ANCHOR:Four days before the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China said it experienced one of the worst terrorist attacks ever from Uighur Muslims. Two Uighurs in Kashgar supposedly drove a truck into a group of 16 Chinese paramilitary officers out for a jog--mowing them down. Then they proceeded to hack the fallen men with machetes and attack them with homemade explosives. This was the version of the story put forth by China's state media at the time.Now it appears the facts of that day may have been somewhat different. According to the New York Times, three tourists staying in Kashgar witnessed the attack. They say the 16 officers were not attacked by Uighur Muslims, but rather by other officers wearing what appeared to be the same type uniforms as the victims.One of the witnesses took over twenty photos of the attack that seem to back up their version of events--including one of a man in a Chinese paramilitary uniform holding two bloody machetes.The new information about the attacks casts doubt on the credibility of the Chinese regime's official story and its aggressive stance towards so-called Uighur separatists.As one Uighur quoted in the New York Times story puts it, "They say one thing, we say another." [ More Detail ]
ANCHOR: Uighur people living in Japan and their supporters take to the streets toprotest against the Beijing Olympic. Let's join our correspondent in Japan for more on the story...STORY: More than 100 human rights activists rallied in Tokyo on Wednesday to protest the passing of the Olympic torch through East Turkestan, a Chinese communist party-controlled region, populated by ethnic-minority Muslim Uighurs.Their protest came after a report on Monday indicated that Chinese authorities in the restive far western region of Xinjiang, demolished a mosque for refusing to put up signs supporting this August's Beijing Olympics. [Ilham Mahmut, Japan Representative of the World Uighur Congress]:"The world is going in the direction of democracy and maybe some 90 percent of the countries are by now, democratic. Nonetheless, the Chinese government is going in the opposite direction and they are trying to eliminate us." Mahmut has been living in Japan for seven years, working as an engineer. Beijing says al Qaeda is working with militants in Xinjiang in an effort to use terror as a means of establishing an independent state called East Turkistan. Oil-rich Xinjiang is home to 8 million Turkic speaking Uighurs, many of whom resent the growing economic and cultural influence of the Han Chinese.One protester joined the rally after finding out that human rights conditions in Uighur, are very similar to those in Tibet.[Fumiyo Mukai, IT Agent]:"Originally, I'm a Tibet supporter, but the more I learned about human rights issues in China, I've come to realize that Tibet and Uighur are having the same problem." Nensyu Shirakawa,a former Silk Road traveler, has been accepting exchange students from East Turkestan for the past two decades.[Nensyu Shirakawa, Former Silk Road Traveler]:"The Chinese government takes 80,000 Uighur women to the mainland every year and that's just one of the unjust policies imposed upon Uighur people." There are an estimated 700 Uighur people living in Japan. [ More Detail ]
Trafficked Uyghur Children May Not See Home Again http://www.rfa.org/english/news/2005/05/03/uyghur_children/HONG KONG, May 3, 2005—Thousands of children belonging to Muslim families in China's northwest are being cared for each year in a regional rescue center while authorities try to track down their parents, RFA's Uyghur service has learned. The task is difficult, sometimes impossible, because many of the children were trafficked to inland Chinese cities at a very young age and have little memory of the homes they left behind. "We usually take in between 2,000 and 3,000 homeless children every year," an official at the Xinjiang Autonomous Region Orphans and Homeless Children Rescue Center told RFA's Uyghur service. He said many of the homeless children in the center's care had been trafficked by internal traffickers to work in China's booming cities. Children forced to steal. "Most of them were deceived and sold into Chinese cities," the official told RFA. "They were forced to become thieves. Ninety-eight percent of these children are Uyghurs," the official said, referring to the Turkic-speaking Muslim ethnic minority who inhabit the northwestern region of Xinjiang. The Chinese-language Tengritagh Web site recently reported the cases of six homeless children at the rescue center who had been returned to Xinjiang by local police officers in other areas of China. But the children, who included a young girl taken from her parents at age three, were now unable to remember their families or their location, a report carried on the Web site said. Uyghur rights activists say the problem stems from the poverty of the families concerned, but is also part of a wider pattern of discrimination against Uyghurs in China, who are subject to strict religious and political control by Beijing. Gangs promise paying jobs "Chinese human-traffickers come to the Uyghur region from inner China and tell the girls that they will find them paying jobs," Uyghur businesswoman and rights activist Rebiya Kadeer, who was recently released from a Chinese prison, told RFA. "Then they sell these girls by transferring them from owner to owner. The human-trafficking of young Uyghur children is becoming a profession in Xinjiang," Kadeer said. "They are children of