The sons of a US-based Muslim activist have been charged with tax evasion and plotting to overthrow the Chinese government, a rights group said yesterday.
Kahar Abdureyim, Ablikim Abdureyim and Alim Abdureyim were officially charged on Tuesday in the predominantly Muslim Xinjiang region in China's far west, the Uighur American Association said in a statement.
Their mother, Rebiya Kadeer, is president of the Washington-based association, and has been an outspoken critic of China's treatment of Uighurs, Turkic-speaking Muslims who have a language and culture distinct from the rest of the country.
"I demand the Chinese government to release immediately my three sons because they are all innocent," Kadeer said in the statement.
"The Chinese government has no right to punish them on false charges," she said.
Telephones were not answered yesterday at the public security bureau in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.
Beijing claims it is fighting an Islamic separatist movement in Xinjiang, where Uighurs are the dominant ethnic group and refer to the territory as "East Turkestan." It blames Uighur separatists for sporadic bombings and other violence.
The government says the separatists are linked to al-Qaeda, but diplomats and foreign experts doubt that.
Once a prominent businesswoman, Kadeer was arrested in 1999 in Xinjiang on her way to meet US government researchers. She was sentenced to eight years in prison but was given early release in March last year, and allowed to leave for the US.
Last month, Chinese authorities detained Ablikim, Alim and Kadeer's daughter, Rushangul, in an apparent attempt to keep them from talking to a visiting US congressional team.
This week, authorities charged Kahar with evading taxes, Ablikim on conspiracy to overthrow the government and Alim on tax evasion and attempt to divide the country, Kadeer's group said.
Kahar was handcuffed and chained and brought from the city of Aksu to Urumqi on a minibus guarded by police, it said. It did not give more details on the arrest of the other two sons.
Kadeer's younger brother and daughter, Rushangul, are under house arrest, the group said, and her grandchildren are not allowed to go to school.
"By unlawfully detaining and arresting my innocent children, China is once again demonstrating to the world where it stands in terms of human rights," Kadeer said.
"China is telling the whole world that it can do anything to any Uighur at any time for any reason with impunity," she said.
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