Two other people were sentenced to life imprisonment, Xinhua news agency said.

Nine people were executed last month over the riots in which nearly 200 people were killed.

Chinese officials have said most of the victims were members of China’s majority Han ethnic group who were attacked by ethnic Uighurs.

Xinhua’s report named the five sentenced to death as Memeteli Islam, Mamattursun Elmu, Memeteli Abburakm, Kushiman Kurban and Helil Sadir.

Eight other people received jail terms, Xinhua said, including the two sentenced to life in prison.

Struggle to restore order

The five sentenced to death all appear to be Uighurs, judging by their names, correspondents say. The Uighurs are a Turkic minority in China that calls Xinjiang their homeland.

Ethnic tensions exploded on 5 July as Uighurs in Urumqi protested over clashes at a factory in southern China that had left two Uighurs dead.

Shops were smashed and vehicles set alight, with passers-by being set upon by Uighur rioters.

Two days later, groups of Han went looking for revenge as police struggled to restore order.

Officials say 197 people were killed and about 1,700 people injured in the rioting.

A total of 34 people have now been convicted over the rioting, for crimes including murder, arson, property damage and robbery.

Besides Thursday’s five death sentences, three other people have been given the death penalty with a two-year reprieve, a sentence which is usually commuted to life in jail.

The rest have received lesser jail terms.

Five more cases are due to be heard by the Intermediate People’s Court in Urumqi on Friday.

news.bbc.co.uk

STICHTING OEIGOEREN NEDERLAND

ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS IN EAST TURKISTAN Uyghur Foundation Stichting Oeigoeren Nederland Stichting Uighur Jurat Barat  Stichting Uyghur Oost-Turkestan Uyghur Logo Nederlanders Holland Europe HUMAN RIGHTS  Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Erkin Alptekin Rebiya Kadeer

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These are men who cannot be returned to their home countries because of fears that they will face torture, or further arbitrary imprisonment, on their return, although Fried is also responsible for trying to broker a deal with Yemen, whose nationals make up around 40 percent of the remaining 225 prisoners. Fried spoke mainly to the BBC about negotiations with Europe, but it is apparent that attempts to overcome the long-standing failure to secure a deal with the Yemeni government remains one of the most difficult tasks that he faces.

In an interview for Radio 4’s Today program, which was partly filmed and televised on BBC News, Fried gave Jon Manel a largely spin-free account of the problems he faces, some of which have been exacerbated by the U.S. government’s unwillingness — or inability — to resettle some cleared prisoners on the U.S. mainland.

To my mind, President Obama missed a golden opportunity to bring 17 prisoners to the U.S.. in his early days in office. These men, the Uighurs (Muslims who had fled oppression in China’s Xinjiang province, and who were sold to U.S. forces after being betrayed by Pakistani villagers, following their flight from Afghanistan) had been cleared of any involvement with al-Qaeda, the Taliban or any form of international terrorism by the Bush administration and by the U.S. courts, but the President wavered, allowing Guantánamo’s supporters in Congress (scaremongers inspired by the hateful and false rhetoric of former Vice President Dick Cheney) to gain the upper hand, eventually persuading Congress to pass legislation blocking the transfer of any cleared prisoners to the U.S. mainland.

Fried began by explaining that his job was “miserable,” because he was “cleaning up a problem” inherited from the Bush administration, which had nothing to do with advancing any positive aspects of U.S. policy. “It’s not like we’re advancing liberty or making peace,” he said. He added that working out what to do with the remaining prisoners is “a huge problem and a complicated one,” but according to Manel, although he said that he would “not criticize Congress,” he stated, unambiguously, “It is fair to say, as just an objective statement, that the U.S. could resettle more detainees [worldwide], had we been willing to take in some.”

