(“You can receive millions of dollars for helping the Anti-Taliban Force catch Al-Qaida and Taliban murderers. This enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life. Pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all of your people”)

When China offered a bounty for capturing, killing or detaining the Uyghur (pronounced “Weeer”), the US Military obliged. Conveniently, they categorized the Uyghur as terrorists, because China says so … China has more influence than our own legal system. How many readers have ever heard about these people? The Uyghur are treated as bad or worse than Tibetans. Its a religious thing, Uyghur are Muslims. China has a greedy ally who will do anything for money … of course, we’re rounding up terrorists, too. Unethical behavior seldom makes media headlines, unless someone blows the whistle very loud and long, like for Tillman.

SALON In 2001 a group of 18 Uighurs, an ethnic minority from Xinjiang province in western China, was living together in a camp in Afghanistan when the coalition bombing started. They claim that they fled to the Afghan mountains, were led across the border to Pakistan by some other travelers, and were sold to the United States for bounty money. Five other Uighurs also ended up in Guantánamo, possibly sold to the United States as well.

Most of these men have been cleared for release since 2003, yet remain in Guantánamo because they can’t return to China, and neither the United States nor any other country has been willing to take them in. While five of the Uighurs were resettled in Albania in 2005, 16 others remain housed in one of the most draconian facilities in Guantánamo, reportedly because they threw feces and urine at prison guards following a dispute about the Koran in May 2007. But instead of receiving a 30- or 90-day punishment, as is common in U.S. prisons for disruptive behavior, the Uighurs were moved into one of the highest-security, most restrictive parts of the facility — indefinitely.

America’s prison for terrorists often held the wrong men

China: Religious Repression of Uighur Muslims

Architecture of Xinjiang Suppression Detailed

“The worldwide campaign against terrorism has given Beijing the perfect excuse to crack down harder than ever in Xinjiang,” said Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “Other Chinese enjoy a growing freedom to worship, but the Uighurs, like the Tibetans, find that their religion is being used as a tool of control.”

China ‘crushing Muslim Uighurs’

China has been accused by two US-based human rights groups of conducting a “crushing campaign of religious repression” against Muslim Uighurs.

China Confirms Protests by Uighur Muslims

SHANGHAI — Chinese officials said Wednesday that they were grappling with ethnic unrest on a second front, in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where Uighur Muslims protested Chinese rule last month even as Tibetans rioted in the southwest.

FindLaw By JOANNE MARINER, human rights attorney

Uighurs in Albania Most Americans have never heard of the Uighurs and wouldn’t be able to find Albania on a map. And if the Uighurs are obscure, then Uighurs in Albania are obscurity squared: an alien people in a faraway place.

But there are now five Uighurs in Albania, and how they ended up there deserves attention. It’s a story of superpower politics, ethnic oppression, and the limits of the law. It highlights a problem that the United States has brought on itself: what to do with the hundreds of detainees who are currently held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, some of whom cannot be returned home.

China to Afghanistan to Cuba

The Uighurs are Turkic Muslims from the Xinjiang region in far western China. A group of them were in Afghanistan when war began in 2001 and were captured in the wake of the fighting, some by Pakistani bounty hunters. Twenty-two Uighurs were sent to Guantanamo, along with other detainees deemed the “worst of the worst.”

By late 2003, having interviewed them extensively, U.S. officials concluded that most of the Uighur detainees were not a threat. Five of them, in fact, were found not to be “enemy combatants” at all, while ten more were deemed to be low-risk enough to merit release.

But while bringing the Uighurs to Cuba was easy, getting them off the island was not. They could not be sent to China, their country of citizenship, for fear of persecution. As part of the “fight against three evils” — terrorism, religious extremism and separatism - the Chinese government has cracked down hard against its Uighur minority. Accusing them of plotting bombings and other sabotage, the Chinese government has incarcerated Uighur dissidents with little proof of actual involvement in violent acts.

Under international law, the only country that is clearly obliged to accept a person’s entry is that person’s country of citizenship. So while the U.S. could not return the Uighurs to China, it could not require any other country to take them either.

