China jails two Uighurs over protests, exile group says

Mar 17, 2009, 7:12 GMT

   Beijing - China sentenced two members of its Uighur minority to long prison terms after convicting them of staging protests in the far western city of Khotan, a US-based Uighur support group reported on Tuesday.

   A court in Khotan sentenced Mamatali Ahat to eight years in prison on March 6 after he raised the flag of East Turkestan near a politically sensitive statue of former Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong, the Uighur American Association said.

   In a separate case, Abdukadir Mahsum was sentenced to 15 years in prison on February 26 for organizing large protests in Khotan last March following the death in police custody of a well-known Uighur philanthropist, the group said.

   Both protests were peaceful but Chinese state media linked the protests over the death in custody to religious extremists, it said.

   'These two cases show the world how Chinese government authorities deal with peaceful Uighur dissent: through lengthy imprisonment and accusations of extremism or violent intent,' US-based Uighur rights activist Rebiya Kadeer said in a statement.

   'Even an action as simple as raising a flag is punished by years in a Chinese prison, something which I know from experience is extremely brutal and dehumanizing,' said Kadeer, who left China for exile in the United States following a prison term for 'providing state secrets abroad.'

   East Turkestan is the name still given to China's ethnically divided central Asian region of Xinjiang by Uighurs seeking an independent state there.

   The huge Moslem-majority region borders Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan.

   More than 60 per cent of its 20 million people are from the Uighur, Kazakh, Kirgiz, Hui, Mongol and other ethnic minorities, according to government statistics.

   Some members of its largest minority, the Uighurs, favour independence from China and have staged some small-scale terrorist attacks over the past 20 years.

   China alleged that Uighur terrorist groups had planned to disrupt last year's Olympic Games in Beijing.

   Uighur exile groups have accused China of using terrorism claims as an excuse for a broad crackdown on dissent in Xinjiang in the run-up to the Olympics.

   Rights group Amnesty International has previously accused China of using the fight against global terrorism to justify its 'long-standing repression' of the rights of Uighurs.