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Uighurs detainees
face tough choice
By Benjamin Robertson in Beijing
Wednesday 05 January 2005,
16:34 Makka Time, 13:34 GMT
 Imprisoned
and unwanted, except by the one country they do not
want to return to, a group of Chinese Uighurs are at
the centre of an international human-rights dispute.
Originally from the western Chinese Xinjiang Uighur
Autonomous Region, the men were captured in 2002 by US
forces in Afghanistan and sent to Guantanamo Bay for
interrogation.
Although the exact number held is unknown - estimates
vary from a dozen to 30 - they have been recently
deemed of little intelligence value by the US military
and it has been suggested that some of them might be
released.
The problem now is what to do with them.
Risk of torture
Human-rights groups are saying that if they are
returned to China, they run the risk of possible
persecution, torture and execution.
James Ross, legal adviser to Human Rights Watch, a
US-based rights-monitoring group, says: "America has a
legal obligation to not send people back to countries
where they might be tortured.
He added: "China has a long history of human-rights
abuse so we would be extremely concerned about seeing
the government send them back."
China, though, has said it wants them back. An ally of
US President George Bush in the "war on terror",
Beijing has said that there are strong links between
its domestic "terrorist" problems and groups such as
al-Qaida.
Western diplomats in Beijing have said in the past
that the links are at best tentative, but China sees
these prisoners as proof of that link and wants to
question them further.
Beijing wants return
Suffering a series of bomb attacks and riots in the
1990s, Xinjiang is described as a sensitive topic when
discussing relations between the indigenous ethnic
groups, who are nominally Muslim, and the Han Chinese
who make up 96% of China's population.
Uighurs form one of the largest ethnic minority groups
in Xinjiang.
Exiled Uighurs have in the past publicly stated they
want to see the re-establishment of East Turkistan, a
historical state that once included Xinjiang and
neighbouring parts of Central Asia.
China says the fact that the US military finds them of
little intelligence is meaningless. In October, Abd
Allah Mahsud, a former Guantanamo inmate, kidnapped
two Chinese engineers in Pakistan. One later died
during a rescue attempt.
Issuing strongly worded statements, China's foreign
ministry has suggested that a failure to send them
back could harm relations.
"The East Turkistan problem is part of the
international war on terror. The US should respect the
international cooperation against terrorism and
respect US-Sino relations," said the ministry.
Complicated problem
In August though, US Secretary for State Colin Powell
said the Uighur prisoners were a complicated problem
but that they would not be sent back to China. It was
also revealed that the Uighurs themselves had asked
not to be sent back.
 However,
a spokesman for the US State Department last week told
Aljazeera.net that nothing had been finalised and that
no one knew what was going to happen to the Uighur
prisoners, suggesting that talks with China on the
issue were ongoing.
"One possibility could be that they are sent back with
diplomatic reassurances," says Nicholas Bequelin, an
expert on Xinjiang and human-rights issues.
In such a case China would have to provide written
assurances that the Uighurs would not be tortured or
persecuted.
But Bequelin thinks that repatriating them with
assurances would be unlikely because US public opinion
would be against it.
"The Chinese prison system can be like a black hole.
You send someone in and you never hear of them again,
and America knows this," Bequellin said.
China's wrath
An alternative is to send them to a third country, but
finding one willing to potentially incur the wrath of
China may prove difficult.
"As China's weight has grown, so has its leverage,"
says Bequelin. "If someone took the prisoners, China
could raise diplomatic concerns, take economic
measures, or suspend academic relations."
In early November, Norway, which was approached by
Washington as a possible candidate, rejected the idea,
saying it was a problem the US should solve on its own.
One possibility has been for the European Union to
split the burden of taking the prisoners, possibly
linking it with the proposed lifting of the arms
embargo placed on China after Tiananmen Square in
1989.
Failing that, the US could decide to take the
prisoners themselves, or they could just stay in
Guantanamo, permanent guests of the Pentagon.
Aljazeera
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