Uyghur1.com

Pakistan Uyghurs in Hiding
Source: RFA 2010-04-06

Brothers blame raids and arrests on pressure from China.

HONG KONG—Two prominent members of the exiled Turkic-speaking Uyghur community, many of whom oppose Chinese rule in their homeland, are on the run from the authorities following police raids on their homes.

Omer Khan observes the 12th anniversary of the Ghulja Massacre, Feb. 5, 2009.

Omer and Akbar Khan, who co-founded a charity to teach Pakistani Uyghurs their own language in the northern city of Rawalpindi, said they had fled from police after neighbors told them their close relatives had been detained for several hours

“We didn’t do anything wrong, but we have decided to stay away from the police for some time, because of the unknown fate of two other guys [we know],” said Omer Khan, 35, who recently applied for a Belgian visa to attend a training program for Uyghur activists outside China.

“A few other Uyghurs were arrested and disappeared last year,” Omer Khan said.

Police detained the Khans’ 52-year-old father and 50-year-old mother, along with their two younger brothers, aged 15 and 18, according to a Uyghur source who asked not to be named.

According to a neighbor, the Khan family was released after 10 hours in detention.

“The raid was so harsh,” one neighbor said.

“The two brothers’ faces were forcibly covered as they were being pushed to the police car.”

Pressure from China

The brothers blame China, rather than their adopted homeland, and say the raid came in response to pressure from Beijing on the Pakistani authorities to step up pressure on Uyghur exiles, many of whom are vocal campaigners for independence for the northwestern region of Xinjiang.

“We believe that all this is happening under instructions from the Chinese government,” Akbar Khan said.

The brothers said Pakistani authorities also detained Abdul Haliq, 29, on March 22, while Memet Rozi, 80, and Eneyetullah, 28, were detained March 26.

Omer Khan, who said his house was searched March 31, added: “They don’t like Uyghurs to undertake organized and established activities, whether they are social, cultural, or political.”

He said the Khan brothers were in regular communication with the president of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, Rebiya Kadeer.

“Ms. Kadeer always encourages us to protect our national identity. Maybe this also makes the Chinese government upset,” Omer Khan said.

Training planned

The Khan brothers had planned to attend a meeting in Belgium from April 25-27 which offered training for Uyghur activists around the world.

“This also may have made the Chinese government upset. In short, being a Uyghur makes the Chinese government uncomfortable,” Omer Khan said.

He said those Uyghurs already detained in Pakistan had all been close to Kadeer, whom Beijing blames for instigating deadly ethnic riots in the regional capital of Urumqi last July.

Pakistan is home to around 1,000 Uyghur families, mostly those who left China during the 1950s and 60s.

Last December, Xinjiang authorities detained Pakistani Uyghur Kamirdin Abdurahman on suspicion of “harming public order,” before asking him to infiltrate Uyghur groups back in Pakistan.

Uyghur exiles fear surveillance once they leave China, especially if they have left family behind, and they say their fears have worsened since deadly ethnic riots last July—which prompted a major security crackdown.

Xinjiang has been plagued in recent years by bombings, attacks, and riots that Chinese authorities blame on Uyghur separatists.

Cambodian case

Cambodian authorities in December returned to China a group of ethnic Uyghurs who had sought political asylum, despite international concern that they could face torture and execution for allegedly taking part in deadly ethnic riots in China this year.

Rights groups, which urged Phnom Penh to stop the deportations, say Cambodia is bound by a 1951 convention on refugees pledging not to return asylum-seekers to countries where they will face persecution.

Cambodia has already received more than U.S. $1 billion in foreign direct investment from China, which in October agreed to provide U.S. $853 million in loans to the impoverished country for dams, infrastructure, and irrigation projects.

The Chinese government has detained hundreds of Uyghurs, and at least 43 Uyghur men have disappeared in the wake of ethnic violence that erupted in Urumqi on July 5, according to Human Rights Watch, which says the actual number of disappearances is likely far higher.

Nearly 200 people were killed in the clashes, by the Chinese government’s tally. Twelve people have since been sentenced to death in connection with the violence.

Uyghurs, a distinct and mostly Muslim ethnic group, have long complained of religious, political, and cultural oppression by Chinese authorities, and tensions have simmered in the Xinjiang region for years.

