Results tagged “worlduyghurcongress”

File this under "Things to take with a grain of salt": Rebiya Kadeer's family in China has apparently written a letter (in the Uyghur language) to the separatist leader, which was then translated into Chinese and English by Xinhua. The letter starts out thusly: "You once were the richest person in Xinjiang just because you were granted a lot of business opportunities and convenience by the Communist Party of China and the Government. But, despite repeated leniency of the Party and the Government, you ended up in prison under other people's enticement. You were allowed to go to the United States thanks to, once again, our government's leniency. You pledged to our government not to participate in any separatist activity before you departed for the United States. You broke your words anyway." If that caught your fancy, read the rest of it here.

Because of the ethnic violence in Xinjiang, President Hu Jintao has cut his trip in Italy short, abandoning plans to attend the G8 summit and rushing back to Beijing this morning. State Councilor Dai Bingguo will sub for him at the summit. At this point, none of China's top leaders have come forward with statements about the incident yet, so it will be interesting to see what Hu has to say when he gets back. Meanwhile, Rebiya Kadeer of the World Uyghur Congress - who's been categorically denying orchestrating any of the unrest - has a ton of things to say on China's handling of the incident, including that 400 Uyghurs have died as a result of police shootings and beatings (according to her "inside" Uighur sources). Oh yeah, and Facebook's been blocked.

Twitter has been blocked (as has Danwei, presumably because of their coverage) and Internet is allegedly down everywhere in Urumuqi - basically, it's information crackdown time since the proverbial shit has hit the fan.