Security efforts include the use of families to pressure or trick suspects, one official says.<\/p>\n
2015-10-19<\/p>\n
Authorities in an ethnic Uyghur township in northwestern China\u2019s Xinjiang region have created files to track the identities and whereabouts of suspect persons and others who have left the area, sometimes simply to find work in other parts of China, one of those responsible for maintaining the system said.<\/p>\n
The system was set up last year in Yengi\u2019eriq township in Aksu (in Chinese, Akesu) prefecture\u2019s Awat (Awati) county, Alim Rahman, a member of the township\u2019s \u201cstability work team\u201d told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service in an interview.<\/p>\n
Uyghurs whose names appear in the files include suspected \u201creligious extremists,\u201d \u201c[ethnic] separatists,\u201d and \u201cdealers in illegal drugs,\u201d Alim said, adding that records have been compiled on everyone known to have left the township \u201csince the 1990s.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alim\u2019s own work focuses on Uyghurs who have fled the township\u2019s Lengger village, he said.<\/p>\n
Many of these are persons wanted by the police, including some who managed to escape before being taken into custody, he said.<\/p>\n
Others had left to find a place where they could practice their Islamic religious beliefs in safety or to \u201cseek a better life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of them have disappeared since then, and are hiding somewhere in [China\u2019s] inner provinces or in the cities. Others have escaped to foreign countries by illegally crossing the borders,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Personal archive<\/strong><\/p>\n Security officials have now begun to set up a \u201cpersonal archive\u201d for each person who has fled, Alim said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe try to investigate their full name, age, occupation, educational background, identification number, and blood type,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Also added to the files are the suspect\u2019s original home address, family members\u2019 names, and anything known about their current activities and situation\u2014including telephone numbers, bank accounts, and social media addresses, Alim said.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course, this isn\u2019t easy work for us,\u201d Alim said.<\/p>\n \u201c\u201dWe pressure their parents and family members, and require them to inform us if they receive any call from our \u2018target.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSome of the parents know where their children are, though,\u201d he said. \u201cBut they conceal this from us, so we have to find some way to make them tell us what they know.\u201d<\/p>\n In one case, a notice posted on a popular Uyghur website that falsely alerted a suspect to his father\u2019s \u201cimpending death,\u201d brought the man out of hiding, Alim said.<\/p>\n \u201cHe came back to our village last month, and township police released his father,\u201d who had been held as a hostage against his son\u2019s return, he said.<\/p>\n County police then held and questioned the man for several months, but found no evidence against him of \u201cillegal activities or behavior,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was recently released, but our township government has not allowed him to move away from the village again.\u201d<\/p>\n ‘Most wanted’<\/strong><\/p>\n In another case, Yengi\u2019eriq authorities discovered that a young Uyghur woman who had fled the township two years before had been taken into custody by police in China\u2019s southern province of Guangxi after attempting to illegally cross the border with Vietnam.<\/p>\n Shirin\u2019gul, 19, was among those \u201cmost wanted\u201d by the Yengi\u2019eriq stability maintenance team, Alim said.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was involved in \u2018illegal religious activities\u2019 as a teenager, and after she graduated from high school she was very active in spreading illegal religious materials and literature promoting Holy War over the Internet and social media.\u201d<\/p>\n Shirin\u2019gul escaped from Lengger village at the end of 2013 and quickly disappeared, Alim said.<\/p>\n \u201cHer case gave us a huge headache, because we didn\u2019t get any information about her for almost two years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n 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 China has vowed to crack down on what it calls the \u201cthree evils\u201d of terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism in Xinjiang, but experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from Uyghur separatists, and that domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence that has left hundreds dead since 2012.<\/p>\n Reported by Eset Sulaiman for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Translated by Eset Sulaiman. Written in English by Richard Finney.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Security efforts include the use of families to pressure or trick suspects, one official says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-2145","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\/2145","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=2145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2145"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=2145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}