Beijing officials on Tuesday hit out at international concern over its human rights situation, saying that only the Chinese people have the right to speak out on the subject. But police in the Chinese capital swooped on the thousands of petitioners who arrived in the Chinese capital to pursue complaints against the ruling Chinese Communist Party ahead of Human Rights Day on Tuesday. "There are tens of thousands of petitioners lurking in Beijing," retired People's Liberation Army (PLA) officer Gao Hongyi told RFA's Mandarin Service.Gao, who hails from the eastern port city of Qingdao, said he and dozens of other former PLA officers planned to converge on the United Nations representative offices in Beijing's embassy district on Tuesday. Thousands of petitioners thronged the alleyway outside the complaints offices of the central government, Supreme People's Court and National People's Congress on Tuesday, on a street dubbed by petitioners the "Dead End Alley of the Three Cheats."
I, Mutellip Imin, from Lop County of Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, am the master student of IstanbulUniversity, majoring in Sociology. I was illegally intercepted by the customs police of BeijingCapitalInternationalAirport in the name of ‘criminal detention’, on my way back school on July 15, 2013. Officers from the Public Security Department of Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region deported me to Urumqi, where I was interrogated and held in three different hotels for 79days, without any legal procedure or notifying my family.
My name is Mutellip Imin. I am from Lop County in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China. From July 15 to October 1, 2013, I was incarcerated by the Xinjiang police in three different hotels, without any legal procedures. On the evening of July 14, 2013, I arrived at Capital International Airdrome in Beijing and went to the ticket counter to check in for my flight from Beijing to Istanbul. The ticket agent told me to wait and left with my passport. I was waiting for an hour until I was taken to the Airdrome police station where my backpack and PC were inspected. The customs agents told me that there were no suspicious items found in my belongings and that I would not miss my flight to Istanbul. I was, however, retained at the police station until two police officers came to inform me that I was wanted by the police in Xinjiang. My passport, cell phone, Turkish residency permit, and my Turkish language proficiency certificate were all taken by the police, and I was handcuffed and brought to the repatriate center near the Airdrome. On the way, I begged the officers to let me contact my loved ones. They refused even to send my girlfriend, Atikem, a message that I was incarcerated. They told me I would be able to contact my relatives when I got back to Xinjiang.
The International Rabia Platform has launched the 'Silent Chair' demonstration in Ankara in remembrance of all Muslims killed in Egypt, Syria, Myanmar, Iraq, Kashmir and East Turkistan.
An ethnic Uyghur farmer in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region has been fighting a seven-year battle for justice over the seizure of his land that led to his home being flattened to make way for a building project while he was locked up in detention. His case is one of many land grabs exacerbating tensions in Xinjiang, where ethnic minority Uyghurs accuse Han Chinese of displacing them from their traditional homeland and depriving them of economic opportunities under strict Beijing rule.
The recent Tiananmen incident that led to the death of five people once again revived the debate on the Xinjiang/Uyghur question. The Uyghur issue not only exposes deficiencies in human rights and fundamental liberties in China but also appears as a hurdle for China’s two most pronounced strategic imperatives, namely “building a harmonious society” and the “peaceful rise of China.” PRC’s reaction to the recent incident and its pattern of handling crises of ethnic tension are increasingly dragging China into a strategic pit, which gets deeper with every instance of ethnic violence related to Tibet or Xinjiang. Beijing’s reluctance to acknowledge the root causes of minority discontent leads the PRC to “resolve problems in its own way” by using force, instilling fear in society, marginalizing minorities, and radicalizing dissent groups.
College students in China's restive western Xinjiang region will not graduate unless their political views are approved, a university official said, as the country wages what school administrators called an ideological war against separatism.
A top ethnic minority Uyghur scholar and activist has hit out at moves to ban college students in China's troubled northwestern region of Xinjiang from graduating unless they pass a test of political views, saying that the policy is "dangerous" and "ridiculous." "The Xinjiang authorities are in the process of doing something very dangerous," Uyghur university professor Ilham Tohti, a vocal critic of China’s policies toward ethnic minority Uyghurs, said in response to official media reports from a regional education conference.
Beijing has alleged that the “East Turkistan Islamic Movement,” which purportedly has links with Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaida as well as many other Central and West Asian terrorist organisations is waging a “holy war with the aim of setting up a theocratic ‘Islamic state’ in Xinjiang.” While this allegation leveled against the Uyghur community is indeed damning, Beijing has unfortunately failed to provide even a shred of credible evidence to support its claim.
A Chinese government worker in the ancient Silk Road oasis of Kashgar beckons two women to her street side stand and logs their details under the gaze of a surveillance camera. Their offence: wearing veils. The "Project Beauty" campaign aims to discourage women from covering their faces - a religious practice for some Muslim Uighurs, the largest ethnic group in China's Xinjiang region - in an attempt to improve security.
