Originally published by Radio Sweden, 9 March 2010

 The Chinese Government denies any involvement in espionage against refugees of Uighur origin in Sweden. Monday’s conviction in the Stockholm District Court of a 62-year-old Uighur is “sheer nonsense”, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman told the news agency Reuters.

 According to the court, the man from the Turkic-speaking region in northwest China had passed on information about the health, travels and political leanings of other exiled Uighurs in Sweden to a diplomat and journalist, who was working for the Chinese intelligence service.

The information, the court said, “could cause significant damage to Uighurs in and outside China.” And the crimes – committed from January 2008 through June 2009 – were branded “especially egregious due to the fact that the espionage served a large power that does not fully respect human rights.”

Originally published by Phnom Penh Post, 4 March 2010

LAST-MINUTE changes to a sub-decree regulating procedures for screening asylum seekers paved the way for the government’s forced deportation of 20 ethnic Uighur asylum seekers, violating their rights under local and international law, an Australian academic has asserted.

Writing in the Australian magazine Eureka Street on Wednesday, Frank Brennan, a professor of law at the Australian Catholic University’s Public Policy Institute, described the new sub-decree, passed two days before the Uighurs’ deportation on December 19, as a “sham”.

Cambodia “may be a signatory to the [1951 UN Refugee Convention], but to date that counts for nothing”, he wrote in the article.

Originally published by Islam Online, 3 March 2010

CAIRO — Chinese Muslims and Xinjiang are not the accurate terms to describe the Uighur people and their autonomous region in northwestern China, a leading advocacy group insists.

“Uighurs are not, in fact, ‘Chinese Muslims’, and this term is inaccurate and misleading,” the Washington-based Uighur American Association (UAA) said in statement mailed to IslamOnline.net on Wednesday, March 3.

It said the nearly 10 million Uighurs who live within China are ethnically and culturally distinct from the dominant Han ethnic group.

Originally published by Times Online, 3 March 2010

Despite being cleared for release and officially declared no threat to the US, five Uighurs held at Guantánamo Bay for eight years had their bid for freedom blocked by the Obama Administration yesterday.

The move came after the Supreme Court agreed with arguments by US government lawyers that the five should not have their appeal to be released into the US heard by the court. It had been due to hear the Uighurs’ appeal on March 23.

America’s highest court, which had been due to hear the Uighurs’ appeal on March 23, reversed course, siding with the White House and refusing to take the case.

Originally published by BBC, 1 March 2010

The US Supreme Court has said it will not consider an appeal by seven Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay, saying the facts of the case have changed.

The case would have had implications over whether US judges could order Guantanamo detainees to be freed in the US if no other country will take them.

The seven men were among a group of Uighurs captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and have all been cleared of charges.

Switzerland has offered to resettle two, the Pacific island of Palau five.

Originally published by RFA, 1 March 2010

HONG KONG—Chinese authorities have barred a Japanese researcher studying the ethnic minority Uyghur people from entering the country, detaining her for two hours after her plane landed in Beijing and then sending her home, the researcher said.

Naoko Mizutani, a lecturer at Chuo University and author of a book about the Uyghur people, landed Feb. 27 at Beijing Capital Airport from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport.

“I felt something was wrong when I boarded the airplane in Japan, because the plane was delayed for an hour before departure—we were informed that it was because Beijing Airport was busy,” she said in an interview.

Originally published by Sunday Morning Herald, 27 February 2010

BEIJING: China’s top expert on social unrest has warned that hardline security policies are taking the country to the brink of ”revolutionary turmoil”.

In contrast with the powerful, assertive and united China that is being projected to the outside world, Yu Jianrong said his prediction of looming internal disaster reflected on-the-ground surveys and also the views of Chinese government ministers.

Deepening social fractures were caused by the Communist Party’s obsession with preserving its monopoly on power through ‘’state violence” and ”ideology”, rather than justice, Professor Yu said.

Originally published by ABC News, 26 February 2010

There are claims the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR) ignored repeated warnings about the imminent forced deportation of 20 Uighur asylum seekers from Cambodia to China last year.

The Cambodian government was condemned around the world when it deported the asylum seekers at gunpoint in December.

Two Australian women – joint Nobel Peace Prize winner Sister Denise Coghlan and Taya Hunt, a legal officer with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) – represented the Uighurs for six months prior to their deportation.

The pair have spoken exclusively to AM.

Ms Hunt provided legal and humanitarian support to the Uighurs and is one of the few people to have close contact with them.

“[They were] very grateful for the assistance we were providing them and generally just a nice, calm group of people,” she said.

“There was a pregnant woman in the group and her beautiful two children.”

Originally published by Zee News, 24 February 2010

Washington: Forcible deportation of Uighurs to China by Cambodia would affect its relationship with the United States, the Obama Administration said today.

“We expect governments, including Cambodia, to uphold its international obligations, and this will affect our relationship with Cambodia as well as its international standing,” Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs P J Crowley said.

“We obviously expressed our disappointment and we are deeply disturbed that the Cambodian Government, in violation of its international obligations, forcibly removed 20 Uighur asylum seekers to China in December without the benefit of a credible process for determining their refugee status,” Crowley told reporters here.

Originally published by Times Online, 21 February 2010

A new mythical animal is on the prowl on the Chinese internet.

The Yake lizard is the latest creation of China’s nimble and imaginative netizens as a way to poke fun at the authorities and their bid to corral online debate and to block access to sites the censors deem inappropriate.

Internet satirists were inspired by the language used by a Uighur artist performing on the Spring Festival Gala show, the annual Chinese New Year’s Eve jamboree created and broadcast by China Central Television to entertain viewers gathered at home for the most important festival of the year. Watched by the largest television audience on Earth, it is an opportunity for wholesome family entertainment peppered with propaganda.