometimes. There is no one to talk to all day in my cell and I hear these voices,” Abdusemet told his lawyer, worriedly. “What did we do?” he asked. “Why do they hate us so much?”
Uighurs at Guantanamo
By Joanne Mariner,
terrorism and counterterrorism director, published in FindLaw
June 30, 2008
In a ruling that is years late, but is nonetheless brave and important, a federal appellate court held last week that a prisoner at Guantanamo has been wrongly deemed an “enemy combatant.” Huzaifa Parhat, the prisoner whose fate was at issue in the case, has been in US custody at Guantanamo for over six years.Parhat is an ethnic Uighur, part of a Muslim minority from western China.
Like the 16 other Uighurs who remain in military detention at Guantanamo, Parhat claims that he was never a combatant and that he ended up in US custody by mistake. Parhat says that he was living with a group of other Uighurs in Afghanistan when the 2001 war started, that his group was led across the border to Pakistan, and that the Pakistanis sold them to the United States for a bounty. US officials realized pretty quickly that the Uighurs were no threat. Indeed, Parhat and others were reportedly determined to be eligible for release from Guantanamo more than four years ago. The reason that they remained at Guantanamo was that they could not return to their home country, and no other country—including the United States—would agree to accept them. Parhat and the other Uighurs would risk serious persecution if returned to China. Since their continued imprisonment at Guantanamo represents an unjustifiable wrong, and they have nowhere else to go, they should be paroled into the United States.
Chinese Fears of “Splittism”
Uighurs in China face imprisonment, torture, and even execution for what the Chinese government deems to be “separatism” or “splittism.” Having fled to Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban would be sufficient, under the Chinese government’s standards, for the 17 Uighurs at Guantanamo to be viewed as a dangerous threat. The Uighur population of western China is under tight Chinese control. Because the Chinese fear that ethnic Uighurs want independence for their region of the country, the government has taken draconian steps to repress Uighur nationalist sentiment. As Islam is perceived as underpinning Uighur ethnic identity, the government also represses most outward expressions of Islam. For Uighurs to celebrate Muslim religious holidays, study religious texts, or show their religious identity through their personal appearance are acts that are strictly forbidden at state institutions, including schools.
The Chinese government vets who can be a cleric, what version of the Koran is acceptable, where religious gatherings may be held, and what may be said at such gatherings. Even the most peaceful Uighur activists, if they practice their religion in a way that the authorities deem inappropriate, face potential arrest and torture. Whether to Return the Uighurs to the Chinese US officials have made it clear that they will not send any of the Uighurs to China, but this option was once deemed within the range of possibility.
In a document that was released via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, an unnamed FBI official who worked at Guantanamo in late 2002/early 2003 mentioned the idea. “At the time of my TDY [temporary duty at Guantanamo],” he said, “US officials were considering whether to return the Uighurs to the Chinese, possibly to gain support for anticipated US action in the Middle East. The Uighur detainees at GTMO were convinced that they would be immediately executed if they were returned to China.” The next paragraph in the document was entirely censored. In a document contained in an earlier FOIA release, an unnamed FBI official described an interview with a Uighur detainee, stating that “[CENSORED] advised that he still has faith and trust in America and please do not return him to [CENSORED].”
The censor’s codes show that the first excision in the sentence was made to hide a person’s name, but that second excision was made because the information that would have been revealed—no doubt the word “China”—was considered classified. It is sad that US classification authority was used to protect the Chinese from embarrassment.
While no Uighurs were ever returned to China—and in fact the US managed to convince Albania to take five of them in 2006—the US did allow Chinese officials to visit Guantanamo at one point and interrogate the Uighur detainees. “They didn’t treat me good,” one Uighur explained, when asked about the visit in a 2004 administrative proceeding. Saying that the Chinese officials made threats, he described how they photographed him and said that he and the other Uighurs were going to be sent back to China.
Walking in Circles
The appellate court’s opinion in Parhat’s case has not yet been released because it, too, contains classified information, but a redacted version is being prepared. Importantly, in the one-page order that has so far been released, the court told the government either to release or transfer Parhat, or—in what would be a pointless and agonizing exercise at this point—to hold a new set of administrative proceedings for him. In the meantime, Parhat is living a life of useless tedium. He recently described his daily routine to his lawyer, who wrote:
Wake at 4:30 or 5:00. Pray. Go back to sleep. Walk in circles—north, south, east, west—around his 6-by-12 foot cell for an hour. Go back to sleep for another two or more hours. Wake up and read the Koran or look at a magazine (written in a language that he does not understand). Pray. Walk in circles once more. Eat lunch. Pray. Walk in circles. Pray. Walk in circles or look at a magazine (again, in a foreign language). Go back to sleep at 10:00 p.m.
Abdusemet, another Uighur at Guantanamo, has described days on end of doing nothing more than eating, praying, pacing, and sitting on his bed. “I am starting to hear voices, sometimes. There is no one to talk to all day in my cell and I hear these voices,” Abdusemet told his lawyer, worriedly. “What did we do?” he asked. “Why do they hate us so much?”
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