http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gVmcDo7Dgwp1qpl33R6iYO***sNw
Torch relay worsens China crackdown: Uighur leader
23 hours ago
BEIJING (AFP) =97 The planned route of the Olympic torch through China's
restive Xinjiang region is worsening Chinese repression there and
should be cancelled, a leader of the area's ethnic Uighur population
has said.
Rebiya Kadeer, head of the Uighur American Association, told AFP that
security forces were rounding up many people ahead of the flame's
circuit of the western region late next month.
"The Chinese authorities have been heavily cracking down on the
Uighurs in order to bring the torch through East Turkestan," Kadeer
said, using the Uighur term for the region.
"We have learned that many Uighurs are being detained and arrested by
the Chinese authorities to prevent their peaceful protests in relation
to the torch," she told AFP in an e-mailed answer to queries.
Leaders of Xinjiang's Uighurs, a Muslim central Asian people who have
long chafed under Beijing's control, accuse China of harsh oppression
and policies that they say are aimed at extingui****ng their culture.
"I am opposed to the torch passage because it comes with severe
repression of the Uighur people," she said.
Kadeer's comments follow allegations Saturday by another overseas
Uighur leader that more than 10,000 people were believed to have been
rounded up in Xinjiang over the past four to five months.
"Everywhere, homes, hotels are searched. People are arrested," Dolkun
Isa, secretary general of the Munich-based World Uighur Congress, told
AFP in Tokyo.
"Even people with no past records have been arrested simply because
they look suspicious."
Kadeer, who spent six years in a Chinese jail from 1999-2005 and now
lives in exile in the United States, also repeated her charge that
China fabricated recent claims that it broke up Xinjiang-based terror
cells targeting the Olympics.
"China is using the occasion to host the 2008 Olympics as an
op****tunity to further demonise the Uighur people's legitimate and
peaceful struggle and justify its heavy-handed repression in East
Turkestan," she said.
China plans to bring the torch to Xinjiang on June 25-27 as part of a
relay through the mainland that began on Sunday in the lead up to the
August Olympics.
The torch's international relay route has been marred by protests
against China's human rights record and crackdown on Tibet.
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