Chinese investment in Palau has dried up since the Pacific nation granted asylum to six former Guantanamo detainees from China’s Uighur minority, Palauan President Johnson Toribiong said this week.
Responding to questions from a US Senate committee about China’s reaction to Palau’s decision to accept the Uighurs in 2009, Toribiong said that his government had faced sustained pressure from Beijing.
“In three separate meetings with Palau’s UN mission, the government of China stated that it considered this ‘a very serious issue for Chinese-Palauan relations,’” Toribiong said in a written response that was released this week.
“[China said] that the issue was ‘not a legal issue, but a political one’ and, ominously, that China had ‘a long memory,’” Toribiong said.
The Uighurs were part of a group of 22 arrested at a camp in the mountains of Afghanistan after the US-led invasion of the country began in October 2001, a month after the Sept. 11 attacks on the US.
The men, all from Xinjiang, were detained at Guantanamo Bay, but cleared of any wrongdoing four years later, prompting Beijing to call for their repatriation.
The US refused to send them back to China out of fears that they would be persecuted after Beijing described them as terrorist suspects.
Palau, formerly a US--administered territory and still heavily reliant on US aid, eventually agreed to take them on a temporary basis until a permanent home could be found for them.
They still remain there.
Toribiong said that shortly after the Uighurs’ arrival, construction stopped on a Chinese-backed five-star hotel in Palau, even though the 100-room project was almost finished.
“I am advised that the Chinese investor, who by that time had invested several million dollars into the project, can no longer get money out of China for the project,” he said.
Toribiong also said that “a previously expected increase in Chinese tourist arrivals to Palau never materialized” after the country agreed to take in the Uighurs.
He said Palau, which has a population of about 20,000, had agreed to Washington’s request to take the Uighurs “without hesitation, when no other nation would even consider providing such refuge.”
The Palauan leader was responding to questions from a US Senate committee that is determining how Washington should fund the Pacific state under a compact of free association between the two countries.
Palau does not have official relations with Beijing, because it is one of 23 nations that recognizes Taiwan.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
PRECARIOUS RELATIONS: Commentators in Saudi Arabia accuse the UAE of growing too bold, backing forces at odds with Saudi interests in various conflicts A Saudi Arabian media campaign targeting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deepened the Gulf’s worst row in years, stoking fears of a damaging fall-out in the financial heart of the Middle East. Fiery accusations of rights abuses and betrayal have circulated for weeks in state-run and social media after a brief conflict in Yemen, where Saudi airstrikes quelled an offensive by UAE-backed separatists. The United Arab Emirates is “investing in chaos and supporting secessionists” from Libya to Yemen and the Horn of Africa, Saudi Arabia’s al-Ekhbariya TV charged in a report this week. Such invective has been unheard of
US President Donald Trump on Saturday warned Canada that if it concludes a trade deal with China, he would impose a 100 percent tariff on all goods coming over the border. Relations between the US and its northern neighbor have been rocky since Trump returned to the White House a year ago, with spats over trade and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney decrying a “rupture” in the US-led global order. During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, Carney hailed a “new strategic partnership” with China that resulted in a “preliminary, but landmark trade agreement” to reduce tariffs — but
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
RSS