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China Detains Family of Jailed Uyghur Businesswoman
as U.S. Envoy Visits
WASHINGTON, Dec. 19--Chinese authorities in the
northwestern province of Xinjiang this week detained
the four adult children of a jailed Uyghur
businesswoman in an apparent bid to keep them from
meeting with a senior U.S. official who was visiting
the region, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports.
Two Chinese police officers came to Rebiye Kadeer’s
home at approximately 8:30 a.m. Tuesday and took her
four children--aged between 25 and 40--into custody,
sources in the Xinjiang capital, Urumqi, told RFA’s
Uyghur service. Kadeer is serving an eight-year jail
term for sending newspaper articles from Xinjiang to
relatives abroad.
Two of Kadeer’s sons have spent time in jail since
their mother’s arrest, while the third has been
subject to police harassment, according to the sources,
who asked not to be named. But Kadeer’s daughter,
Rushangul, “is pretty shaken up,” one source said,
noting that she hadn’t previously been detained. Local
police officials couldn't be reached for comment.
The detentions came ahead of a visit to Xinjiang on
Wednesday and Thursday by Lorne Craner, U.S. assistant
secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and
labor. Craner spent two days this week meeting with
senior Chinese officials on human rights and democracy
issues in Beijing before travel on to Urumqi. He met
there with senior Chinese provincial officials and
several Uyghur Moslem leaders.
All four siblings were taken to the Urumqi Nanguan
Police Department on Tuesday morning and assigned to
separate cells, the sources said, with one officer
assigned to watch each of them. The police released
Kadeer’s daughter, Rushangul, after only two hours but
kept her sons in custody until midday.
Later in the day, the director of the Nanguan Police
Department and 16 other officers confined Kadeer’s
three sons again at the family's Rebiye Department
Store for about five hours. They were barred from
leaving the store, making phone calls, or visiting the
restroom except in the company of police. One son,
Alim, tried to call his father in the United States
but was stopped from doing so, the sources said.
In the early evening, the officers left, warning that
they would return on Wednesday. They returned
Wednesday at 8 a.m. and confined all four siblings in
the department store until 2:30 p.m., when they left
the premises, the sources said.
I n the first high level dialogue on human rights
between China and Washington since October 2001,
Craner said Beijing had decided to re-issue
invitations to U.N. special rapporteurs on human
rights. Human rights groups fear China is using the
U.S.-led war on terror as a pretext for cracking down
on ethnic Uyghurs, however.
Through its broadcasts and call-in programs, RFA aims
to fill a critical gap in the lives of people across
Asia. Created by the U.S. Congress in 1994 and
incorporated in 1996 as a private, nonprofit
corporation, RFA currently broadcasts in Burmese,
Cantonese, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Mandarin, the Wu
dialect, Vietnamese, Tibetan (Uke, Amdo, and Kham),
and Uyghur. It adheres to the highest standards of
journalism and aims to exemplify accuracy, balance,
and fairness in its editorial content.
[RFA 12/19/02]
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