kaya'08
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Nov 25, 2008
- Messages
- 6,363
- Reaction score
- 1,318
- Location
- British Turk
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Centrist
Exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer charged Wednesday that nearly 10,000 people "disappeared" in ethnic unrest in China’s northwest this month and expressed disappointment at the U.S. response to the violence.
Kadeer, the U.S.-based head of the World Uighur Congress, said that "the Chinese government is trying to destroy the Uighur people," speaking during a Japan visit that angered the communist government in Beijing.
Speaking through an interpreter and citing local sources, she said "close to 10,000 people in Urumqi disappeared in one night" when authorities cracked down from July 5 on the unrest in the mainly Muslim region of Xinjiang.
"Where did those people go?" she said. "If they died, where did they go?"
Kadeer, 62, claimed that Chinese police used machine guns to randomly shoot Uighur people after dark after the electricity was turned off, and that the following morning large numbers of Uighur men had gone missing.
Beijing accuses the mother-of-11 and grandmother of being a "criminal" and a separatist who instigated the unrest -- which the government says left 197 people dead, most of them Han Chinese killed by angry Uighur mobs.
Kadeer is due to attend the August 8 launch in Melbourne of the documentary "10 Conditions of Love," which depicts her life story and which prompted Chinese attempts to have it pulled from the citys film festival.
Kadeer on Tuesday drew support from another figure who has long been a thorn in Beijing’s side, the Dalai Lama, who told an audience in Warsaw that, like him, Kadeer believed in non-violence and was not seeking a separate state.
Uighur leader says nearly 10,000 missing in China unrest - Hürriyet Daily News and Economic Review