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China's Uighurs trapped
at Guantanamo
By Adam Wolfe [ Aisia Times ]
The Pentagon wants to release more than 12 of some two
dozen Uighur detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, but Washington for strategic and political
reasons will not return the detainees, captured in
Afghanistan, to China, which considers them terrorists
and Xinjiang separatists. China would be expected to
deal with them harshly. Since other countries,
concerned about their own diplomatic relations with
China, are unwilling to accept the detainees, the
United States faces a serious threat to its diplomatic
relationship with China if it grants the detainees
asylum in the US.
This difficult situation in Cuba highlights the
complexities that underscore, and threaten to
undermine, Washington's policy on China's western
Xinjiang region, one populated by Muslim Uighurs
seeking greater autonomy, independence or just better
treatment.
Recent riots between Hui Muslim Chinese and Han
Chinese in central China's Henan province left at
least 150 dead and resulted in the imposition of
martial law. And the situation in Xinjiang and
Uighur-Han relations are far more tense than in Henan,
boding ill for any returning Uighurs who had fought in
Afghanistan against US forces.
History of the Xinjiang region
China's Xinjiang region is the traditional home of the
Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people who converted to
Islam in the 1300s. In 1949, the newly established
communist government of China took control of the
region. To consolidate its power in the area, Beijing
began to resettle Han Chinese people in Xinjiang, a
policy leading to a dramatic shift in the demographics
of the region: the Han population has increased from
7% to over 40% since 1949.
The Uighur population often felt slighted by Beijing
and resented that Han Chinese were given
state-sponsored jobs after moving to Xinjiang, while
Uighurs were offered few economic opportunities. In
the early 1990s, this resentment began to form the
foundation of a sometimes-violent opposition movement.
After seeing the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy
movements, the Tibetan autonomy or independence
movements within China, and witnessing the former
Soviet Central Asian states gain their independence to
the west, the Uighurs in Xinjiang began to speak out
against Beijing's control. This movement lacked the
clear leadership of the Tibetan campaign being fought
to their south, and it quickly became fractured.
Militant groups emerged to challenge China's rule
forcefully, while non-violent groups agitated within
China and sought backing from Western governments.
Beijing focused on the violent groups, while
Washington highlighted the grievances of the
non-violent groups. The 1990 uprising in Baren, a
small town near Kashgar, led by the Free Turkestan
Movement and claimed 22 lives was used by Beijing as
an excuse to crack down on the Uighur population in
Xinjiang. Throughout the 1990s, Beijing's efforts to
increase its control over Xinjiang were answered by a
series of attacks by militant Uighur groups.
Washington's position on the attacks was that they
were being launched by a small minority within the
opposition movement, which had legitimate grievances
with the Chinese government.
While the US promoted human-rights issues in Xinjiang,
Beijing claimed that the attacks were being waged by
groups that had ties to terrorist organizations in
Central Asia. In many cases these claims were valid,
but Washington's strategic goals were to promote human
rights in China and weaken the government's control of
its western periphery regions, in case a conflict
should arise between the two states in the long term;
it was not in the United States' interests to provide
a justification for China to rein in the Uighur groups
seeing greater autonomy or separation. To this end,
Washington dismissed Beijing's claims that Uighur
groups fought on the side of the Taliban during the
1996 revolution in Afghanistan as propaganda - and an
excuse to persecute political dissidents.
To achieve greater control over the Xinjiang region,
China pushed for the formation of the Shanghai Five, a
regional organization that integrated the security
forces of China, Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and
Kyrgyzstan to suppress separatist movements within
each country. In this period, the member countries'
concerns were more closely aligned with Beijing than
with Washington's goal of promoting democracy and
pluralism in the former Soviet states. The Shanghai
Five admitted Uzbekistan in June 2001 and was renamed
the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). It has
become one of Beijing's dominant tools for achieving
regional influence in Central Asia.
Xinjiang in the 'war on terror'
Although Washington monitored the actions of the
militant Uighur groups prior to the attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11,
2001, they were not seen as a threat to US objectives
in the region. This changed after Uighur militants
were captured and killed during the invasion of
Afghanistan while fighting alongside the Taliban and
al-Qaeda. There are reportedly two dozen Uighur
militants captured during fighting in Afghanistan, and
being held at Guantanamo Bay.
While Washington's long-term goals for Xinjiang were
little altered by the new "war on terrorism", it
became difficult to reconcile support for Uighur
freedoms and the desire to eliminate any group that
aligned itself with al-Qaeda. Although many in
Washington were skeptical that any Uighur groups would
attack outside of the Xinjiang region, they also hoped
to exploit any ties that might exist between these
groups and al-Qaeda. This put Washington in the
uncomfortable position of cooperating with China on
Xinjiang affairs or ignoring possible opportunities to
weaken the operational capabilities of Osama bin
Laden's organization.
