For immediate release

December 23, 2009, 7:30 pm EST

Contact: Uyghur American Association +1 (202) 349 1496

 The Uyghur American Association (UAA) condemns, in the strongest possible terms, the latest sentencing of 22 Uyghurs in Urumchi, the regional capital of East Turkestan (aka: Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region). A spokeswoman for the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Regional government Wednesday stated “a group of 22 people … were tried” on charges connected with deadly unrest in Urumchi on July 5, 2009. According to spokeswoman Hou Hanmin, 19-year old Mehmet Maheti was sentenced to death. The exact date of Maheti’s execution remains unclear. The trials of the 22 Uyghur men, similar to the previous closed trials since July 5, were marked by politicized judicial proceedings and a lack of transparency.

Hou said the trials were open and were according to the law. However, the Australian reported that journalists in Urumqi who had spoken to the paper on condition of anonymity said that they had been given less than a day’s notice of the trials and warned by the government not to write detailed reports or conduct their own investigations into the murders or the accused.

 “The mass sentencing of 22 Uyghurs, including one death sentence given to a 19-year old young man, on the eve of Christmas and the New Year is aimed at terrorizing the entire Uyghur population throughout the next year,” said Uyghur democracy leader Rebiya Kadeer. “The Chinese authorities must be held to account for their actions, or tensions in East Turkestan will worsen even further. I ask the international community to press for a full investigation into the killings and detentions of Uyghurs since the July 5 massacre in East Turkestan and urge the Chinese authorities to stop the execution of Uyghurs.”

A heavy military presence has blanketed Urumchi and other cities in East Turkestan since July 5. Reports indicate that authorities implemented a heavy-handed security crackdown after July 5, which particularly targeted the predominantly Uyghur cities of Ghulja, Kashgar and Hotan. The crackdown appears to have been aimed at preventing potential protests in these cities against the government brutality in Urumchi.

Since July 5, 41 people have been tried and sentenced over the unrest, including 21 sentenced to death. Nine of those defendants were executed in November. Their trials, which did not adhere to standards of domestic or international law, were hampered by state-sanctioned threats towards lawyers not to represent Uyghur suspects, and both prosecutors and judges in East Turkestan had received instructions from Party authorities regarding the handling of cases related to July 5. Political criteria were used to select judicial personnel assigned to handle the trials. Urumchi Communist Party secretary Li Zhi, at a press conference on July 8, stated that executions would be used to deal with those involved in the unrest. According to an Apple Daily report cited by UAA on November 4, Uyghur prosecutors initially selected to preside over July 5 cases were removed from their duties because of alleged ethnic bias. Since July 5, an unknown number of Uyghurs have disappeared and many of them believed to be tortured to death under Chinese government custody.  

East Turkestan remains cut off from the rest of the world through state-imposed phone and Internet restrictions. International telephone communication has been stopped, and a blackout on Internet use has forced business owners and netizens with the means to do so to travel to Dunhuang in neighboring Gansu Province for Internet access. Bloggers have reported that Uyghurs are restricted from Internet access in Internet cafés throughout China. Some Uyghurs living abroad were previously able to contact relatives in East Turkestan by first calling a friend or relative in eastern China who then connected their call to East Turkestan, but this method of communication has now been cut off by Chinese authorities. The transmission of cell phone text messages has also reportedly been limited to messages from Communist Party authorities to residents of East Turkestan.

In September, authorities in East Turkestan approved a law criminalizing talk of “separatism” on the Internet, following the ramping up of local anti-separatism legislation in July. Chinese officials, rather than investigating the root causes of the unrest rocking the region, blamed the violence in East Turkestan on the World Uyghur Congress and its president Rebiya Kadeer.

More than 130,000 troops were reportedly deployed to East Turkestan from other regions of China in a bid to restore order and crack down on the Uyghur population after July 5. An untold number of Uyghurs have been swept up in “enforced disappearances” in Urumchi, Kashgar and other cities since July 5, in large-scale sweep operations and targeted raids. Furthermore, Chinese security forces launched another round of high pressurized “Strike Hard” campaign from November 1 to the end of December.

Chinese officials recently detained Uyghur journalist Hairat Niyaz on suspicion of “endangering state security”, which his family believes is due to interviews he gave to foreign media organizations about the July 5 unrest. In addition to writing for state media publications, Niyaz was a manager and editor of the “Uighur Online” website (http://www.uighurbiz.cn), whose founder, Ilham Tohti, was also jailed for a period of time following July 5. Tohti reported that Niyaz was taken from his home in Urumchi on October 1.

Other Uyghurs who have publicized information about police abuses, such as two men living in Qorghas County who told Radio Free Asia about the death of a Uyghur detainee in police custody, have also been detained.

On Saturday, the Cambodian government forcibly deported 22 Uyghur refugees, including one pregnant woman, one baby and one toddler, to China in contravention of its international obligation as a party to the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1967 Protocol to the Refugee Convention, and the Convention Against Torture through its refoulement of these Uyghurs.  These Uyghur refugees who had witnessed the brutal crackdown of Uyghur protestors on July 5 by Chinese security forces had feared that they would be sentenced to life and even death. In spite of the deep concern expressed by the U.S., United Nations and other Western countries, Cambodia deported them back to China in order to curry favor and investment from Beijing. Their whereabouts are unclear since their deportation to China.