Some of the 17 Chinese Uighurs cleared of wrongdoing but still held at the US prison camp here appealed to visiting journalists asking why it is they have yet to be freed.
Reporters were visiting as a US military court on Monday held the first open hearing of the administration of US President Barack Obama, examining the case of a young Canadian accused of killing a US soldier in Afghanistan.
Taken on a visit to their camp, journalists found the Uighurs behind a prefab building, talking with their lawyers, according to the US military. Several stared, curious at the sight of reporters on the other side of the grillwork that frames their tightly enclosed space.
Two members of the Turkic-speaking Muslim Chinese minority stepped forward with a large sketchbook in hand. First, they asked: “Who is asking the questions here?”
But reporters, under rules of the military prison, cannot reply.
So the Uighur detainees began flipping the pages of the notebook, displaying words of protest written out in brightly colored capital letters: “We need freedom,” “Where is justice?” “What is the difference between democracy and communism?” (referring to Beijing, which they say persecutes their people).
But they have not been treated fairly by the US, either, they say.
Obama’s administration has asked the US Supreme Court to reject a request by Chinese Uighurs held at the Guantanamo Bay prison and cleared of all charges to be released on US soil.
Four years ago US authorities cleared the 17 imprisoned Uighurs, but they are stuck at the Guantanamo prison because of fears that Beijing would torture them if they returned to their homeland in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Province.
At the prison, the Uighurs are held at “Camp Iguana,” a special area for detainees cleared for release. They have more freedom and greater privileges than most other prisoners, including a recreational space and a library, the Pentagon said.
In October 2008 a federal judge ordered that the Uighurs be released in the US. The most likely place for the detainees to be released would be in Washington’s suburbs in northern Virginia, which is home to a significant Uighur expatriate community.
However, a federal appeals court overturned that ruling in February. It is the Uighurs’ appeal to that decision that the Supreme Court must now address.
But for the Obama administration, which is repeating some of the reasoning that his predecessor George W. Bush used, “the decision whether to allow aliens abroad to enter the United States and if so, under what terms, rests exclusively in the political branches,” it said in the filing.
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