You go, Uighurs!

Guantanamo Vigil in Dupont Circle Park, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.

The Uighurs staged a rare public protest of their detention at Guantanamo Bay:

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — A group of Muslims from China awaiting a court-ordered release staged a self-styled protest inside their prison camp Monday, waving signs demanding their freedom written in crayon on their Pentagon-issued art supplies.

''We are the Uighurs,'' said one sign. "We are being oppressed in prison though we had been announced innocent.''

Another: "We need to freedom.'' [McClatchy]

Just to make this absolutely clear: these men are not terror suspects. It's not like they're accused of terrorism that the U.S. can't prove. They're not accused of anything. U.S. authorities admit the whole thing was a mistake.

The Uighurs are Chinese Muslims, a despised minority persecuted in the People's Republic. As a result of this repression, many flee to nearby Muslim countries, including Afghanistan, where they hope to live and worship in peace. The United States is satisfied that the Uighurs had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism, violence, or jihad. They can't be sent back to China because the Chinese government will probably kill them.

Attorney General Eric Holder initially suggested relocating at least some of them to the U.S., but he and Obama have caved to Congressional pressure and withdrawn that suggestion. The retreat on the Uighur issue may also have something to do with the fact that the U.S. and China have agreed to restart high-level talks later this month in Washington. China would consider it an affront if the U.S. were to give the Uighurs asylum.

Comments

[TB]

The should be freed and repatriated immediately.

[Alon Levy]

You're kidding, right, TB?

[The Phantom]

I knew TB would make sense some day!

[Ben]

I'm in full agreement, TB.

[Thomas]

It might make some sense to convince China to let these people live in peace lest they find taking up with Muslim extremists appealing as a way to strike at the country that has abandoned them.

[The Phantom]

In order to abandon someone, you have to have first had a at least an implicit responsibility for them.

There guys are not our citizens, nor were they resident here, nor were they lawfully in the country they were found it.

We don't owe them a thing.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Two U.S. administrations have said that Uighurs are innocent and that their apprehension was just a case of mistaken identity. We've completely ruined their lives for no reason. If we can find another safe country that will accept them, great. If not we can't just keep them locked up forever. They're innocent. What kind of precedent does it set if the government can keep people it ADMITS are innocent in prison forever?

Clearly we can't send them back to China. They will be killed. Turning them over to the Chinese would be the moral equivalent of murder on top of everything else we've inflicted upon them. Keeping them locked up is no solution. So, we've got to let them come to the United States.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

What, the Taliban didn't issue these guys green cards? For shame!
Words cannot express how touched I am that Phantom is so supportive of the Taliban's immigration policy, violation of which is obviously an unforgivable crime.

Just because their ancestors have been living around those particular hinterlands since forever, just where do they get off wandering across an imaginary line in a desolate landscape and expect not to be kidnapped by foreigners, shipped halfway around the world and imprisoned for no good reason for seven years?

[The Phantom]

Why will they be killed if they return to China?

China, bad as it is, does not kill without a good ( or bad ) reason

Are these guys enemies of the Chinese state? Politically, or, directly or indirectly, militarily?

I've asked if they've been known to associate with any " militant " / terrorist group at any time, and I have not received any answer .

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

China has been known to kill Falun Gong leaders, those mild-manner people who do breathing exercises in parks, and anyone else who violates state-mandated atheism.

[Interrobang]

China, bad as it is, does not kill without a good ( or bad ) reason...

...sure, if you accept that a good or bad reason is "They're not of Han descent" and/or "They follow the wrong religion" and/or "They're tribal primitives from the hinterlands." China notoriously treats its ethnic minorities exceedingly badly, to the point where unless you were following the sparse anthropological literature, it was next to impossible until recently to find out that China even had ethnic minorities.

[Peter K.]

First off, someone should use "Uighurs" in their band name, like "Uighurs Limbo".

Second, I'm a huge Obama fan but this is a travesty. They need to do something. It's like that movie Terminal with Tom Hanks, excpet they're in prison. These days if you get on the wrong side of China, you're pretty much screwed.

[The Phantom]

Lindsay

I'm not defending anything that the Communist government of China does but

Falun Gung is illegal in China ( shouldn't be illegal but it is )

Being a Uighur is not illegal.

Everyone is skirting around the issue of why these guys were in Afghanistan and who they were involved with. It is very relevant to any understanding of the larger issue.

[parse]

Phantom, is your position that because the U.S. took these people into custody, it's their obligation to explain why they were in Afghanistan and who they were involved with? The U.S. government has already determined that these men are innocent of any terrorist activity or identity that provided the reason for holding them. We've admitted that we incarcerated them for years without just cause. It seems arrogant to now demand that they explain to our satisfaction how it was that we put them in jail in the first place. If their presence among Americans puts us as risk, maybe we should have thought of that before we kidnapped them.

[The Phantom]

My questions stand.

Especially as we have some well informed people who know the lawyers and all.

Enquiring minds wanna know.

[parse]

Phantom, you may want to know, but it's none of your business. Anymore than it's anyone else's business why you travel and who you are involved with.

