China to UN panel: No arbitrary detention in Uighur region

China insisted yesterday there is no “arbitrary detention” and there are no “re-education centers” in its western Xinjiang region, rejecting concerns raised by a U.N. human rights committee that more than 1 million ethnic Uighurs may be being held in camps.

Beijing was responding to questions raised by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on Geneva. A committee member last week cited estimates that over 1 million people in China from the country’s Uighur and other Muslim minorities are being held in “counter-extremism centers” and another 2 million have been forced into “re-education camps.”

China’s delegation told the panel that “there is no arbitrary detention […] there are no such things as re-education centers.” It said authorities in Xinjiang have cracked down on “violent terrorist activities,” while convicted criminals are provided with skills to reintegrate themselves into society at “vocational education and employment training centers.”

“The argument that 1 million Uighurs are detained in re-education centers is completely untrue,” Chinese delegate Hu Lianhe said through an interpreter.

He added “there is no suppression of ethnic minorities or violations of their freedom of religious belief in the name of counter-terrorism.” But he also said “those who are deceived by religious extremism […] shall be assisted through resettlement and education.”

Xinjiang has been enveloped in a suffocating blanket of security for years, especially since a deadly anti-government riot broke out in the regional capital of Urumqi in 2009. Over recent months, monitoring groups and witnesses say Uighurs have been sent into detention and indoctrination centers.

Gay McDougall, the committee vice-chairwoman who raised the detentions last week, said she wasn’t convinced by China’s “flat denial” of the detention figures. She said China “didn’t quite deny” that re-education programs are taking place.

“You said that was false, the 1 million. Well, how many were there? Please tell me,” she said. “And what were the laws on which they were detained, the specific provisions?”

There was no direct response to that in yesterday’s session, which addressed a broad range of issues that went well beyond the Uighurs.

But delegation leader Yu Jianhua said some panel members had treated “some of the unsubstantiated materials as credible information.” He contended that some of that information came from groups which “seek to split China” and have links to terrorist organizations.

Global Times editorial

China’s campaign of pressure against the country’s Uighur Muslim minority has prevented the far-northwestern region of Xinjiang from “becoming ‘China’s Syria’ or ‘China’s Libya,’” an official Communist Party newspaper said yesterday

Following attacks by radical Muslim separatists, hundreds of thousands of members of the Uighur and Kazakh Muslim minorities in Xinjiang have been arbitrarily detained in indoctrination camps where they are forced to denounce Islam and profess loyalty to the party.

Global Times said the intense regulations in the region were merely “a phase that Xinjiang has to go through in rebuilding peace and prosperity.”

The editorial did not directly mention the existence of the internment camps.

Denouncing what it called “destructive Western public opinions,” the paper said, “peace and stability must come above all else.”

“Through the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China, the national strength of the country and the contribution of local officials, Xinjiang has been salvaged from the verge of massive turmoil,” the paper said. “It has avoided the fate of becoming ‘China’s Syria’ or ‘China’s Libya.’”

Xinjiang has been enveloped in a suffocating blanket of security for years, especially since a deadly anti-government riot broke out in the regional capital of Urumqi in 2009. Over recent months, monitoring groups and eyewitnesses say Uighurs have been summoned from abroad and across China and sent into detention and indoctrination centers.

The roughly 10 million Uighurs make up a tiny proportion of China’s almost 1.4 billion people and there has never been an insurgency that could challenge the central government’s overwhelming might.

When the U.N.’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination started reviewing China’s report in Geneva on Friday, Chinese delegation leader Yu Jianhua highlighted economic progress and rising living standards among other things.

Committee vice-chairwoman Gay McDougall said members are “deeply concerned” by “numerous and credible reports that we have received that, in the name of combating religious extremism and maintaining social stability, [China] has turned the Uighur autonomous region into something that resembles a massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy.”

McDougall said there were estimates that more than a million people “are being held in so-called counter-extremism centers and another 2 million have been forced into so-called re-education camps for political and cultural indoctrination.”

She did not specify a source for that information in her remarks at the hearing.

The Geneva-based committee continues its hearing, with conclusions expected later. Yu, China’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, said China will respond to the main questions raised in Friday’s session yesterday. MDT/AP

Two, including Chinese tourist, killed in Kenya hippo attacks

A Chinese tourist was attacked and killed by a hippo while taking pictures on the edge of Lake Naivasha in Kenya’s Rift Valley, just hours after a local fisherman was mauled to death in the same area, authorities said yesterday [Macau time].

A second Chinese tourist was injured in the incident Saturday night and received treatment in the local hospital in Naivasha, 91 kilometers southeast of Nairobi, the Kenya Wildlife Service said in a statement.

In the same area, a Kenyan fisherman was attacked by another hippo a few kilometers from where the incident with the Chinese occurred, a police official said.

“The man was bitten on the chest and his injuries were serious and he died minutes after he was retrieved from the lake,” said Rift Valley Head of Criminal investigations Gideon Kibunja.

The deaths brought to six the number people who have been killed by hippos around Lake Naivasha so far this year.

Wildlife service spokesman Paul Udoto said the circumstances are not clear in which the two Chinese were attacked. He said attacks on tourists are rare because they are usually protected by guides.

He said hippos and lone buffalos pose the greatest danger to humans and there have been many attacks in which civilians and even rangers have lost their lives. AP