February 5, 2007 will mark the 10th anniversary of brutal crackdown on a peaceful demonstration in the city of Gulja in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People´s Republic of China, right. Dozens of people were killed during the crackdown; hundreds, possible thousands, lost their lives or were seriously injured in the unrest that occurred the following day. Remembering the massacre, the Uyghur community is arranging a demonstration in Oslo on Saturday, February 3. The Rafto Foundation and Amnesty International in Bergen is arranging a small ceremony at the Human Rights Plaza in Bergen on Monday, February 5. (01-FEB-07)

This article was written by Gunta Venge of the Human Rights House in Bergen. Photo, above: www.uygur.org, below, www.guljavigil.org .

Remember Gulja banner.jpgMemorial ceremony in Bergen
Time: February 5 at 12:00
Place: Human Rights Plaza, Menneskerettighetenes plass 1
 
The Rafto Foundation and Amnesty International local office in Bergen invites to a small ceremony on February 5 at 12:00 at the Human Rights Plaza in front of the Rafto Human Rights House. Uyghur community in Bergen and its area, human rights supporters, people of Bergen and media are welcome to attend the ceremony. 
 
Contact: Gunta Venge, the Rafto Foundation: 90 67 36 78
 

Demonstration in Oslo
Time: February 3, from 12:00 – 15:30
Route: Oslo S – Karl Johan street – the Parliament building – Chinese Embassy
 
On Saturday, February 3, 2007 between 12:30 pm and 15:30 pm, members of the Uyghur committee in Norway, the local Uyghur community and their supporters will gather in front of the Chinese Embassy in Oslo and Karl Johan street to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Ghulja Massacre on February 5, 1997.

Members of the public and the media are welcome to attend.

Demonstrators will be remembering the hundreds of Uyghurs who were killed, imprisoned, or who disappeared having taken part in a peaceful demonstration in Ghulja in the northwest of East Turkistan (also called Xinjiang)

Several thousand Uyghurs, mostly young men, took to the streets of Ghulja on February 5, 1997 and marched to the Ghulja Municipal Government offices. They were demanding equal treatment, religious freedom, and an end to racial discrimination in response to ever more repressive policies and practices against the majority Uyghur community in Ghulja.

The Chinese authorities responded to the appearance of thousands of Uyghurs on the streets of Ghulja by sending fully armed paramilitary police to confront the unarmed demonstrators with batons, tear gas and high-pressure water sprayed from fire trucks. Eyewitnesses report that Chinese police fired indiscriminately into the crowd, killing as many as 30 Uyghur demonstrators and wounding more than 100 on the spot.

Armed Chinese police then rounded up fleeing demonstrators and loaded them on to military trucks already stationed by the sides of the roads and took them to different detention facilities in and around Ghulja. When all of the facilities in Ghulja were filled, police took several hundred demonstrators to a sports stadium and soaked them with cold water from a fire hose. Several people developed frostbite in the wintry conditions, and later had to have hands, feet or whole limbs amputated.

According to an Amnesty International report issued in April 1999, the People´s Republic of China executed more than 200 Uyghurs in February 1997 for their participation in the demonstration. Detainees suspected of organizing the demonstration, including Abduhelil Abdumejit, were the victims of severe torture in prison, and Abduhelil Abdumejit himself died in 2000 as a result of the injuries he sustained during torture.

As the 10th anniversary of the Ghulja Massacre approaches The Norwegian Uyghur committee, calls upon the Chinese government to re-evaluate its repressive policies in East Turkistan and begin to respect the fundamental human rights of the Uyghur people.

The Norwegian Uighur committee calls upon the Chinese authorities to allow a full and open independent enquiry into the events of the Ghulja Massacre and to immediately and unconditionally release anyone found to have been detained for their non-violent protests in Ghulja in February 1997.

Contact: The Norwegian Uyghur committee   +47 464 74 204


Rebiya Kadeer personal account of Gulja Massacre
http://www.rafto.no/DesktopModules/ViewAnnouncement.aspx?ItemID=260&Mid=42
 
Remember the Gulja massacre? China´s crackdown on peaceful protesters
http://web.amnesty.org/pages/chn-010207-action-eng