Instead, the U.S. had to wheedle: to appeal to other countries’ humanitarian inclinations. But this is an age of unwanted refugees and, more importantly, of growing Chinese power. Few countries are willing to risk alienating Beijing by granting asylum to the Uighurs as a group . Although the U.S. approached a whole host of countries — Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and others - none agreed to accept them.

Uighurs in Court

At the same time as the U.S. government was trying to negotiate the Uighurs’ resettlement, a case brought by two of the Uighurs was making its way through the federal courts. At issue in the case was whether the U.S. could hold the Uighurs indefinitely even after it found that they pose no threat to national security.

On the merits of their claim, District Judge James Robertson ruled unequivocally in favor of the Uighurs. “The detention of these petitioners has by now become indefinite,” said Robertson in an opinion issued in December 2005. “This indefinite imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay is unlawful.”

At a hearing prior to his ruling, Judge Robertson had suggested that he might order the Uighurs released temporarily into the United States. But his final ruling found, instead, that he lacked the legal authority to remedy the Uighurs’ plight. “The question,” he wrote, “is whether the law gives me the power to do what I believe justice requires. The answer, I believe, is no.”

Winning in principle but losing in practice, the Uighurs filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court. It was a long-shot effort, given that the case was still pending in the lower courts, and in April the Supreme Court declined to consider the appeal. The case was due to be heard by a federal appellate court last Monday, but, just days in advance of the hearing, the two plaintiffs (and three others) were released to Albania.

The Albanian Solution?

While five Uighurs have left, ten other Uighurs cleared for release remain at Guantanamo. And the Uighurs are not the only detainees who cannot return home. There are three others — a Russian, an Algerian and an Egyptian — who have been found not to be “enemy combatants” yet who remain incarcerated.

Indeed, nearly 30 percent of the detainees at Guantanamo - about 141 men — have been cleared to leave, but still remain. For many, the U.S. government knows that conditions are unsuitable at home. Dozens of detainees have filed motions seeking advance notice of any transfer, seeking to challenge their return on the ground that they might face torture.

So what are the options for detainees who cannot return home? There is the Albanian solution - find a country that, for humanitarian or other reasons, is willing to give them a safe haven. But that may not work in every case.

More from Joanne Mariner

Read the rest of this entry »

UN raises Burma cyclone estimate

The UN has sharply increased its estimate of those severely affected by Burma’s cyclone to 2.5m people.

The figure was revised up from the 1.5m previously thought to be in need, following the storm 12 days ago.

Since Cyclone Nargis struck, hardly any foreign aid workers have been allowed into Burma to hand out relief supplies.

Latest Burmese official figures put the death toll at almost 38,500 with 27,838 more missing but the Red Cross warned as many as 128,000 could be dead.

‘Food is not the problem. Right now, it’s clean water’

Red Cross: Up to 128,000 may have died in Myanmar

Monsoon predicted in Myanmar delta

Aid Trickling In to Myanmar

International disaster assistance experts are still having trouble securing visas, despite ongoing negotiations. There is great concern about the possibility of disease among the many, now homeless, survivors, but no outbreaks have been reported yet.

THE devastating natural disasters in Burma and China illustrate the difference between having a competent government and an incompetent one.

The Burmese military, unlike the Chinese, has done little to help its people, of whom more than 100,000 are already dead. The Burmese Government’s reluctance to allow foreign aid in will condemn many more tens of thousands to unnecessary deaths.

Optimistic analysts in Southeast Asia and in the West hope the appalling suffering in Burma may lead to the collapse of the military junta and its replacement by a government led by Aung San Suu Kyi.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

China quake toll close to 15,000

Nearly 15,000 people died in the devastating earthquake that hit China’s Sichuan province, the official Xinhua news agency has reported.

More than 25,000 are still trapped in the rubble two days after the 7.9 quake struck, flattening homes, schools and entire villages and cutting roads.

Soldiers have begun to reach the isolated epicentre by helicopter and on foot, bringing much needed supplies.

The government has meanwhile downplayed fears about the stability of a dam. No damage has been reported to the massive Three Gorges Dam, also in Sichuan province, but there were concerns about dozens of smaller dams closer to the epicentre.