China may have pressured Australia to refuse to take six Uighur men released from Guantanamo Bay and sent to the Pacific island nation of Palau, Palauan President Johnson Toribiong said.
Toribiong, who has welcomed the six Muslims who spent close to eight years in detention at the US military base, told television station SBS he was puzzled as to why Australia rejected the group.
“It’s strange, it’s a big country,” the Palau president said in an interview aired yesterday. “I assume they were pressured by China to take the position they did, but in my opinion the problem or dispute between the US and China over these people is between them.”
Palau, which is a former US-administered territory which relies heavily on US aid, has agreed to provide a temporary home to the six Uighurs, who were cleared of all charges four years ago.
The US has refused to send them back to China — which expressed anger over their release, describing them as terrorist suspects — for fear they would be persecuted.
One of the six, Ahmad Tourson, told SBS’ Dateline program that the group would like to settle in another country, preferably Australia, where he said there was an established Uighur community.
“We came here to Palau because it’s close to Australia. While we’re here, if we apply again to settle in Australia, we are hoping that it will be accepted,” he said.
The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was unable to comment on specific cases, but confirmed that China had made representations to Canberra on the issue.
The six Uighurs arrived in Palau two weeks ago as part of US President Barack Obama’s drive to close the controversial Guantanamo Bay detention center.
The former prisoners were among 22 Uighurs — a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority — living at a self-contained camp in Afghanistan when the US-led invasion of the country began in October 2001.
They said they had fled to Afghanistan to escape persecution in their home region of Xinjiang in northwest China.
Last week, Beijing said it had executed nine people over ethnic unrest between Uighurs and members of China’s dominant Han ethnic group in July in Xinjiang.
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