Original reporting by Shohret Hoshur for RFA’s Uyghur service. Translated by Zubeyra Shemshidin. Uyghur service director: Dolkun Kamberi. Written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

A Documentary on the Uyghur community in Kazakhstan. The film was produced for Forced Migration Online, Oxford University in 2009. www.forcedmigration.org

Uyghurs and China: Christian Tyler

Christian Tyler, author of ‘Wild West China: The Taming of Xinjiang’ disusses the recent history of Xinjiang (East Turkistan) and the changing relations between Uyghurs and Han Chinese (August 2008).
Part of the Xinjiang Video Project: www.archive.org/details/xinjiang-video-p roject

The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) is outraged, disgusted, and deeply saddened by Cambodia’s illegal, inhumane, and egregious forcible return to China of twenty Uyghurs who had sought refuge and protection in Cambodia

Source: WUC December 22, 2009

The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) is outraged, disgusted, and deeply saddened by Cambodia’s illegal, inhumane, and egregious forcible return to China of twenty Uyghurs who had sought refuge and protection in Cambodia. On Saturday evening, December 19, 2009 (Phnom Penh time), the Cambodian government – in severe violation of international law – forced these twenty Uyghurs, who included two children (6 month, 1 year old), aboard a special plane sent from China (i), the country from which they had escaped several months ago because of the immense risk that they would be persecuted on account of their peaceful political activities, Uyghur ethnicity, and Muslim religion. In forcibly returning these Uyghurs to China, Cambodia has exposed them to immense danger. Uyghur asylum-seekers who have been forcibly returned to China in the past have been detained, tortured, and in some cases sentenced to death and executed. According to Amnesty International, with the exception of one Tibetan case, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (known to the Uyghurs as East Turkestan) is the only region in China where prisoners of conscience have been executed in recent years (ii).

Cambodia has blatantly violated its obligations as a party to the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1967 Protocol to the Refugee Convention, and the Convention Against Torture through its refoulement of these Uyghur asylum-seekers, and in doing so, has betrayed the entire international community – every single one of us. Cambodia has become an accomplice to the Chinese government’s human rights violations against the Uyghurs. WUC vow to continuously hold Cambodia accountable for this horrific action and to make sure that the world never forgets this atrocity committed by the Cambodian government.

According to media reports, the refoulement came one day before Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping’s scheduled visit to Cambodia (iii), during which Cambodia is expected to sign 14 agreements with China related to infrastructure construction, grants, and loans (iv).

The twenty Uyghurs returned to China were part of a group of Uyghurs initially numbering twenty-two that had fled China after the brutal suppression of a peaceful Uyghur protest on July 5, 2009 in Urumchi, the regional capital of East Turkestan (XUAR), by Chinese security forces. According to numerous witness accounts, security forces committed extrajudicial killings of protesters (v). Most of the twenty-two Uyghurs witnessed Uyghur peaceful demonstrators being arrested. At least one saw Uyghur nonviolent demonstrators being shot and killed by Chinese security forces. Some of the twenty-two Uyghurs were accused of being instigators because of their religious knowledge.

The WUC asks the international community and media to remember that the events of July 2009 began with the Chinese government’s brutal suppression of this peaceful, non-violent protest in Urumchi and that the ethnic unrest and violence in Urumchi succeeded that initial event (vi). Since the protest and unrest in Urumchi in July 2009, Chinese security forces have conducted a fierce crackdown in East Turkestan and have arrested thousands of people. Many have been arrested in widespread, indiscriminate security sweeps, including mass roundups of young Uyghur men (vii). Eighteen Uyghurs have already been sentenced to death (three of them with a two-year reprieve) for crimes allegedly committed during the July 2009 events after non-transparent, egregiously unfair trials plagued with intense politicization and severe lack of due process (viii). Eight of these eighteen Uyghurs were executed less than four weeks after being sentenced.

According to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, official statements from the Chinese government and state media reports have suggested that some acts of peaceful protest on July 5th would be formally subjected to criminal prosecution and an XUAR official admitted that the authorities were holding in custody people who had protested peacefully on July 5th (ix).

The twenty-two Uyghurs, of whom twenty were forcibly returned to China, had escaped China with the aid of an underground network of Christian missionaries, crossed China’s southern border into Vietnam, and then made their way into Cambodia. They were living in a refugee camp in Cambodia and were in the process of applying for refugee status/asylum. In Cambodia, applications for refugee status/asylum are jointly assessed by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Cambodian government (x). Two of the Uyghurs fled the refugee camp amid intense threats that the Uyghur asylum-seekers would be returned and therefore, these two were not among those returned to China.