The administration of President George W Bush pursued
a path that mitigated these concerns. The State
Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
quickly began differentiating between violent groups
that had ties to international terrorist organizations
and nonviolent groups that were campaigning for
greater autonomy and religious freedom within the
Xinjiang region. Some of the groups that were singled
out as violent were the United Revolutionary Front of
Eastern Turkestan, which has ties to groups in
Kazakhstan and took up arms against China in 1997; the
Wolves of Lop Nor, which has claimed responsibility
for several train bombings and assassinations in
Xinjiang; and the Xinjiang Liberation Organization and
Uighur Liberation Organization, which have been active
in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and are tied to the
assassinations of Uighurs thought to be cooperating
with the Chinese government.
The main way the US sought to combat these violent
groups was through bilateral agreements with the
Central Asian countries in which these militants were
training and operating. This method was chosen as a
way to undermine the importance of the SCO to the
member states' security strategies and to decrease the
influence the organization allowed to China. However,
there has also been some amount of US cooperation with
China on combating these organizations. It was widely
viewed that Washington placed the East Turkestan
Islamic Movement on the official US list of terrorist
organizations on August 26, 2002, as a sign of
cooperation with Beijing after the US attacks in
September 2001.
The Bush administration, however, also has attempted
to maintain its previous position of supporting
greater religious freedom within China and weakening
Beijing's control over its western provinces. To this
end, the administration has been consistent in stating
China must not use the "war on terrorism" as "an
excuse to persecute minorities" within its territory.
Washington has also increased its funding and support
for nonviolent Uighur groups, such as the East
Turkestan National Congress and the Regional Uighur
Organization. Most prominently, the Uighur American
Association received a grant from the
US-government-funded National Endowment for Democracy
- a first for a Uighur exile group.
No easy answers
These competing agendas have made Washington's
position on the Xinjiang region difficult to sustain,
and the desire to free the Uighur detainees from
Guantanamo Bay has further complicated the problem.
Washington cannot return the detainees to China for
two reasons: their repatriation would be seen as a
justification of China's discriminatory policy toward
its Uighur citizens, which would make it more
difficult for Washington to promote the peaceful
instability it favors in the Xinjiang region, and
there are genuine concerns for the detainees' safety
if they return to China.
Last week's widely reported violence in the Henan
province in central China in which fighting between
Han Chinese and Hui Muslims left 150 dead and ended
with a declaration of martial law exemplifies
Washington's concerns about repatriating the detainees.
Hui Muslims are not generally thought to be a threat
to Chinese rule and are better integrated into Chinese
society than the Uighur Muslims. China's record on
human-rights issues has led to a weapons sales ban
from Western governments and has greatly shaped
Washington's approach to Beijing since the peaceful
Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989.
Sending the detainees to a country in which it can be
reasonably assumed that they would be tortured or
persecuted would also be a violation of international
law. There is little reason to believe that the US
will change its opposition to China's human-rights
record to repatriate the Uighur detainees.
It is also unlikely that Washington will grant the
detainees US asylum, even if the detainees are deemed
to be no threat to US national security. This would
risk creating a rift between Beijing and Washington
that the US cannot allow when it is relying on
Beijing's cooperation in nuclear arms negotiations
with North Korea. If Washington is serious about
freeing the detainees - and it does appear that this
is the case - then there is only one workable solution
to the problem: finding a third party to accept the
detainees, a country with an acceptable human-rights
record.
The Financial Times reported that Washington has
approached Switzerland, Finland, Norway, Germany,
Italy, France, Portugal, Austria and Turkey to accept
the detainees. So far, none of the countries has been
willing to accept them. Many of these countries are
attempting to increase their economic ties to China,
and accepting the detainees might make this more
difficult. One way around this would be for the US to
allow the United Nations to negotiate the repatriation,
but this is unlikely to happen. The UN High
Commissioner for Refugees is concerned that UN
involvement would threaten China's cooperation on the
humane treatment of North Korean refugees, and not
sending them back to Pyongyang that would be expected
to torture, persecute and very possibly kill them.
Conclusion
Why the Uighur Muslims were captured, and why they
were deemed no longer to pose a threat to the US, is
not clear. However, there is little chance that the
detainees will be freed from US custody any time soon,
because there is little maneuverability for
Washington's Xinjiang policy. The US will continue to
search for a country that will accept the detainees,
but China's importance to global capital markets makes
this unlikely to succeed.
Most likely, the detainees will be sent to another
US-run facility that operates under clearer
international laws - this may help to promote the idea
that Washington is dedicated to finding a solution to
the problem that is consistent with international law
and makes repatriation in another country less
politically risky. Previously, Washington has sent
Iranian and Syrian detainees to a US-run prison in
Afghanistan after no acceptable country was found
willing to accept them. The current situation of the
two dozen Uighur Muslims is the result of complicated,
and sometimes contradictory, policy decisions and no
simple solution will present itself to allow for their
release.
http://atimes.com/atimes/China/FK04Ad02.html
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