Chinese police ransacked the headquarters and arrested four employees of a company owned by Rebiya Kadeer, a Muslim businesswoman who was released from prison two months ago and is now in the US, her daughter said.
Kadeer's son, who runs two of the company's nine restaurants, fled and remains in hiding, said the daughter, Akida Rouzi.
"We have heard he is going to be safe for the time being," Rouzi said Friday by telephone from her home in Virginia, where her mother is living.
Kadeer was arrested in 1999 on her way to a meeting with staff members of the US Congressional Research Service. She was never told why. However, she told reporters after her release in March that it probably was because she was carrying papers about alleged human rights and other abuses of her Uighur people by the Chinese.
The 8 million Uighurs are Muslims from the Xinjiang autonomous region of northwestern China. They are ethnically related to Central Asians, not to the Chinese.
Kadeer, 58, spent 5 years of an 8-year prison sentence before being released in March, ostensibly on medical grounds. Her release was announced minutes after the State Department had said it would not introduce a resolution at the Human Rights Commission in Geneva that would denounce China's rights record.
There has been no word from the Chinese government about the latest reported incident.
A State Department official, who refused to speak for attribution, said: "We are aware of such reports and have raised our concerns with the Chinese both here in Washington and in Beijing."
Rouzi, Kadeer's daughter, said the family doesn't know why police ransacked the offices of Kadeer's company, Akida, and arrested the workers. The conglomerate, based in Urumqi, includes real estate firms, stocks brokerages, import-export companies and restaurants.
"They haven't given us any official papers," she said. "Even when they searched the company headquarters, there was no warrant and so no word on why."
She said police at first arrested five people, including Ahmatchan Matilai, the best friend of her 32-year-old brother, Ablikim Abudureyim. Matilai was released after a couple of hours, again without explanation, she said.
The human rights group Amnesty International USA has been deeply involved with Kadeer's case. The organization said Kadeer was told three days before her release in March that she must avoid contact with Uighurs abroad and keep quiet about conditions in Xinjiang.
T. Kumar, who handles affairs of the organization's Asia-Pacific region, said her businesses were threatened if she did not follow those ground rules.
Kadeer's husband, who lives in the US, is an activist for the Uighurs. For years, Kadeer was presented as a model for China's poor Muslim women and even was named a delegate to the UN 1995 Women's Conference in Beijing.
She said in the March interview that she assumed her growing prominence among the Uighurs made the Chinese authorities uneasy about her activities, which included a charity to help Muslim women start businesses.
BRUSHED OFF: An ambassador to Australia previously said that Beijing does not see a reason to apologize for its naval exercises and military maneuvers in international areas China set off alarm bells in New Zealand when it dispatched powerful warships on unprecedented missions in the South Pacific without explanation, military documents showed. Beijing has spent years expanding its reach in the southern Pacific Ocean, courting island nations with new hospitals, freshly paved roads and generous offers of climate aid. However, these diplomatic efforts have increasingly been accompanied by more overt displays of military power. Three Chinese warships sailed the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand in February, the first time such a task group had been sighted in those waters. “We have never seen vessels with this capability
A Japanese city would urge all smartphone users to limit screen time to two hours a day outside work or school under a proposed ordinance that includes no penalties. The limit — which would be recommended for all residents in Toyoake City — would not be binding and there would be no penalties incurred for higher usage, the draft ordinance showed. The proposal aims “to prevent excessive use of devices causing physical and mental health issues... including sleep problems,” Mayor Masafumi Koki said yesterday. The draft urges elementary-school students to avoid smartphones after 9pm, and junior-high students and older are advised not
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has fired his national police chief, who gained attention for leading the separate arrests of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte on orders of the International Criminal Court and televangelist Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, who is on the FBI’s most-wanted list for alleged child sex trafficking. Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin did not cite a reason for the removal of General Nicolas Torre as head of the 232,000-member national police force, a position he was appointed to by Marcos in May and which he would have held until 2027. He was replaced by another senior police general, Jose
POWER CONFLICT: The US president threatened to deploy National Guards in Baltimore. US media reports said he is also planning to station troops in Chicago US President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to deploy National Guard troops to yet another Democratic stronghold, the Maryland city of Baltimore, as he seeks to expand his crackdown on crime and immigration. The Republican’s latest online rant about an “out of control, crime-ridden” city comes as Democratic state leaders — including Maryland Governor Wes Moore — line up to berate Trump on a high-profile political stage. Trump this month deployed the National Guard to the streets of Washington, in a widely criticized show of force the president said amounts to a federal takeover of US capital policing. The Guard began carrying