[Gabriel Nichols]

Phantom,

Describing Uighurs simply as Chinese Muslims is a bit misleading. There are many strands of Islam in China many of whom can practice with only the extreme limitations china places on any religious group. The Uighurs however have the misfortune to belong to a ethnic minority that was conquered by China quite late in the game an never got a Han Chinese majority in their homeland. Particularly illustrative of this is the name for that province (well special autonomous zone but if we try to get into all the details will take a longer post then I'm willing to make) XinJiang which literally means "New Territory"

There is no simple way to capture 1/1000th of the history here but basically during the chaos which has been the last 100 years in China at several points the Uighurs have suggested "thanks but no thanks, we're not Chinese, we want out of this madhouse" This has never been a popular opinion in Beijing (a feeling that is rooted firmly in long tradition and has nothing to do with the fact that Xinjiang produces more oil than any other province and its reserves are largly untapped) They have pursued a policy of settlement that over fifty years has managed to get the population to almost 40% Han Chinese.

Beijing has long labeled Uighurs arguing for independence as "Capitalist Roaders", "Reactionary Elements", and the now popular "terrorists" That said while there has been some asymmetric warfare between Uighur nationalists, Islamic extremists, and the Han Chinese government of XinJiang. These have largly consisted of attacks against Han Chinese police or military units stationed in the province but have also included attacks on civilian settlements. beijing responded to this by clamping down hard making it illegal for the Uighurs to run religious schools, banning unauthorized gatherings, and discriminating against them in many different ways.

For these specific individuals if they returned to Xinjiang they would almost certainly be accused of being members of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement. Even if not charged with a capital crime with a trial in front of a Han Chinese judge taking place in a language they, in all liklihood don't speak, with a transcript provided to the them in a script they don't read with a lawyer ... if they can pay one, they would at the very least spend several more years in a LaoGai (reeducation through labor, an administrative punishment where the accused does not get a trial) camp.

[TB]

Given where they're from within China, terrain and weather-wise, I bet they'd feel right at home in Wyoming.

Why don't we just use eminent domain to annex one of Cheney's ranches and let them settle there?

[Weeger]

Phantom, as I told you before:
The Uyghurs were in Afghanistan fleeing oppression, just as Tibetans flee Tibet. India/Nepal is not just across the border from East Turkestan (Xinjiang)- Afghanistan is.
China certainly does kill people without good reason (never mind that I'm opposed to the death penalty). East Turkestan, the Uyghurs' homeland, is the only place in the PRC where political prisoners are still executed (although there may have been a recent exception with a Tibetan political prisoner.) And as you so aptly noted, Falun Gong members are severely persecuted in China, and there are many reports of Falun Gong practitioners being killed or tortured to death. Do you think there was a good reason for that?
With regard to Uyghurs, it is interesting that you say "being a Uyghur is not illegal". Today, in East Turkestan, the Chinese government is trying to wipe out Uyghurs' very identity.

[The Phantom]

parse

It may be none of my business, but you're hardly going to get much support for these guys with that attitude

--

No one has any knowledge or curiousity about who and what these people were associating with in, of all places Afghanistan. Boy, I guess we're interested in all subjects under the sun. Except this one!

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Phantom, you're happy to take the U.S. government's word for it when it says people are guilty. I'd love to interview the Uighurs myself and find out what they were doing in Afghanistan, but I can't because they're locked up in Guantanamo. The U.S. authorities have had 7 years to quiz these guys on what they were up to in Afghanistan. I guess they got a satisfactory answer. I'd like to know, too. But you can't say that the Uighurs deserved to be locked up because the people who accidentally kidnapped them also won't give us the details, or let the Uighurs tell their own stories.

The authorities have no reason to say these guys are innocent if there's a shred of evidence that they're guilty. After all, the bar for keeping someone locked up in Guantanamo is incredibly low. Mere suspicion of guilt is plenty. And publicly admitting their innocence is causing huge diplomatic and PR headaches for the government.

Two successive administrations have investigated these guys and they've come up clean.

[Alon Levy]

Phantom: do you think Britain was right to repatriate Soviet defectors-cum-prisoners of war in World War Two?

[The Phantom]

No one has still begun to answer my question about who these guys were affiliated with. Geez, and we have people who know the lawyers and all. You'd think that these lawyers might know something about their clients.

Alon

No I do not think that they should have been repatriated to the Communist USSR. But if I were making decisions back then, I'd be asking the same questions- the circumstances of their defection, and who they associated with.

We've been discussing this for a few days, and no one still has any idea of who these guys hung out with. What a big mystery.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Phantom,
typical rightwing prevaricating BS. The Uighers haven't been accused of being "affiliated" with anyone, at least not by US authorities. Perhaps by totalitarian Chinese, or by whacko rightwingers that are have yet to disprove their own affiliation with abortion clinic bomber terrorists, but not by anyone credible.

That's right, just keep asking that a negative to be proven. I'd sure like to see the definitive proof that you've never had deviate sex with a goat, but I suspect you'll never cough it up. Maybe if we all ask you for it, over and over again, you'll finally come clean. But I doubt it.

[Mandos]

They may not have hung out with anybody.

The Phantom is just throwing up smoke. Personally, I think they were in communion with the Great Ujux, a transcendent being from Sirius B. If you permitted them into the USA, they may or may not share their enlightenment with you as they please.