The Uyghurs in Cambodia first garnered international attention more than two weeks ago when several media outlets first reported on their situation and presence in Cambodia. The Chinese government asserted pressure on Cambodia to violate international law and return these Uyghurs to China. The United Nations, the United States, and human rights organizations pressed Cambodia not to forcibly return them (xi). Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific director, Sam Zarifi, sent an open letter dated December 16, 2009 to Sar Kheng, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior of Cambodia, reminding the Cambodian government of its obligations under international law, warning the government that these Uyghurs “would be particularly vulnerable to torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment” if returned to China, and strongly urging the government to refrain from returning them and to ensure that they have access to a fair asylum process (xii). On December 17, 2009, Koy Kuong, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told the Phnom Penh Post that Amnesty International’s concerns were “premature” (xiii) and yet, two days later, the Cambodian government forcibly returned the Uyghurs to China.

Cambodian officials made a futile attempt to concoct a reason for Cambodia’s violation of international law. On December 18, 2009, Koy Kuong, the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, disingenuously and audaciously stated: “All 20 [Uyghurs] illegally entered Cambodia, because they have no immigration papers, no visa. Therefore they violate Cambodia’s 1994 immigration law. They have to be deported, because they are illegal immigrants.” (xiv) However, many refugees do not have visas or immigration papers. Refugees are in desperate flight from persecution and have to employ whatever means that they can to reach countries where they will be safe. Whether a refugee has immigration papers is completely irrelevant to Cambodia’s obligations under the aforementioned U.N. treaties.

As reported in the Associated Press, Kitty McKinsey, a spokeswoman for the UNHCR in Bangkok, said that the UNHCR had staff prepared to try to physically prevent the deportation if it had taken place on civilian side of the airport, but it ended up taking place on the military side of the airport. She said that the refugee agency is preparing a protest to the Cambodian government (xv).

The WUC asks the international community to strongly condemn Cambodia’s actions for the sake of the preservation of the sanctity of international law and for the sake of refugees of all ethnicities in Cambodia and around the world who desperately need protection.

NUK: DEPORT OF INNOCENT UYGHURS TO CHINA

Uyghurs Missing in Vietnam
Source: RFA 2009-12-10

Two ethnic Uyghurs are unaccounted for after fleeing China through Vietnam.

PHNOM PENH—Ethnic minority Uyghurs from northwestern China, seeking asylum in Cambodia, say two would-be refugees in their group remain missing since they were detained by Vietnamese border authorities in early October.

Twenty-two Uyghurs managed to cross in smaller groups from Vietnam into Cambodia, where the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) operates an office, and where they are now seeking political asylum and resettlement in a third country.

But two men in one of those groups were forced to remain in Vietnam because their group of five could afford help in crossing the border for only three people, one of the asylum-seekers in Cambodia said.

“Five of us traveled as a group at the same time from China. We had a very small amount of money when we arrived in Vietnam—only enough for three of us to pay smugglers,” one of them said in an interview.

They cast lots with numbers from one to five, he said, with the understanding that numbers four and five would have to stay behind.

“They had no choice but to be left behind and face a more dangerous fate,” one of the Uyghurs said.

Wrong turn

In an interview Oct. 6, one of the left-behind Uyghurs—a Turkic, mostly Muslim ethnic group living mostly in northwestern China—said the two of them had headed on their own toward what they thought was Cambodia, and ended up at the Vietnam-Lao border instead.

“Our goal was to cross the border to get to Cambodia, but we went the wrong way to Laos by mistake,” one of them said.

Uyghurs interviewed for this report all asked that the names of the asylum-seekers involved not be used.

“We have been here almost 24 hours—we don’t know what they think of us because of the language barrier,” he said at the time.

“We tried to explain with the few English words we know that we are not Chinese, we are Turkish. We are not sure if they understand.”

A day later, on Oct. 7, one of the detained men said both had tried to escape but only one of them succeeded.

“The officers caught me about a half-mile away,” he said.

Other Uyghurs, now in Cambodia, said the second man had fled into the forest.

Both men have been unreachable since then, they said.

Higher orders

Ilshat Hassan, vice president of the Uyghur American Association, said he had spoken with the police and quoted them as saying, “They are holding Chinese passports, but they don’t speak Chinese and don’t look Chinese.”

The officer also reportedly said border guards were awaiting instructions on how to handle the men.

The 22 Uyghurs in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, include two children and are currently in the care of international Catholic organization Jesuit Refugee Service, which declined to comment.

