Freedom, Independence and Democracy for East Turkistan !

E-mail: etic@uygur.org

 The World Uighur Network News 2006

ETIC  PRESS INFORMATION

The East Turkistan Information Center strongly condemns China’s arrest of the “Spiritual Mother” of the Uyghurs and leader of Uyghur diasphora, human rights activist Rabiye Kaadeer’s three adult children

Mrs. Kadeer was detained in 1999, when she tried to contact a visiting U.S. Congressional Delegation and formally arrested and sentenced to eight years imprisonment, but was released early and flown immediately to the U.S. on March 17, 2005, just days before U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was due to visit Beijing.

According to media reports, the Chinese government arrested her three adult children Kahar Abdureyim, Ablikim Abdureyim and Alim Abdureyim, under the charges of “tax evasion, conspiracy to overthrow the government and rejection of cooperation with police authorities.” Currently, the rest of the family members are kept under house arrest at their residence with strict police surveillance.

The East Turkistan Information Center informed that it strongly believes that after her release and exile to the US, the Chinese government constantly threatened her family back at home to discourage her in her struggle for Uyghur human rights and in her outspoken criticism of the Chinese government’s tyrannical policy on uyghurs. It is obvious that the Chinese government wanted to take revenge from her through arresting her children.

Although the Chinese government holds a human rights discussion every year with the EU and gives exaggerated speeches about their positive steps on human rights issues, in reality, the Chinese government has not only no improvement on human rights issues but also has stepped back 40 years and has returned the “cultural revolution” of the seventies. It is also marketing the old policy of “if someone has political charges, punish all the relatives”.

We can clearly see that the growing Chinese economy encouraged and empowered the Chinese government to ignore the international world community’s pressure on human rights issues.

Tragic are not only the events which came to be known these days regarding Mrs. Rabiye Kadeer’s children; the situation in East Turkistan has been a constant disaster created by the Chinese government since their colonization of East Turkistan.

The Uyghurs remember that thousands of families were destroyed from the beginning of the Land Revolution until the end of the Cultural Revolution, because of the Chinese communists brutal policy of punishing the whole family and the relatives for the political charges of one person.

According to an article titled “Nine Evaluation for the Communist Party” in the “ Dajiyuen” gazette, half of the Chinese families suffered by the Chinese communist party’s unlawful policy. In the article, it was estimated that the number of destroyed families was more than a 100 million. It is not difficult to predict that the damages and losses in East Turkistan are heavier, since the Uyghurs are politically more labelled such as “Pan-Turkists”, “Separatists”, “Religious Extremists” and so forth ...

Following the free market economy, the Chinese government has made some improvement on human rights issues and democracy in Chinese regions, but the situation in East Turkistan is gradually worsening.

As we know, families of many of Uyghur refugees in East Turkistan are currently suffering under the political, economical and other types of pressure applied by the Chinese government.

The Chinese government’s terror on the Uyghurs causes great anger among the Uyghurs inside and outside East Turkistan.

Uyghurs in the diaspora in the US , Canada, Germany, England, Sweden, Norway and Holland demonstrate against China’s unlawful arrests.

What is the explanation of this kind of Chinese violence in East Turkistan?

During the last years, the Chinese government has used the pretext of “global war on terror” to label the Uyghurs as terrorists, and arrested and executed thousands of innocent Uyghurs.

The formal arrest of Mrs. Rabiye Kadeer’s three children was at the eve of the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). China has used its “counter terrorism” agenda to suppress the Uighurs mercilessly, and it discussed with the other member states at the said meeting how to cooperate more effectively to combat against the Uyghurs through the intensification of various campaigns against the so-called “three evils” of “terrorism, separatism and religious extremism”. This indicates the Chinese government’s intention of expanding its terror policy on the Uyghurs to central Asian and Western countries.

On the other hand, the Chinese government also realized that they can not fool the international community with their counter terrorism agenda – they begin to show their real face behind their veil by arresting famous human rights activist Mrs. Rabiye Kadeer’s innocent children and applying the kidnapping tactics of terrorism itself.

In conclusion, the tragedy of Mrs. Rabiye Kadeer’s children is one of the vivid examples of the tragedy of the whole of the Uyghurs in East Turkistan and demonstrates the state terror policy of the Chinese government applied on the Uyghurs.

Abduljelil Karakash
President of the East Turkistan Information Center
Perhat Yorungkash
Director of ETIC - Uyghur Research Center

© Uygur.Org  14.09.2006 16:27  A.Karakas