Exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer, alleging China has “destroyed” her Muslim people, has urged Japan’s new government not to ignore their plight as it presses to bolster ties with Beijing.
Kadeer was speaking during a visit to Tokyo, where Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s center-left government took power five weeks ago vowing to improve regional ties and to promote an EU-style Asian community.
US-based Kadeer, whom China labels a separatist, arrived on Tuesday for a 10-day visit, her second trip to Japan this year, triggering an immediate protest from China.
Speaking late on Tuesday, Kadeer criticized China for rights abuses but said she was ready to talk with Beijing on improving ethnic minority policies as she seeks “self-determination” for her people.
“I hope Japan will talk with the Chinese government about the problem,” the grandmother and mother-of-11 said. “Japan plays a very important role in Asia. So it’s a responsibility of Japan to talk about the Uighurs’ problems.”
Uighurs have accused China of decades of religious, cultural and political oppression.
On her visit in July, Kadeer said 10,000 Uighurs had “disappeared” after unrest that erupted on July 5 in Urumqi, pitting Uighurs against Han Chinese.
Kadeer said on Tuesday that “according to new information we have obtained, from July 5 to October 1 more than 10,000 Uighurs have been arrested and jailed, but how many have died, or been killed, how many have been jailed, nobody knows the exact number.”
US-based Human Rights Watch said in a report yesterday it had documented the disappearances of 43 men and boys in Xinjiang, but that the real number was likely much higher.
Quoting residents, the group said security forces sealed off entire neighborhoods of Urumqi and hauled away male residents.
“‘Disappearing’ people is not the behavior of countries aspiring to global leadership,” Brad Adams, the Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in the report.
China blames Kadeer for fomenting the unrest, which it says left 197 people dead and more than 1,600 injured, mostly Han. China last week sentenced 12 people to death over the bloody unrest.
Kadeer said she had learned that “out of the 11 Uighurs who were sentenced to death ... nine people have been executed.”
“Punishing people who demonstrated peacefully is not necessary,” she said, speaking though an interpreter.
Kadeer’s pleas to Japan for help, however, run counter to Hatoyama’s declared aim to erase the distrust and frequent animosity that marked Tokyo’s relations with Beijing under previous governments.
Kadeer, a former businesswoman who was jailed in China from 1999 to 2005 and now lives in exile in the US, called on China to allow the Uighur people “self-determination.”
She said her people now wanted autonomy and would decide later on whether to seek full independence.
“We will talk about this point when China sits at the table for negotiations,” she said.
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