The interview was also notable for the following frank exchange about the perception of the remaining prisoners as “the worst of the worst,” which included, I believe, the first public admission, by a senior Obama administration official, that some of the prisoners were nothing more than low-level Taliban recruits, in an inter-Muslim civil war (with the Northern Alliance) that preceded the 9/11 attacks and had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or international terrorism, and that they should not have been in Guantánamo for the last seven years:

Daniel Fried: The detainees in Guantánamo run a spectrum. Some really are awful. Some qualify as “the worst of the worst,” and we’re going to put those on trial. Some, frankly, should not have been in Guantánamo for the past seven years.

Jon Manel: So they were innocent?

Daniel Fried: Innocent, guilt … I look at their files and some of them seem relatively benign, and I have in mind the Uighurs, in particular, but others …

Jon Manel: They’re the minority from China …

Daniel Fried: That’s right, the Uighur minority from China, but if I had to describe — if there’s such a thing as an average Guantánamo detainee, it’s someone who was a volunteer, a low-level trainee or a very low-level fighter in a very bad cause, but not a hardened terrorist, not an organizer. Now it is those people whom we’re asking Europeans to take a look at, and each government has to evaluate the background of each individual and make a decision.

Despite his criticism of the implications of the failure to accept any cleared prisoners into the United States, Fried did make the point that “parliamentarians in Europe” — as well as the U.S. – “have raised questions about security, and we have to respect those opinions,” although he was also concerned to publicize the successful resettlement of four of the Uighurs in Bermuda (in June), even though it had apparently brought him into conflict with the British government, because, as the BBC described it, “Bermuda is a British overseas territory and Britain was not informed until the last minute.”

“The British government, it is fair to say, cannot be considered part of the deal. This was worked out between the Americans and the Bermudans,” Fried told Manel, adding, “I will say that I’ve been admonished by the British government in very clear terms.” He insisted, however, that the deal had been successful. “We are very grateful to the Bermudan government and the behavior of the four Uighurs has been exemplary, which really bolsters our contention that they were not any kind of threat,” he said, adding, “These are four people who are enjoying freedom who would otherwise be in Guantánamo.”

This was an important point to make, although I maintain that the Uighurs’ “exemplary” behavior, which “bolsters” the government’s “contention that they were not any kind of threat,” would have had a far more powerful impact if it had happened in Washington D.C., where American citizens would have been able to appreciate, first-hand, that the Uighurs are not, and have never been terrorists.

In conclusion, Fried told Manel that he was “confident” that the President’s January deadline for closing Guantánamo would be met, although he could not guarantee it. “President Obama’s timetable is what we’ve got,” he said, “we don’t have Plan Bs, we’re looking at that timetable. We’ve got a lot of work to do, we need help getting this done, and we’re going to be working hard at it. But you’re not going to have Guantánamo II. Whatever solution we come up with, it will be one based firmly on the rule of law and transparency.”

Fried’s interview coincided with an announcement that Hungary is preparing to take a cleared prisoner from Guantánamo, to add to those already accepted by the UK (Binyam Mohamed, a British resident, in February), France (Lakhdar Boumediene, an Algerian, in May), and Portugal (Mohammed al-Tumani and Moammar Dokhan, both Syrians, last month). Other countries who have agreed to take cleared prisoners are Belgium, Ireland, Italy (although with some disturbing conditions), and Spain, and discussions are apparently ongoing with both Lithuania and Switzerland.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-worthington/guantanamo-envoy-us-shoul_b_289747.html

www.huffingtonpost.com

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Riots leave many dead in China

