China's Hooded, Handcuffed, Frogmarched Uighur Muslims

China's Hooded, Handcuffed, Frogmarched Uighur Muslims

By Richard S. Ehrlich

BANGKOK, Thailand -- China's claim that Turkish diplomats helped
Uighur Muslim refugees become terrorists in Syria and Iraq is
"laughable," Turkey said after Chinese security forces wrapped black
bags over the heads of 109 handcuffed "jihad" Uighurs during their
forced flight from Thailand to China.

"These allegations are ridiculous," Turkey's Foreign Ministry
Spokesman Tanju Bilgic told reporters on July 15 in the Turkish
capital Ankara.

"This is not an allegation to even answer. It is laughable," Mr.
Bilgic said, Turkey's Anadolu Agency reported.

"A total of 109 illegal immigrants, who were repatriated from Thailand
to China on July 9, had been on their way to Turkey, Syria or Iraq to
join jihad, the Ministry of Public Security confirmed," China's
official Xinhua news agency reported on July 11.

"Recruitment gangs were uncovered in Turkey by a Chinese police
investigation, which also discovered that Turkish diplomats in some
Southeast Asian countries had facilitated the illegal movement of
people," it said.

"Of the 109 individuals returned to China...13 had fled China after
being implicated in terrorist activities, and another two had escaped
detention," Xinhua reported, quoting the Public Security Ministry.

China is expected to harshly punish any renditioned Uighurs
(pronounced: "WEE-gurs") deemed guilty of involvement in terrorism.

On July 15, more than 50 worried Uighurs remained in limbo in Bangkok.

China demanded Thailand send them to Beijing, while Turkey offered to
give them sanctuary after earlier receiving 180 Uighurs from Thailand.

Exasperated by the diplomatic pressure, Thailand's coup leader Gen.
Prayuth Chan-ocha asked journalists: "What do you think I am going to
do? Destroy investments with Turkey or ruin Thai-Chinese ties?"

Minutes after the 109 Uighurs were forced onto a China Southern
Airlines passenger plane in Bangkok on July 9, Chinese security forces
handcuffed them and draped each refugee's head in a large black bag,
and allowed China Central Television (CCTV) to broadcast their fate.

Each hooded Uighur wore a large sign around their neck with a big
number written in red, while sitting next to Chinese guards whose
uniforms were labeled: "SWAT".

Upon arrival in China, the Uighurs -- still hooded with hands cuffed
behind them -- were frogmarched down the steps from the airplane onto
the tarmac while guards kept each person's head down and body
bent-double forward, a position used in China for decades to keep
prisoners under control while walking.

CCTV showed each SWAT officer wearing a white cloth mask with circular
air filters, plus white latex gloves, apparently fearing possible
disease from the Uighurs.

New York-based Human Rights Watch's China Director, Sophie Richardson,
tweeted to CCTV which posted photographs of the airplane's hooded
passengers: "@cctvnews Thanks for providing helpful photos of a gross
human rights violation in action."

https://twitter.com/cctvnews/status/619855303610253312/photo/1

Gen. Prayuth also violated international agreements against torture
and other protections when he sent the 109 minority ethnic Uighurs
back to China, according to the U.S. State Department, the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Human Rights Watch, London's
Amnesty International and others.

"The deportation of this group to China would amount to refoulement,
and put them at risk of being tortured or subjected to other cruel,
inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," UN High Commissioner
for Human Rights spokesman Rupert Colville said in Geneva on July 10.

Thailand is a signatory to the Convention Against Torture and Other
Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Mr. Colville
said.

When Gen. Prayuth, who rules with absolute power and also as prime
minister after his May 2014 coup, expelled the 109 Uighurs, he angrily
told journalists:

"Do you want to feed them until they breed litters of offspring?"

That Thai-language phrase -- "breed litters" -- is normally used "to
describe dogs and other animals," reported Bangkok Post's respected
columnist Kong Rithdee.

"In the original Thai, the prime minister used the word 'krok,' a
rougher, throatier and much more derogatory term than the English
equivalent. Krok gives the image of animal lust.

"It signifies a large number of puppies crawling from the belly of a
bitch. It's not the term any mother would want to be heard describing
their children," Mr. Kong wrote.

About 340 Uighur men, women and children were caught in scattered
raids across Thailand during the past year, presumably fleeing China
by air or sea, or overland through Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia.

Most denied understanding any Mandarin Chinese language or that they
were from China where Beijing discriminates against Uighurs and
forbids some of their Muslim traditions including long beards on men
and face-covering veils on women.

Most Uighurs in China live in the impoverished western province of
Xinjiang and consider themselves Turkmen, an ethnic group who also
live in Turkmenistan, Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey, and speak the
Turkic language.

Some have struggled for decades for a region-wide independent "East
Turkistan" which would include Xinjiang.

Beijing describes that demand as a terrorist plot fueled by the tiny
East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) based in Pakistan which has
links to Kashgar, Xinjiang's historic desert city near northern
Pakistan on the ancient Silk Road.

Two ETIM top leaders were shot dead in Pakistan in 2003 and 2010.

China's Public Security Ministry said many of the 109 renditioned
Uighurs "had been radicalized by materials released by the
[German-based] World Uighur Congress and the East Turkistan Islamic
Movement."

In 2002, the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Counterterrorism placed
ETIM on its list of
"Individuals and Entities Designated by the State Department Under
Executive Order 13224."

In a separate "Foreign Terrorist Organization" list, the State Department said:

"It is the most militant of the ethnic Uighur separatist groups
pursuing an independent 'Eastern Turkistan,' an area that would
include Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China.

"ETIM is linked to al Qaeda and the international mujahideen
movement," the State Department said.

The U.S. imprisoned several ETIM suspects in Guantanamo Bay.

"The fact that most Uighur detainees from Guantanamo have been
released, suggests that the U.S. has determined that they were not
members of any terrorist organization or combatants," Uighur expert
Dru Gladney, a University of Hawaii in Manoa anthropology professor,
told Voice of America in 2011.

ends

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