Stuck at Guantánamo, Uighurs demand freedom (Miami Herald)

[struggle4progress]

BY CAROL ROSENBERG
[e-mail]

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- A group of Muslims from China awaiting a court-ordered release staged a self-styled protest inside their prison camp Monday, waving signs demanding their freedom written in crayon on their Pentagon-issued art supplies ...

Monday, they staged the polite protest for about five minutes for visiting reporters before guards hustled the journalists away.

''As you can see, they are pretty much free men,'' said a Navy chief who supervises sailors guarding the men at the half-acre compound. He called the protest ''their own doing,'' and permitted a dozen reporters visiting the prison to film the signs.

Unclear Monday evening was how much of the video would survive a censor's review ...

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/story/1077014.html

[Buzz Clik]

1. I really think they should become China's problem again.

[struggle4progress]

2. Amnesty International report 2008: People's Republic of China

... Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region

The authorities continued to use the US-led “war on terror” to justify harsh repression of ethnic Uighurs, living primarily in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR), resulting in serious human rights violations. Non-violent expressions of Uighur cultural identity were criminalized. Uighur individuals were the only known group in China to be sentenced to death and executed for political crimes, such as “separatist activities”.

China increasingly successfully used the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to pressurize neighbouring countries, including Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, to co-operate in forced returns of Uighurs to China.

There was an increase in the number of Uighurs detained abroad who were forcibly sent to China, where they faced the death penalty and possible execution, including Uighurs with foreign nationality ... http://report2008.amnesty.org/eng/regions/asia-pacific/china