Violence in China’s restive western region of Xinjiang has left at least 156 people dead and more than 800 people injured, state media say.
Several hundred people were arrested after a protest, in the city of Urumqi on Sunday, turned violent.
Beijing says Uighurs went on the rampage but one exiled Uighur leader says police fired on students.
The protest was reportedly prompted by a deadly fight between Uighurs and Han Chinese in southern China last month.
The BBC’s Chris Hogg says the violence is some of the worst reported in the country since Tiananmen Square in 1989.
‘Dark day’
Eyewitnesses said the violence started on Sunday in Urumqi after a protest of a few hundred people grew to more than 1,000.
Xinhua says the protesters carried knives, bricks and batons, smashed cars and stores, and fought with security forces.
Wu Nong, news director for the Xinjiang government, said more than 260 vehicles were attacked and more than 200 shops and houses damaged.
Most of the violence is reported to have taken place in the city centre, around Renmin (People’s) Square, Jiefang and Xinhua South Roads and the Bazaar.
See detailed map of Urumqi city centre
The police presence was reported to be heavy on Monday.
Adam Grode, an American studying in Urumqi, told Associated Press: “There are soldiers everywhere, police are at all the corners. Traffic has completely stopped.”

UIGHURS AND XINJIANG
Uighurs are ethnically Turkic Muslims
They make up about 45% of the region’s population. 40% are Han Chinese
China re-established control in 1949 after crushing short-lived state of East Turkestan
Since then, large-scale immigration of Han Chinese
Uighurs fear erosion of traditional culture
Sporadic violence since 1991
Attack on 4 Aug 2008 near Kashgar kills 16 Chinese policemen

In pictures: Xinjiang protests
Q&A: China and the Uighurs
China tells its own story
Accounts of Xinjiang violence
A witness in the Xinjiang city of Kashgar told AP there was a protest there on Monday of about 300 people but there were no clashes with police.
It is still unclear who died in Urumqi and why so many were killed.
The Xinjiang government blamed separatist Uighurs based abroad for orchestrating attacks on ethnic Han Chinese.
But Uighur groups insisted their protest was peaceful and had fallen victim to state violence, with police firing indiscriminately on protesters in Urumqi.
Dolkun Isa, a spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) in Munich, disputed the official figures, saying the protest was 10,000 strong and that 600 people were killed.
He rejected reports on Xinhua that it had instigated the protests.
Xinhua had quoted the Xinjiang government as blaming WUC leader Rebiya Kadeer for “masterminding” the violence.
But Mr Isa said the WUC had called on Friday only for protests at Chinese embassies around the world.

More than 260 vehicles were destroyed in Urumqi, officials said
Alim Seytoff, the vice-president of another Uighur group – the US-based Uighur American Association – condemned the “heavy-handed” actions of the security forces.
“We ask the international community to condemn China’s killing of innocent Uighurs. This is a very dark day in the history of the Uighur people,” he said.
When asked about the rioting, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that all governments must protect freedom of speech and “the life and safety of civilian populations”.
A spokesman for UK PM Gordon Brown said Britain was urging “restraint on all sides”.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano said he had raised the issue of human rights with visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao in Rome.
Internet blocks
The Uighurs in Urumqi were reportedly angry over an ethnic clash last month in the city of Shaoguan in southern Guangdong province.
A man there was said to have posted a message on a local website claiming six boys from Xinjiang had “raped two innocent girls”.

FROM THE TODAY PROGRAMME

More from Today programme
Police said the false claim sparked a vicious brawl between Han and Uighur ethnic groups at a factory. Two Uighurs were killed and 118 people were injured.
BBC sources in China report they have been unable to open the Twitter messaging site in Shanghai and that message boards on Xinjiang on a number of websites were not taking posts.
Reports from Xinjiang suggest some internet and mobile phone services have been blocked.
Analysts say the government’s so-called Great Firewall of China, which it uses to block unwanted internet material, will prevent large-scale dissemination of information but that dedicated internet users can bypass it fairly easily.
BBC China editor Shirong Chen says there has been ethnic tension in Xinjiang since before the founding of the People’s Republic.
Some of its Uighur population of about eight million want to break away from China and its majority Han Chinese population.
The authorities say police are securing order across the region and anyone creating a disturbance will be detained and punished.
However, our China editor says there may be questions asked about their inability to prevent a protest they knew about days in advance.

Return to story
14 July 2009: This article has been amended to remove an audio track that contained misleading information about the protests.

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