Cambodia plans to deport at least 20 Muslim Uighurs who fled China after deadly ethnic violence this year, a government official said yesterday, despite concerns they will face persecution by Beijing.
The Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim ethnic group involved in rioting in western China that killed nearly 200 people in July, were smuggled into Cambodia in recent weeks and applied for asylum at the UN refugee agency office in Phnom Penh.
“The Cambodian government is implementing its immigration law. They came to Cambodia illegally without any passports or visas, so we consider them illegal immigrants,” Cambodian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong said.
Human rights groups said they fear for the lives of the Uighurs if they are deported to China.
“Cambodia will be sending these Uighurs to a terrible fate, possible execution and likely torture,” said Amy Reger, a researcher at the Washington-based Uighur American Association.
She cited the case of Shaheer Ali, a Uighur political activist who fled to Nepal in 2000 and was granted refugee status by the UN. He was forcibly returned to China from Nepal in 2002 and executed a year later according to state media.
Reger’s group received reports at least 20 of the Uighurs were put on a flight to Shanghai early yesterday. But she said it appeared they had not yet been deported.
Washington is “deeply disturbed” that the Uighurs may be forcibly returned, US embassy spokesman John Johnson said in Phnom Penh. “The US strongly urges the Cambodian government to honour its commitments under international law.”
Cambodia’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said he did not know their location.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office said it believed they were still in Cambodia.
“We have conveyed a message to the Cambodian government to refrain from deporting them,” said Kitty McKinsey, a spokeswoman for the UNHCR office.
The UN body had offered assistance to the Cambodian government to resolve the case, McKinsey said.
Beijing has called the asylum seekers “criminals,” although it has offered no evidence to back up the allegations.
Rights groups said Cambodia was bound by a 1951 convention on refugees pledging not to return asylum seekers to countries where they will face persecution. Cambodia is one of two Southeast Asian nations to have signed the convention.
When asked about Cambodia’s obligations under the 1951 convention, Koy said: “We are implementing our internal laws.”
The Uighurs have put Cambodia’s leaders in an awkward position ahead of a visit today by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平), who is expected to sign 14 agreements related to infrastructure construction, grants and loans.
China is Cambodia’s biggest investor, having poured more than US$1 billion in foreign direct investment into the country.
The July 5 riots, which began with protests against attacks on Uighur workers in south China, killed 197 people, most of them Han Chinese. More than 1,600 were wounded, official figures show.
At least eight people have been sentenced to death for murder and other crimes during the rioting, and nine other people have been executed, Chinese state media have reported.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS