Exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer said yesterday that nearly 10,000 people “disappeared in one night” during ethnic unrest in the Chinese city of Urumqi early this month.
“Close to 10,000 people in Urumqi disappeared in one night. Where did those people go?” she said in Japan, speaking in her native language through a translator. “If they died, where did they go?”
Kadeer, the 62-year-old US-based head of the World Uighur Congress, charged that “the Chinese government is trying to destroy the Uighur people. I want to tell the international community about our situation.”
PHOTO: EPA
Citing local sources she had been in contact with, Kadeer said during the unrest from July 5, Chinese police randomly shot people after dark when the electricity went out, and that the next morning people awoke to find many Uighur men had disappeared.
Beijing accuses the mother of 11 and grandmother of being a “criminal” who instigated the unrest pitting Uighurs against Han Chinese in Xinjiang, which the government says left 197 people dead.
“I was not involved in the incident,” she told the press conference. “If China says I did it, I want them to show evidence. If the international community judges it as evidence, I would acknowledge that.”
Kadeer instead charged that “the responsibility lies with the authorities who changed what was a peaceful demonstration into a violent riot.”
“For Uighurs, taking part in demonstrations is like committing suicide,” she said.
The Chinese foreign ministry on Monday expressed its “strong dissatisfaction” with Japan for allowing entry to Kadeer, who spent around six years in a Chinese prison before being released under US pressure in 2005.
Japan’s top government spokesman, Takeo Kawamura, said on Tuesday that Kadeer’s visit “was organized by civil groups, not an event by the government.”
“We don’t consider that her visit to Japan itself will negatively impact the Japan-China relationship,” Kawamura told a regular press briefing.
Beijing has also campaigned for other countries to deny Kadeer a platform.
In Washington, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Guangya (王光亞) said on Tuesday that Beijing had asked Washington to “restrain and prevent” anyone from using its soil to conduct “separatist activities against China.”
Kadeer said she was “perplexed and disappointed” by the US response to ethnic unrest in China this month.
“The response of the United States has been somewhat cold,” she said. “I am perplexed and disappointed.”
She added, however, that “I do not believe the United States will remain quiet. I believe it will respond in an appropriate way.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS