According to Xinhua, the state news agency, Mr. Hu visited rural areas and factories; a major oil center; and the regional capital, Urumqi, where the rioting occurred.

On Tuesday, he told government officials and security forces that stability was a top priority in the region. “The key to our work in Xinjiang is to properly handle the relation between development and stability in the region,” Xinhua quoted him as saying.

Reporters gathered in Xinjiang this week in anticipation of the start of trials related to the riots. But an official with the news media office of the local Communist Party headquarters said that he had no information that any such trials would take place this week.

The official, Li Hua, said Tuesday by telephone that a report on Monday in China Daily, a state-run English-language newspaper, had incorrect information on the timeline for the trials. Some Chinese Web sites and foreign news organizations, including The New York Times, ran articles based on the China Daily report.

“Of course they have to be tried, just not according to the timeline of the China Daily story,” Mr. Li said, referring to the scores of men, mostly ethnic Uighurs, charged with taking part in the riots. Mr. Li said he had no information on exactly when the trials would start.

The China Daily article, published on the front page, said that more than 200 suspects had been formally charged with an array of crimes related to the rioting that began on July 5, and that trials were expected to start this week in Urumqi. The article cited an unnamed court official.

It also said the local police had gathered 3,318 pieces of evidence, including bricks and clubs stained with blood.

Some Chinese and foreign reporters have waited in Urumqi for the trials to start. In late July, China Daily had reported that the trials would start in August.

On Tuesday, Global Times, a newspaper published by the Communist Party’s main news organization, reported that the government had not yet set a date for the trial and that the number of suspects remained at 83. Global Times quoted Hou Hanmin, a spokeswoman for the Xinjiang regional government, saying that the China Daily report was “totally untrue.”

The announcement of a trial date on a matter as delicate as the ethnic riots would usually be reported first through Xinhua. But Xinhua had yet to report on any fixed date as of late Tuesday.

The conflicting reports appeared to be an indication of growing competition among official news organizations in China as senior officials encourage more aggressive reporting on topics of international interest.

On July 5, mobs of Uighurs, Turkic-speaking people who make up the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, stormed through the streets of Urumqi after clashes between Uighur protesters and riot police officers. The initial protesters had been holding a rally over the killing of Uighurs in an earlier ethnic brawl at a factory in southeastern China.

In the violence in Urumqi, at least 197 people were killed and 1,721 injured, most of them Han civilians, according to state news organizations. It was the deadliest ethnic riot in China in decades. The Han are the dominant ethnic group in China.

In the days afterward, Han vigilantes armed with sticks and knives went into Uighur neighborhoods to exact revenge.

Uighurs in Urumqi say the government has not given an accurate count of Uighur casualties.

source: www.nytimes.com

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HONG KONG and WASHINGTON—The family home of prominent Uyghur exile leader Rebiya Kadeer in northwestern China has been slated for demolition and her family has been served with an eviction notice, according to residents.

Two businessmen, members of China’s mostly Muslim Uyghur ethnic minority, said officials in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) plan to raze the Akida Trade Center, the Rebiya Kadeer Trade Center, and a third smaller building.

The three buildings, located in the regional capital Urumqi, were formerly fully owned by the Kadeer family and are now managed by government authorities. The exiled Rebiya Kadeer currently lives in Washington.

One Uyghur businessman from Gulja (in Chinese, Yining), capital of the Ili Kazakh Prefecture, traveling in Kazakhstan said Urumqi authorities also gave notice of eviction to Uyghur merchants who owned stores in the building.

“Now, Uyghur merchants are forced to rent stores in other buildings owned by Han Chinese. The new buildings offered by the government are more expensive then Rebiya’s buildings, and the buildings are located in an area populated by Han Chinese,” he said.

The businessman said Uyghur merchants are either unable or unwilling to rent space in those areas because of higher tensions between Uyghurs and Han Chinese after violent riots erupted in Urumqi on July 5.

“It is difficult for Rebiya Kadeer’s relatives to find a place to rent in the current situation because Han Chinese hate them and Uyghurs are scared of [renting to] them,” he said.

Ahmetjan, a Uyghur merchant from Atush city in the far West of the remote Tarim Basin, said he had heard that merchants in Kadeer’s buildings were scrambling to prepare for the eviction.

“My uncle had to travel to Urumqi from Atush to find a new location for his business. He had a wholesale store in one of Rebiya’s buildings,” he said in a phone call from Kyrgyzstan, where he was traveling on business.

Thriving business community

Rebiya Kadeer speaking at the Rebiya Kadeer Trade Center, Dec. 15, 1997. Courtesy of the Kadeer family

The Akida Trade Center, which comprises 15 floors and 20,000 square meters of living space, also serves as a residence for Kadeer’s relatives, who draw an income by running a restaurant on the building’s first floor.

A total of 37 family members, including Kadeer’s sister, brothers, and grandchildren, live in the building.

The Kadeer Trade Center has served as the main wholesale center in the XUAR since it was established by Kadeer in 1990.

Several thousand Uyghur merchants have set up shop in both the Rebiya Kadeer Trade Center and the Akida Trade Center.

Both buildings are to be demolished for the construction of a public park, according to the eviction notice.

Local authorities were unavailable for comment.

‘Act of revenge’

Rebiya Kadeer condemned the move by Urumqi authorities as an “act of revenge against me and against Uyghurs over July 5.”

The official Chinese media has branded Kadeer the “mastermind” behind the ethnic riots and regularly accuses her of sponsoring separatist terrorism in the region.

She also voiced concern for her family members, who she said would face difficulty in finding a new source of income and place to live because they have been blacklisted by the government.

“I cannot believe this kind of retaliation—punishing the family members of a political dissident—can still occur in the 21st century. I had thought it was the last act of retaliation when the authorities forced my family to speak out against me on state-owned TV,” Kadeer said.

On Aug. 4, state-controlled television broadcast interviews with Kadeer’s son Kahar, daughter Rushangul and imprisoned son Alim, as well as with Kadeer’s younger brother Mehmet.

Kadeer maintains that her children and brother were compelled to make false accusations about her alleged role in the July 5 unrest.

The day before the interviews aired on television, official news media published a letter that accused Kadeer of having broken her promises not to participate in “ethnic splittism” when she left China.

The letter was signed by her children, their spouses, and five of her grandchildren.

Following her release from prison in 2005, and before her exile to the U.S., Chinese officials warned Kadeer against speaking out on behalf of Uyghurs in China, saying that if she continued to do so her children and businesses would be targeted.

When she later engaged in human rights advocacy in the United States, Chinese officials shut down her businesses and harassed her family members.

Following Kadeer’s election as president of the Uyghur American Association and the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, her sons Alim and Ablikim were detained and imprisoned for seven and nine years respectively.

“The Chinese will do whatever they can to stop my activities. Making my family homeless is probably just one of the measures they have planned,” she said.

Uyghur buildings razed

Kadeer said the buildings are two of the few remaining in Urumqi that were designed in Uyghur-style architecture.

Buildings with Chinese architecture have taken over the city in recent years.

“The authorities don’t want to see Uyghur-style buildings in the [Xinjiang] capital, and they don’t want to see my name anywhere in the city,” Kadeer said.

Officials began demolishing Uyghur-style buildings in the ancient city of Kashgar, in southwestern Xinjiang, a few months before the July 5 incident in Urumqi.

“They can erase my name from the building by demolishing it, but they cannot erase it from the hearts of my people,” she said.

Kadeer, 60, was a self-made millionaire in China and a favorite of the authorities until she spoke out about Beijing’s heavy-handed treatment of her people, who frequently complain of harassment and discrimination and suffer high unemployment.

She later spent six years in prison for opposing the government and was released into U.S. exile in 2005.

Since the Urumqi unrest, the Chinese government has harshly criticized the governments of Japan and Australia for granting Kadeer visas to travel to their countries on unofficial visits.

It has also attempted to prevent an independent Australian film festival from screening a documentary about Kadeer’s life.

source: www.rfa.org

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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Kazakhstan is home to the largest Uighur community outside China. About 500 people, many wearing the blue badges with white crescents of the Uighur independence movement, gathered at a mosque for a traditional ceremony.

In Xinjiang’s worst ethnic unrest in decades, Uighurs staged protests in the regional capital Urumqi on July 5 following a clash among migrant workers at a factory in south China that had led to two Uighur deaths.

The Urumqi violence left 197 people dead and more than 1,600 wounded, mostly members of the China’s ethnic Han majority, according to Chinese authorities.

Han Chinese launched revenge attacks on Uighurs in Urumqi days later. About 1,000 people, mostly Uighurs, have been detained in an ensuing crackdown by security forces.

Han migration into Xinjiang, home to Muslim Uighurs who speak a Turkic language and whose culture has strong links to Central Asia, has helped fuel the conflict.

“What is our goal? We want an independent state,” Kakhraman Khodzhaberdiyev, a vice president of the U.S.-based World Uyghur Congress, told the Almaty meeting.

“The current autonomy (of Xinjiang) is not real and we demand that its status be changed as a first step.”

Another Uighur community leader, Abdulla Ushurov, attacked what he said were Chinese attempts to portray Uighur protests as purely criminal riots.

“You cannot say that a group of people just started crushing everything,” he said.

“These are being described as criminal acts but it is a century-long fight for independence.”

Police in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, also home to a significant Uighur minority, detained two Uighur leaders after a similar rally this week, saying it had not been given official permission.

The Almaty city government had permitted the Thursday meeting.

source: www.reuters.com

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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