Responsive Image

The Long Arm of China: Why were members of China’s Uighur minority group recently deported from Cambodia?

Published By The Wall Street Journal, 21 December 2009

 On Saturday night under cover of darkness, a special Chinese plane departed from the military section of the Phnom Penh airport carrying 20 Uighur asylum seekers. For this group of men, women and children, this was the end of their failed effort to seek freedom from the Chinese regime.

 Cambodia’s decision to deport the asylum seekers, who were in the process of applying for refugee status at the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, is a reminder that Beijing’s oppression of the Uighurs does not stop at China’s borders. The Uighurs are a predominantly Turkic, Muslim people who live in East Turkestan (also knows as the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region). For decades they have been the victims of systemic human-rights abuses at the hands of the Chinese government.

 

Click here to read more:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704376704574607001504303582.html