China’s Afzal Guru…
This is how our great neighbour China treats its Afzal Gurus:
A Reuters news story reported in the Indian Express (February 09, 2007), “Muslim executed for trying to ‘split’ China”
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Beijing, February 9: China has executed a Uighur activist in a far-northwestern city for attempting to “split the motherland” and possessing explosives, drawing condemnation from a human rights group, which said the evidence was insufficient.
Ismail Semed, who was deported to China from Pakistan in 2003, (note the Pakistan connection) had told the court a confession had been coerced, but he was executed nevertheless on Thursday in Urumqi, capital of the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang, Radio Free Asia on Friday quoted his widow, Buhejer, as saying.
…The exile group, the World Uighur Congress, said the prosecution had presented no credible evidence for a conviction.
The Xinjiang regional government declined to comment. Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs account for 8 million of the 19 million people in Xinjiang.
…Nicholas Bequelin, Hong Kong-based China researcher of Human Rights Watch, said: …”We don’t think there was sufficient evidence to condemn him,”
China has waged a harsh campaign in recent years against what it says are violent separatists and Islamic extremists struggling to set up an independent “East Turkestan” in Xinjiang, which shares a border with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia.
…Semed had previously served two prison sentences for taking part in a violent uprising in 1990. He fled to Pakistan after a Chinese government crackdown in 1997.
…In a reference to another case currently in court in Urumqi, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said on Thursday Canadian diplomats had no right to be present at the hearing of Hussayin Celil, a Uighur accused by China of terrorism who was awarded Canadian citizenship two years ago.
Celil, also known as Yu Shanjiang, fled China in the 1990s and travelled last year to Uzbekistan, where he was detained and then extradited to China on terrorism charges.
He was cited in court documents related to Semed as a co-conspirator, Bequelin said. China has not recognised Celil’s Canadian citizenship, obtained in 2005.
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The last bit about not recognising foreign citizenship is very interesting. Would our government ever have the courage to do the same?
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