poor families. They were deceived and sold by the Chinese and forced to become thieves, heroin sellers and prostitutes," Kadeer said. Street children are evident in large cities across the Asia Pacific region, where they work in occupations that bring them into contact with the public, both the local population and foreign tourists, a 2003 report for the Asian Development Bank found. "The range of work includes begging, collecting rubbish for recycling, scavenging rubbish dumps, shoe-shining, flower or magazine and newspaper sales, prostitution, or the less visible petty theft," said the report, authored by Save the Children social adviser Andrew West. China has major trafficking problem "Some children are trafficked or otherwise coerced into involvement in illegal activities, from bag-snatching and petty theft to drug- or weapons-smuggling. Children may steal food or clothes for themselves," West said. Overseas agencies have identified China as a significant center for human-trafficking, both within its borders and internationally. "The Peoples' Republic of China is a source, transit, and destination country for persons trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation," the 2004 U.S. State Department report on Trafficking in Persons said. "The domestic trafficking of women and children for marriage and forced labor is a significant problem," it said. Uyghur children face discrimination West's report, entitled At The Margins: Street Children in Asia and the Pacific, singled out Uyghur children as particularly vulnerable because they faced additional forms of discrimination. "Discrimination against various ethnic groups is rife in some countries. Where an ethnic distinction is obvious, then the affected street children face additional problems: for example, the children from Xinjiang in other parts of the People's Republic of China," he wrote. Generally, street children could be beaten by police, shopkeepers, or other adults, and were often subject to harassment by police, including beatings, abuse and other violence, including sexual violation, West's report said. But it also said the Xinjiang rescue center had launched a cross-displinary initiative to solve the problem at source, through education. The center had involved the Justice Bureau, Civil Affairs Bureau, the Women's Federation, and the University and Social Science Academy with the support of Save the Children UK, in providing awareness-raising events in local languages around the region, including television programs and mass meetings, the report said. [ More Detail ]
Over 45 nuclear tests in East Turkistan by the Chinese government.Over 10 million East Turkistan people including 8.5 million babies have been killed by the Chinese government since 1949 occupation by China.EAST TURKISTAN INFORMATION CENTERhttp://www.uygur.org/East Turkestan government in exilehttp://www.eastturkistangovernmentinexile.us/Peace and liberty for East Turkistanhttp://saveeastturk.org/en/East Turkistanhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ6CobqeVdAGenocide of Chinese communist party in East Turkistan.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6MJLRcTDFAAbdulla Abdurehim-Yol Bərginhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydRt8zy4X_0Genocide of Chinese communist party in East Turkistan.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL56XQx5pvE [ More Detail ]
Over 45 nuclear tests in East Turkistan by the Chinese government.Over 10 million East Turkistan people including 8.5 million babies have been killed by the Chinese government since 1949 occupation by China.EAST TURKISTAN INFORMATION CENTERhttp://www.uygur.org/East Turkestan government in exilehttp://www.eastturkistangovernmentinexile.us/Peace and liberty for East Turkistanhttp://saveeastturk.org/en/East Turkistanhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ6CobqeVdAGenocide of Chinese communist party in East Turkistan.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6MJLRcTDFAAbdulla Abdurehim-Yol Bərginhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydRt8zy4X_0Genocide of Chinese communist party in East Turkistan.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL56XQx5pvE [ More Detail ]
Over 45 nuclear tests in East Turkistan by the Chinese government.Over 10 million East Turkistan people including 8.5 million babies have been killed by the Chinese government since 1949 occupation by China.EAST TURKISTAN INFORMATION CENTERhttp://www.uygur.org/East Turkestan government in exilehttp://www.eastturkistangovernmentinexile.us/Peace and liberty for East Turkistanhttp://saveeastturk.org/en/East Turkistanhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ6CobqeVdAGenocide of Chinese communist party in East Turkistan.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6MJLRcTDFAAbdulla Abdurehim-Yol Bərginhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydRt8zy4X_0Genocide of Chinese communist party in East Turkistan.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL56XQx5pvE [ More Detail ]
Caravan by Duke Ellington with American Voices' Mike Del Ferro trio and Uighur traditional musician, Ekrem Umaher on the Ejek. Part of American Voices Jazz Bridges Western China project with Uighur traditional musicians in Urumchi and Kashgar. [ More Detail ]
Makam singer and Dotar player, Abdul Rahim Air of Urumchi, China performs a traditional song based on ancient Uighur poetry. Part of American Voices 2007 Jazz Bridges Western China project with the Mike Del Ferro Trio [ More Detail ]