Exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer, alleging China has “destroyed” her Muslim people, has urged Japan’s new government not to ignore their plight as it presses to bolster ties with Beijing.
Kadeer was speaking during a visit to Tokyo, where Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s center-left government took power five weeks ago vowing to improve regional ties and to promote an EU-style Asian community.
US-based Kadeer, whom China labels a separatist, arrived on Tuesday for a 10-day visit, her second trip to Japan this year, triggering an immediate protest from China.
Speaking late on Tuesday, Kadeer criticized China for rights abuses but said she was ready to talk with Beijing on improving ethnic minority policies as she seeks “self-determination” for her people.
“I hope Japan will talk with the Chinese government about the problem,” the grandmother and mother-of-11 said. “Japan plays a very important role in Asia. So it’s a responsibility of Japan to talk about the Uighurs’ problems.”
Uighurs have accused China of decades of religious, cultural and political oppression.
On her visit in July, Kadeer said 10,000 Uighurs had “disappeared” after unrest that erupted on July 5 in Urumqi, pitting Uighurs against Han Chinese.
Kadeer said on Tuesday that “according to new information we have obtained, from July 5 to October 1 more than 10,000 Uighurs have been arrested and jailed, but how many have died, or been killed, how many have been jailed, nobody knows the exact number.”
US-based Human Rights Watch said in a report yesterday it had documented the disappearances of 43 men and boys in Xinjiang, but that the real number was likely much higher.
Quoting residents, the group said security forces sealed off entire neighborhoods of Urumqi and hauled away male residents.
“‘Disappearing’ people is not the behavior of countries aspiring to global leadership,” Brad Adams, the Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in the report.
China blames Kadeer for fomenting the unrest, which it says left 197 people dead and more than 1,600 injured, mostly Han. China last week sentenced 12 people to death over the bloody unrest.
Kadeer said she had learned that “out of the 11 Uighurs who were sentenced to death ... nine people have been executed.”
“Punishing people who demonstrated peacefully is not necessary,” she said, speaking though an interpreter.
Kadeer’s pleas to Japan for help, however, run counter to Hatoyama’s declared aim to erase the distrust and frequent animosity that marked Tokyo’s relations with Beijing under previous governments.
Kadeer, a former businesswoman who was jailed in China from 1999 to 2005 and now lives in exile in the US, called on China to allow the Uighur people “self-determination.”
She said her people now wanted autonomy and would decide later on whether to seek full independence.
“We will talk about this point when China sits at the table for negotiations,” she said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS