Nearly all the members of a group of people detained by authorities in southwestern China near the border with Vietnam over the weekend are ethnic Uyghur women and children from China\u2019s restive Xinjiang region, a source said Thursday.<\/p>\n
2014-12-25<\/p>\n
Nearly all the members of a group of people detained by authorities in southwestern China near the border with Vietnam over the weekend are ethnic Uyghur women and children from China\u2019s restive Xinjiang region, a source said Thursday.<\/p>\n
According to state media, police in China\u2019s Guangxi province on Sunday shot dead one person and detained 21 other \u201creligious extremists\u201d seeking to cross into neighboring Vietnam.<\/p>\n
The report, carried by the official Xinhua news agency, did not identify the members of the group or say where they were from, but authorities in China frequently blame religious extremism for violence involving Uyghur Muslims from Xinjiang in the country\u2019s northwest.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, a staff member of a detention center in Guangxi\u2019s border town of Pingxiang told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service that 17 women and children from the group had been taken into custody on Sunday\u2014all of whom were Uyghurs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe detained Uyghurs are housed here in our facility,\u201d said the staff member, surnamed Huang.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of the [adults] are females, no males at all. [Most have] kids ranging from one to eight years of age. Public security personnel from the Pingxiang police station are currently interrogating them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Huang said he was unsure whether the detainees were religious extremists or not, adding that it was the first time Uyghurs had been held at his facility.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know where the males are. There are usually two places\u2014one for women and the other for men,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe kids are fine. None are suffering from illness, but I\u2019m not allowed to let the Uyghurs speak to you on the phone. All I can say is that they are eating the food that we provide them and occupying two cells\u2014large enough to accommodate them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Huang said he had not heard anything about a male member of the group being shot dead by police, but added that he was unaware of how the Uyghurs were detained.<\/p>\n
He said he knew of Uyghurs \u201cdoing business\u201d in Pingxiang, but said he was unfamiliar with them or their culture.<\/p>\n
Xinhua said Wednesday that police had received a tip the group would attempt to cross into Vietnam through Pingxiang and sent a team to intercept them.<\/p>\n
Other state media reports said one member of the group had stabbed a police officer as they were detained on Sunday night and was shot dead by authorities.<\/p>\n
The Associated Press cited a statement by the official website for Guangxi\u2019s Chongzuo city as saying that police reinforcements helped detain the 21 others, adding that the policeman who was attacked was recovering at a local hospital.<\/p>\n
\u2018Excessive force\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Rights groups and exile Uyghur groups have questioned reports that members of the group were religious extremists and said Chinese authorities may have used excessive force in detaining them.<\/p>\n On Thursday, exiled Uyghur leader Rebiya Kadeer said the group included women and children, which indicated they were \u201cescaping persecution to resettle in a third country.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cChina labeled these people as extremists even before investigating their situation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not something a country governed by rule of law would do.\u201d<\/p>\n Reports that one of the members of the group had been shot to death by police officers \u201csuggests that Chinese security personnel used excessive force\u201d in detaining them, Kadeer said.<\/p>\n She questioned why state media reports did not include information about women and children among the group of detainees.<\/p>\n \u201cThe government is saying that these people are religious extremists, but they are using this kind of tactic to justify police brutality against Uyghurs and discourage sympathy for them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Recent violence<\/strong><\/p>\n The Xinjiang region, which is home to millions of Turkic-speaking Uyghurs, has seen an upsurge in violence that has left hundreds dead since 2012, and which China has blamed on terrorists and Islamist insurgents seeking to establish an independent state.<\/p>\n But rights groups accuse the Chinese authorities of heavy-handed rule in Xinjiang, including violent police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people.<\/p>\n Chinese president Xi Jinping announced a harsh, one-year antiterrorist campaign in May, following a bombing in the regional capital Urumqi that killed 31 people and injured 90.<\/p>\n Reported by Jilil Musha for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Translated by Mamatjan Juma. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nearly all the members of a group of people detained by authorities in southwestern China near the border with Vietnam over the weekend are ethnic Uyghur women and children from China\u2019s restive Xinjiang region, a source said Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-1533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1533"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=1533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}