Exiled Uyghur leader expresses fears for detainees in China

Rebiya Kadeer, the U.S.-based president of the World Uyghur Congress, said that about 70 injured Uyghurs were transferred from a civilian to a military prison hospital after the violence on July 18 in the remote city of Hotan.

“They collected all of them and brought them to a military (prison) hospital. It is clear whenever an injured Uyghur is brought to a military hospital, he will never be released alive,” Kadeer told AFP in an interview.

Kadeer said that Uyghurs have raised complaints for years about military prisons. She charged that prisoners in the past have been killed — perhaps to harvest their organs, a practice long alleged by activists.

Chinese state media said that 18 people died in Hotan, an oasis on the ancient Silk Road, in violence around a police station.

State media called it a “terrorist” attack. It said that a crowd set upon the police station and killed four and that police then “gunned down” the attackers.

Kadeer disputed the account and said that the death toll may be higher. A spokesman for her group last week told AFP that 20 protesters had been killed.

She said the Uyghurs had gone to the police station and attempted to seize officers as they sought leverage to gain information on missing loved ones.

Kadeer defended the move, saying that it did not constitute violence.

“Of course I am against violence, but in this case the protesters were the ones who were attacked by Chinese police and they reacted to defend themselves. They have the right to know the whereabouts of their loved ones,” she said.

“This is very different from in Western countries where police are there to protect people from being attacked. In China, they arrest simple people so they are the criminals; they just wear uniforms,” she said.

“They arrest people whenever they want, they beat people whenever they want.”

Xinjiang — a vast, arid but resource-rich region bordering Central Asia — is home to more than eight million Uyghurs, who speak a Turkic language and are mostly Muslims.

Many are unhappy with what they say have been decades of repressive rule and unwanted immigration by China's Han majority.

The government says nearly 200 people were killed and 1,700 injured in 2009 riots in the regional capital Urumqi, where witnesses recounted attacks by Uyghurs on Han Chinese.

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