The Turkish Foreign Ministry has confirmed that 10 Turkish citizens are under arrest in China on charges of trying to smuggle people out of the country, but it did not say they had been helping terrorism suspects, as a Chinese news report asserted.<\/p>\n
By EDWARD WONG and SEBNEM ARSU
JAN. 15, 2015<\/p>\n
BEIJING \u2014 The Turkish Foreign Ministry has confirmed that 10 Turkish citizens are under arrest<\/a> in China on charges of trying to smuggle people out of the country, but it did not say they had been helping terrorism suspects, as a Chinese news report asserted.<\/p>\n A statement issued by the ministry late Wednesday in response to questions by The New York Times confirmed some aspects of the account published earlier in the day<\/a> by Global Times, a major state-run newspaper. However, the statement\u2019s failure to mention any of the terrorism-related charges that the paper did, citing police officials in Shanghai, where the arrests took place, raised questions about the newspaper\u2019s account.<\/p>\n Global Times said the 10 Turks and two Chinese citizens were charged recently with smuggling terrorist suspects and altering legal documents. The Shanghai police also detained nine ethnic Uighurs<\/a> who are Chinese citizens, saying they were trying to leave the country illegally on flights from Shanghai, the article reported.<\/p>\n It described how two masterminds of the alleged smuggling scheme \u2014 a Chinese Uighur living in Turkey<\/a> named Dawuti and a Turkish man identified in Mandarin Chinese as Lamazan had bought passports from nine Turks entering China and then had them altered by a Turk before giving them to the nine Uighurs, who paid $9,700 each for the passports in order to leave the country. All the people were detained in November, when the nine Uighurs tried to fly out of Shanghai, the article said.<\/p>\n It added that the police had found video and audio material related to terrorism on the Uighurs, and that some had confessed that they had planned to travel to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria to take part in jihadist activities.<\/p>\n A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said at a news conference on Wednesday that the Global Times article was \u201cextremely accurate.\u201d<\/p>\n But the details given by the Turkish Foreign Ministry made no reference to either terrorism-related charges or terrorist suspects. Rather, the ministry said that 10 people \u2014 eight men and two women \u2014 had been detained by security officials in Shanghai on Nov. 17 on suspicion of \u201corganizing people for illegal border crossings.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the 10 detained were a father and a daughter as well as a married couple, the ministry said. It said that nine of the Turks had arrived in Shanghai on Nov. 5 and that one entered China on Nov. 15.<\/p>\n The Turkish citizens were not released after a month\u2019s detention despite no legal charges having been brought against them, the ministry said. Then, on Dec. 24, after prosecutors had examined their case for a week, two Turks were formally arrested on the charge of \u201corganizing people for illegal border crossings\u201d and eight on the charge of \u201cselling travel documents.\u201d Their cases were transferred to criminal courts.<\/p>\n All the suspects are in jail in Shanghai, where they have been visited twice by Turkish diplomats. The ministry said it expected court hearings to start around Feb. 25.<\/p>\n The propaganda and media relations office at the Shanghai Police Headquarters did not answer calls seeking comment on Wednesday and Thursday.<\/p>\n Violent attacks have been on the rise in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, the homeland of the Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking, mostly Muslim people. Chinese officials blame Islamist terrorists for most of the attacks, but many Uighurs and some foreign scholars say the Chinese are exaggerating the threat of jihadism to justify repressive policies.<\/p>\n Hundreds and possibly thousands of Uighurs illegally fled Xinjiang last year. More than 400 were detained by Thai security officials<\/a> in separate groups in Thailand in March alone. Most were women and children trying to get to Turkey, and many had forged Turkish passports.<\/p>\n Some scholars say the Uighurs detained in November in the Shanghai airport may have been simply trying to flee China rather than looking to join jihadist groups.<\/p>\n