Reports by Japanese media suggest that Muhemmed may have fled Urumqi after Chinese authorities accused him of participating in ethnic unrest in the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in July 2009. At least 200 people were killed in the riots.
But according to the new evidence provided by Ilshat Hasan, vice-president of the Washington-based Uyghur American Association (UAA), Muhemmed had already been living in Thailand for nearly nine years as an illegal immigrant after moving to the country to escape religious persecution in China. “As an illegal immigrant with no travel documents, and as a father of two children he had after marrying a local woman, Muhemmed had never left Thailand until his deportation,” Hasan told RFA.
Extending political power
While China has witnessed rapid economic growth in the past decades its foreign policy is often overlooked. Nevertheless China’s political influence is extending rapidly, particularly in so called near abroad. China has used its economic influence in the region to detain and repatriate a number of Uyghurs, authorities said were wanted in connection with deadly rioting that gripped the Xinjiang capital Urumqi in 2009, although they did not publicly provide any evidence of their involvement. In the months that followed the violence in Urumqi, hundreds of Uyghurs were detained and at least nine were executed. Aside from Thailand, Malaysian authorities in mid-August turned over 11 Uyghurs to Chinese authorities they had accused of involvement in a human trafficking ring, drawing criticism from two senior U.S. lawmakers. In recent years, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos have all also repatriated the Muslim Uyghurs, allegedly following pressure from Chinese authorities.
After the Kashgar incident, Pakistan, which has as long been a close ally of China, immediately stated that it would extend its full support to China against ETIM. In turn Pakistan extricated five people on 9 August 2011 to Chinese authorities. By doing so, Pakistan violated the UN Convention Against Torture (CAT) which prohibits parties from returning, extraditing or refouling any person to a state “where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture’’.China is notorious for ill-treatment and torture in detention and no matter what these people are accused of, Pakistan should not have deported them back to China, said the leader of the Uyghur Human Rights Movement Rebiya Kadeer. “In addition, China also has a track record of publicly executing, torturing and imprisoning Uyghurs who have been forcibly sent back from Pakistan- RFA reports.
Uyghurs seek to preserve national identity
Despite constant threat of being arrested, Uyghur minority is reluctant to give up their sense of national identity. Authorities in north-western China have detained five ethnic Uyghur Muslims for “inciting separatism” after the men refused to honour the national flag at a ceremony held inside their mosque, according to residents and exile Uyghur groups. Local officials say the decision to raise the flag on the grounds of the mosque in mid-August was part of a larger campaign to promote patriotism in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where a series of attacks in July left dozens dead and wounded. Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, said the five men were arrested after confronting Chinese officials during the flag raising ceremony in Aksu.
Chief of the Department of Religious Issues in Kucha county, Rozi Moydin said that the Prefecture Islamic Centre decided that raising the national flag in a mosque was “not wrong” because “all people in the mosque are Chinese citizens’’. However, local Uyghurs are reportedly angered at the government’s decision. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a local resident told Radio Free Asia that Uyghurs throughout the prefecture were angered by the campaign and believed that “raising the national flag in mosques is an insult to the Uyghurs.”Speaking on the detention of the five Uyghurs, spokesman of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, Dilxat Raxit said that “the five spoke out against the Chinese officials in public, saying that raising the national flag in a mosque is wrong and goes against the principles of Islam.”Rebiya Kadeer, president of the World Uyghur Congress while condemning the Chinese flag raising campaign pointed out that ’’ they may succeed in raising the Red Flag in buildings throughout the region, but the important thing is which flag is being raised in the heart of the Uyghur people,” the outspoken exiled leader said.
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