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Cynics question China's motives as
Uighur freed
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Was it an adroit public
relations maneuver, or a major advance in
Beijing's human-rights performance in Xinjiang?
That's what international human-rights groups were
asking. And their answers tended to be cynical.
International human-rights groups praised
the unexpected release after nearly six years of
imprisonment of a prominent Uighur businesswoman,
but they complained that the timing of her freedom
suggested it was more of a public-relations
maneuver than a major advance in Beijing's
human-rights performance.
Both Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) pointed
to the decision by the administration of US
President George W Bush, announced shortly after
the release, not to table a resolution criticizing
China's human-rights record at the current session
of the United Nations Human Rights Commission
(UNHRC) that got under way this week as evidence
of a quid pro quo.
Rebiya Kadeer, whose
plight had become a cause celebre for
lawmakers in the US Congress since she was
arrested while meeting with a member of
congressional delegation in 1999, immediately flew
to the United States to be reunited with her
husband and five of her 11 children who have lived
here for most of the past decade. It is not clear
whether permanent exile was a condition of her
release.
"We're very happy to see Rebiya
freed, but China shouldn't get any political
credit for letting her go when they kept her
behind bars for so many years," said Brad Adams,
HRW's Asia director.
"Letting her go now
is yet another instance of China's 'revolving
door' policy of releasing a few prominent
political prisoners before important international
events to head off criticism," he said, noting
that Beijing last year released a Tibetan nun a
year before her 17-year sentence was due to end.
Kadeer was given a medical release.
Kadeer, who received HRW's highest honor
in 2000 for her promotion of the rights of the
Uighurs, particularly Uighur women, hails from
China's westernmost region and the Uighur
homeland, Xinjiang.
A Turkic-speaking and
predominantly Muslim people who came under China's
rule in the mid-19th century, many Uighurs still
refer to their territory as East Turkestan. Fifty
years ago, they made up more than 80% of the
population, but steady ethnic-Han Chinese
immigration, encouraged by Beijing and spurred by
the region's rich oil and other resources, and by
its growing links with Central Asia, has brought
the percentage of the Uighur population down to
less than half.
Tension between the two
groups, Hans and Uighurs, fueled by racial
discrimination against the Uighurs in education,
free expression of culture and religion, and
employment, has risen steadily since the late
1980s.
The collapse of the Soviet Union
and the subsequent creation of Central Asian
states ethnically related to the Uighurs sparked a
wave of nationalism among the Uighurs that has
become more powerful over the past decade. In
1997, a Uighur demonstration in Yining erupted
into a riot in which nine people were killed.
In addition to detaining tens of thousands
of Uighurs - the vast majority of whom, according
to rights groups, are believed never to have used
or advocated violence - the government has shut
down some mosques and banned some religious
schools and practices.
Islamic clergy, for
example, have been subjected to "political
education" designed to give them "a clearer
understanding of the party's ethnic and religious
policies", while some clerics have been detained
for teaching the Koran.
In addition to the
restrictions on religious schools and mosques,
tens of thousands of Uighur books have reportedly
been banned and burned, while Uighur has been
banned as a language for teaching most subjects at
Xinjiang University.
Kadeer, whose
development work and business acumen made her one
of China's most prominent and wealthiest women,
was extolled by the government through much of the
1990s as a model for the country as a whole. In
1995, she was made an official representative to
the UN's ground-breaking fourth World Conference
on Women in Beijing and later became a member of
an official advisory body to the National People's
Congress.
But Washington became
increasingly concerned with the activities of her
husband, who had moved to the United States after
serving a brief sentence for political activity.
When several of her sons fled China to join their
father, the regional government confiscated her
passport and subsequently announced in September
1997 that she could not leave the country because
"her husband was engaged in subverting the
government and in separatist activities outside
the country".
After her arrest, she was
tried secretly on charges of "providing secret
information to a foreigner" and sentenced to eight
years in prison. In fact, the information she was
charged with providing consisted of newspaper
articles sent by her to her husband. Last March,
her sentence was reduced by one year.
"The
release of prisoner of conscience Rebiya Kadeer is
a joyful victory, and our joy is only tempered by
thoughts of the many others who remain unjustly
jailed in China, including those jailed after the
1989 Tiananmen Square protests," said Amnesty
International. "Her release demonstrates that no
government is immune to the persistent pressure
applied by dedicated human-rights activists
worldwide."
At the same time, however, the
London-based group said it noted the timing of the
release "with skepticism", particularly in light
of Washington's decision not to sponsor a
resolution on China at the UNHRC and the imminent
visit of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to
Beijing. The timing, according to Amnesty, created
the impression that once again the Chinese
government was using political prisoners to play
"hostage politics".
The group noted that
other Uighur political prisoners remain behind
bars, including Abdulghani Memtemin, who was
sentenced to nine years in prison in 2002, also on
charges of "leaking state secrets" after sending
information abroad about rights abuses against
Uighurs in Xinjiang, and Tohti Tunyaz, sentenced
to 11 years in 1999 for "inciting separatism" by
writing a book on Uighur history.
The
group also expressed concern that the release
"will be cited as evidence of improvements in
human rights as the European Union debates lifting
its arms embargo on China", a step that is opposed
by Amnesty, HRW, and the US administration.
At the State Department on Thursday,
spokesman Adam Ereli denied that a deal had been
struck between Beijing and Washington, while
declining to speculate on the motives for Kadeer's
release. "The release, for whatever reason, is
important, is welcome, and I think gives us reason
to press for further releases in the future," he
said, adding that 20 political prisoners have been
released as a result of reforming the rules on
parole and 33 more have received reductions in
their sentences since December 2003.
He
claimed that Washington had decided against
sponsoring a resolution in Geneva because "we have
seen some significant steps, some important steps
that China has taken and agreed to take" to
improve its human-rights performance in the past
couple of months.
Among them, he cited
changes in regulations that give prisoners
convicted of political crimes the same rights to
sentence reductions and parole as other prisoners.
The State Department spokesman also said
Beijing had agreed to host visits by the UN
special rapporteurs on torture and on religious
intolerance, and also by the UNHRC.
(Inter
Press Service) |
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