The Uyghurs say they fear being returned to China, which has close ties with Cambodia, Uyghur sources said. They notably fear detention for allegedly taking part in deadly ethnic riots in July in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Uyghur sources in Asia say.

UNHCR and Cambodian officials in Phnom Penh declined to comment on the case, although it has been learned that the UNHCR has met with the Uyghurs several times in small groups.

Tighter border

China has meanwhile tightened its southeastern border, Uyghur sources say, and has detained 31 Uyghurs since Sept. 15 in the southern cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou and in the central city of Kunming, either for trying to flee the country or for allegedly aiding others in fleeing China.

Clashes first erupted between Han Chinese and ethnic Uyghurs in Urumqi on July 5, and at least 200 people were killed, by the Chinese government’s tally. Twelve people have since been sentenced to death in connection with the violence.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said it has documented the disappearances of 43 men and boys in the Xinjiang region, but that the actual number of disappearances is likely far higher.

Police have meanwhile detained more than 700 people in connection with the unrest, according to earlier state news reports.

Uyghurs, a distinct and mostly Muslim ethnic group, have long complained of religious, political, and cultural oppression by Chinese authorities, and tensions have simmered in the Xinjiang region for years.

Original reporting by Shohret Hoshur for RFA’s Uyghur service with additional reporting by RFA’s Khmer service. Uyghur service director: Dolkun Kamberi. Khmer service director: Sos Kem. Translated by Shohret Hoshur. Written for the Web in English by Sarah Jackson-Han.

Uyghur Pressed to Spy
Source: RFA 2009-12-02

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

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.

Undated photo of Kamirdin Abdurahman. Photo: RFA

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.

Uyghurs in Palau - 1 / 3

Uyghurs in Palau - 2 / 3

Uyghurs in Palau - 3 / 3

Uyghurs in palau

Uyghur American lawyer Nury Turkel discusses the plight of the Uyghurs in Guantanamo Bay (part 1)

Uyghur American lawyer discusses the plight of the Uyghurs in Guantanamo Bay (part 2)

Uyghurs on Al jazeera tv

Xinjiang: Uyghurs

China’s oppression of Uyghurs remains largely ignored by the global community

Monday, July 20, 2009 11:31 PM ET
Article link

Mehmet Tohti [Former Vice President, World Uyghur Congress]: “Horrible video footage posted on the internet regarding the July 5th Urumqi massacre has brought some international attention and at the same time revealed the bitter reality that can be summarized as miserable Uyghurs, cruel Chinese and a generally uninterested world when it comes to the reaction to this tragedy that resulted in more than 1000 dead and the subsequent arrests of as many as 10,000, according to a RFA Uyghur service caller from Urumqi where riots have taken place.

All Uyghurs are unanimous in calling the July 5th Urumqi massacre a tragic event, as both Chinese armed forces and civilian Chinese mobsters were given a free hand in attacking and killing Uyghurs in Urumqi without proper restrictions. It was reported that on the late evening of July 5th, electricity was cut in a mainstream Uyghur neighborhood upon the order of Wang Lequan, Communist Party chief in Uyghur Autonomous Region, and that Chinese military forces the began a “Uyghur Hunt” that lasted the whole night, resulting in the killing and arrest of an unspecified number of Uyghurs. According to the eye witness statements to RFA Uyghur service of Kazak nationals who came to Urumqi for a business trip, 150-200 Uyghurs were murdered right in front of their hotel and the Chinese military cleaned up the body and blood from the streets just prior to dawn on July 6th. According to Edward Wong from the New York Times, “Hospital officials in Urumqi have generally declined to allow foreign reporters to interview injured Uyghurs, but have allowed them to interview injured Han.” So far the Chinese government has failed to show any injured or dead Uyghurs out of fear that most of them were apparently killed by bullets shot by the armed forces.

Uyghurs in East Turkistan are in the state of shock and anger for lack of condemnation from the outside world - especially from the United States of America -particularly considering the greater global reaction to the much smaller scale riots that occurred in Tibet last year. The lack of concern from the Western world gave a much needed free hand to the Chinese regime to expand its brutal crackdown throughout the region with the threat of execution to be used for those who have been part of the public unrest.

The July 5th outbreak is just the tip of the iceberg with regard to long existing ethnic tensions and evem hatred between the Uyghurs, who are the rightful owners of “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” and the Chinese, who are a migrant boss from mainland China that arrived to colonize the region due to its abundant natural resources and strategic location.

