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2008 Olympics disaster: Mass arrest
in East Turkistan
China has launched a 15 days of mass arrest
campaign beginning on July 1st to July the 15th in
East Turkistan. According to our sources, all
political prisoners who had finished serving their
sentences and who had to be released had been returned
to prison again. All Uyghur immigrants traveling from
one part of East Turkistan to another part are going
to be the first targets of this campaign. It is not
clear how long they are to be detained. Some Uyghurs
presume that government going to be held prisoners
until the end of the 2008 Olympic Games over. This
official mass arrest campaign was not publicly
announced. Although, officially, Chinese Government’s
mass arrest campaign begins on July the 1st, mass
arrests have already taken place in counties, cities,
and villages mainly populated by Uyghur people. For
instance, in May 2008, two hundred young men and women
from the Kelpin county were arrested. This mass arrest
was justified by claiming that it was done for the
security of the Olympics. Some police stations
admitted that although those people have committed no
crime, they’ll be held prisoners until the end of the
2008 Olympics.
ETIC learned that more than three hundred people were
arrested in Kelpin County: the imam of the mosque they
went to pray at was not appointed by the Chinese
Government. Reuters has reported that Chinese
authorities have demolished a mosque for refusing to
put up signs for the August's Beijing Olympics.
Recently ETIC has learned that an unknown number of
Uyghurs were arrested in Urumchi for the security of
the Olympics, again. It is impossible for us to find
out how many innocent people were victimized, since
the Chinese Government has put forward a fictional
idea that classifies the Uyghur people as terrorists
planning on sabotaging the Olympic Games by kidnapping
athletes and journalists. According to media sources,
65 people in East Turkistan are going to be convicted
on charges related to the Olympic Games. At least 20
of these Uyghurs reportedly face the death penalty.
There is no evidence linking these people to any
terrorist organization, nor is there any proof that
any organization or any independence movement
organization has been planning on sabotaging the
Olympic Games.
“We’ve learned that if there are three friends in
East Turkistan, one of them is a Chinese spy. Chinese
security services spend considerable amounts of money
for services and individuals, spies, who report anyone
who doesn’t agree with the Chinese politics. It is
therefore almost impossible to have an underground
organization. We don’t believe that there is an
underground independence movement” said Abdujelil
Karakash , president of ETIC.
Arrests were not limited within the Chinese territory:
in order to demonstrate its diplomatic power and to
threat the Uyghur Diaspora as well, China has
continuously hunting Uyghur human rights activist all
over the world.
On June 26, seven young men were arrested in Dubai:
they were suspected of planning an attack on the
Chinese market in Dubai. They face deportation to
China now. The Uyghur community fears now that these
men, if returned to China, might be imprisoned and
executed without a fair trial, as countless Uyghurs
have been- imprisoned and executed- by the Chinese
Government.
The Uyghur community is frustrated; everyone is
desperately waiting for the Olympic Games to end,
since there is no peace for them now, not anywhere in
the world. An elder man living in Urumchi has said,
during a phone conversation: “The Olympics is a
synonym of a disaster for us, Uyghurs are arrested
everywhere, we cannot wait for them to end. Hopefully,
there won’t be any reason for mass arrests again, once
the Games are over.”
He was wrong: the Olympics will end, but China’s
oppressive regimes will not. China’s main goal is not
the security of the Olympics, but the ethnic cleansing
of the Uyghurs, and the oppression will not stop until
they’ve reached that goal. The World community stands
aside and watches only: they deem the economic
relations to be more important than human solidarity
and the respect of human rights. They fear that saying
“stop” to the Chinese Government would encourage
nationalism in China. However, the appeasement policy
did not work for the Nazi Germany in the WWII, and it
will not work for China today. .
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