Muslim anger grew on Friday at China’s crackdown in Xinjiang, with Turkey’s leader labeling the plight of the Uighurs “a kind of genocide” and thousands taking to the streets of world capitals in protest.
“The event taking place in China is a kind of genocide,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters after returning from the G8 summit in Italy. “There is no other way of commenting on this event.”
“There are atrocities there, hundreds of people have been killed and 1,000 hurt. We have difficulty understanding how China’s leadership can remain a spectator in the face of these events,” Erdogan said.
He also called on Beijing “to address the question of human rights and do what is necessary to prosecute the guilty.”
The leader of the exiled Uighur community claimed thousands may have died.
“According to unconfirmed reports we get on the ground, now the number is up to 1,000 or some say 3,000,” Rebiya Kadeer, the Washington-based head of the World Uighur Congress, told a news conference.
In Istanbul, about 5,000 people demonstrated outside the Fatih mosque after Friday prayers, NTV TV showed.
“No To Ethnic Cleansing” demonstrators chanted, while burning Chinese products.
About 700 people took part in a similar demonstration at the Kocatepe mosque in Ankara.
Other protests were held in seven other Turkish towns. Uighurs are Turkic speakers and Turkey, while recognizing Chinese sovereignty in Xinjiang, has been particularly outspoken on the case of the predominantly Muslim ethnic minority.
Turkish Trade and Industry Minister Nihat Ergun has called for a boycott of Chinese goods. This was backed by a Turkish consumer defense group that held a protest on Friday outside the Chinese consulate in Istanbul.
In Germany, which has Europe’s largest Uighur community, about 150 people rallied in front of the Chinese embassy in Berlin against the crackdown, police said.
About 200 people protested in Australia’s capital, Canberra, shouting “death to Chinese terrorists” outside the Australian parliament.
Uighur exiles hurled rocks and cobblestones at China’s embassy in The Hague this week during another demonstration. Fourteen people were given jail terms of between a week and 10 days by a Dutch court for their part in the protests.
Concern has grown in recent days, especially in the Muslim world. The Organization of the Islamic Conference has condemned the “disproportionate” use of force in Xinjiang and called on China to carry out an “honest” investigation into the incidents and find those responsible.
The head of Indonesia’s largest Muslim party, the Prosperous Justice Party, called for UN and Western pressure on China to stop the “slaughter” of Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese.
“China can no longer act as tyrants towards those of their people who are of a different faith,” Tifatul Sembiring said in a statement.
Indonesia is the world’s most populous Islamic nation.
Many governments have urged restraint. Japan on Thursday urged China to protect the human rights of Uighurs in Xinjiang. Japanese diplomats told Chinese counterparts at a bilateral human rights meeting in Tokyo that Uighurs and China’s other minorities should have their human rights guaranteed, a Japanese official told reporters.
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