Despite the incorporation of East Turkistan into mainland China in 1949, Uyghurs have not accepted Chinese rule and want to restore their independent statehood while China remains determined to colonize this territory with a massive Chinese settlement program under the shadow of guns. As a result of this program the ethnic Han Chinese population has jumped from 5-6% in 1950s to almost 60% to today, even though many media outlets are using the old census numbers that put the Chinese population in the region around 40%, which is exclusive of the nearly 3.5 million Bingtuan, 1.5 million unregistered migrant workers and nearly 300,000 military personal and their family members. This colonization has brought cultural marginalization, ethnic isolation, social injustice and political deprivation to Uyghurs in East Turkistan as the central government in Beijing has consistently put the interest of the Han Chinese on the top of its priority list.

As early as 1980 China started a “Go West” campaign with tremendous incentives to encourage more and more Chinese settlers to resettle in East Turkistan. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and emergence of neighboring Turkic republics alongside the border of East Turkistan as independent states, a campaign was launched targeting Uyghurs to prevent a possible break up of East Turkistan from China and thus tighten Chinese control over the region. After 1997, right after publishing an official White Paper under former President Jiang Zemin, the central government identified East Turkistan as a high risk area for Chinese national security and adopted harsh measures to prevent the East Turkistan problem from being internationalized. They established the Shanghai Corporation Organization with the persuasion of the neighboring countries of East Turkistan (Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan) in the name of border security, which put Uyghurs as prime target. Short after the establishment of SCO almost all Uyghur organizations in central Asia that were kept open since the Soviet era were dismantled or sanctioned, a number of influential Uyghur organizational leaders have been assassinated and Uyghur refugees were deported back to China for prosecution.

The September 11 terrorist attacks provided a perfect opportunity for China to step up pressure on Uyghurs and the Uyghur national identity. Further diluting Uyghur identity is a short cut answer for the Chinese government to complete the long-term elimination of a Uyghur voice. Chinese efforts in this regard include branding every incidence of civil unrest or discontent with the terrorism label; increased religious persecution; harsh political suppression; sharp ethnic discrimination in employment, education and social participation; banning the more than 2000 year old Uyghur language from schools and forcefully imposing Chinese education starting from the kindergarten level; implementing the same Chinese law differently for Uyghurs; forcing Uyghur families to send their children to mainland China for employment arrangements while bringing millions of Han Chinese to the Uyghur region to fill employment vacancies; and generally coercing Uyghurs to become like the Chinese by sacrificing their unique identity.

There are further recent examples of Chinese oppression of Uyghurs.

In May 2009 a 33 year-old Chinese teacher surnamed Zhao, who was recruited by government to teach Uyghur pupils in the historical Uyghur city of Yarkend, was discovered to have sexually assaulted more than 20 pre-teen Uyghur girls. For this unforgivable crime, he was protected by the school principal Liu Yu Mei, along with other local Chinese police. One parent of the assaulted pupil traveled to Urumqi to have his voice heard but officials ignored him.

Then video footage surfaced of brutal beatings and killings of Uyghur workers in a Shaoguan toy factory on June 26, 2009, which resulted in more than 56 dead. Both the regional government in Urumqi and authorities in Shaoguan have downplayed this brutal killing of Uyghurs issuing a report of 2 dead and have done nothing to punish the perpetrators.

Ilham Tohti, Economic Professor in Beijing Nationality University and owner of an online Uyghur website intended to promote ethnic dialogue between Hans and Uyghurs has been arrested after the July 5th massacre for his sharp criticism of the government’s wrong policy stating that “unemployment among Uyghurs are the highest on earth.”

As many independent analysts have pointed out, it was the Chinese government’s discriminatory policy that instigated the July 5th uprisings and and so the government needs to review its hard line policies in the region and move towards the prospect of reconciliation.

One anonymous Uyghur posted his outcry as follows:

I am very shocked to find out that the world is much [more] disabled than I imagined. The images show the Chinese in Urumqi are carrying out ethnic cleansing with the protection of the Chinese Army and the Police. The world is not seeing it and could not see it. But they saw it when it happened in Darfur, Even George Clooney saw it. Fareed Zakaria saw it when it happened to Tibetans. Bill Clinton saw it when it happened to Kosovar people. And the world spoke out on behalf of all of them.
But now? They are all deaf and blind.”

Please help Uyghurs

Chinese started Attack Uyghurs Again With Army Supported