Uighurs

More than 10,000 Han Chinese marched in the streets of Urumqi on Thursday in a new protest that belied the government's claim of having quashed ethnic unrest in the capital city of Xinjiang province. The protesters were enraged over hundreds of alleged attacks in which people were stabbed with hypodermic needles, attacks that they blamed on ethnic Uighurs. The northwestern-most region of China, Xinjiang has often witnessed violent confrontations between the Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people concentrated there, and the Han Chinese who are perceived by the Uighur as colonizers.

BEIJING -- In the deadliest ethnic violence in China since 2009, 21 people were killed in confrontations Tuesday between police and Uighur residents of Kashgar, the country's westernmost city. Among the dead were 15 police and neighborhood security officers and six people that the state media described as “mobsters. " Kashgar, which lies close to China's borders with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, has been a frequent site of violence between the dominant ethnic Han Chinese and the Uighurs, a Muslim minority.

Sipping guava juice under cover from a steamy tropical downpour, Tommy Remengesau Jr. says he's always considered his Pacific island home a refuge from the troubles of the outside world. "While the rest of the planet was in conflict, waging its wars, we remained a little piece of paradise," the former Palauan president said as his pet fruit bat swayed upside down in a nearby cage. "Now, the world's headaches have come home to roost in Palau."

BEIJING -- The most prominent Uighur intellectual in China was blocked Saturday from leaving the country at Beijing international airport as he tried to board a flight for Chicago. Ilham Tohti, 43,  a professor who teaches at the Central Minorities University in Beijing, was brought back to his home late Saturday after 10 hours in custody. His teenage daughter, who was traveling with him, was permitted to travel to the United States on a later flight. According to Nury Turkel, a Washington lawyer, Tohti was on his way to take up a visiting scholar position at Indiana University, traveling on a temporary work-study visa.

It's a high compliment when someone seeks to live in a country that imprisoned and abused him. That's what five Chinese Muslims held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility want to do, but they're encountering resistance from the Justice Department. It is urging the Supreme Court not to review an appeals court decision holding that a judge may not release them into this country. The Muslims, members of an ethnic group called the Uighurs who want independence from China, had traveled to Afghanistan, where Uighur military training camps had been set up. After the United States launched a military offensive in Afghanistan, they and others were captured by Pakistani and other coalition forces and brought to Guantanamo.

BEIJING -- In the deadliest ethnic violence in China since 2009, 21 people were killed in confrontations Tuesday between police and Uighur residents of Kashgar, the country's westernmost city. Among the dead were 15 police and neighborhood security officers and six people that the state media described as “mobsters. " Kashgar, which lies close to China's borders with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, has been a frequent site of violence between the dominant ethnic Han Chinese and the Uighurs, a Muslim minority.

Re "Free the Uighurs," editorial, Feb. 23 We are writing to express our deep concern about The Times' appeal to release 17 Chinese Uighur terror suspects detained at Guantanamo. The Chinese Uighurs are not average people -- they are suspected members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which has been listed as an international terrorist group by the United Nations. We believe the ETIM has long been colluding with Al Qaeda, Taliban remnants, Chechen terrorist groups and other international terrorist organizations.

The Supreme Court backed away Monday from a confrontation with the Obama administration and Congress over the handling of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who are judged to be wrongly held as "enemy combatants." The justices dismissed a case brought on behalf of 17 Chinese Muslims, or Uighurs, who were held as prisoners at Guantanamo even after a judge ruled they deserved to go free. Congress and the Justice Department balked at a judge's plan to release them into the United States.

Lawyers for 17 Chinese Muslims held at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to order their clients' release into the United States. The Muslims, members of the Uighur minority from China's Xinjiang region, have been held without charge at Guantanamo Bay for more than seven years despite their military jailers' concession years ago that they posed no threat to the United States.

China says it has accumulated evidence that the riots that swept through Urumqi on July 5, killing nearly 200 people, were part of a coordinated attack, possibly by a group with an Islamist agenda. Security officials were quoted Monday in the state-run press as saying that surveillance videos showed women in long Islamic robes and head coverings issuing orders to rioters. One woman was said to have given out clubs.

BEIJING -- The most prominent Uighur intellectual in China was taken into custody Saturday at Beijing's international airport with his daughter as he tried to board a flight for the United States. The detention of Beijing professor Ilham Tohti recalled the circumstances of artist Ai Weiwei's detention in 2011 at the airport. Tohti is an economist who teaches at the Central Minorities University and runs a website, Uighurbiz.net. "I, Ilham Tohti originally planned to go to the U.S. They stopped me and prevented me from leaving.

At a teachers college in far northwestern China, students were irritated to find that their professors were escorting them to lunch last month — an odd occurrence since they were more than capable of finding the cafeteria themselves. There was an ulterior motive, students told travelers who recently visited the city of Kashgar: The college wanted to make sure that the students, most of them Muslims, were eating rather than fasting in daylight hours during the holy month of Ramadan.

Under a bridge in the shadows of central Beijing, Aygul Tohti lays out the evening meal on a bare mattress that has served as bed and dining room table since police confiscated most of her possessions. There are thin slices of watermelon, a traditional flatbread called nan and what Tohti calls beef noodle soup, although there's no evidence of meat. Only cauliflower and broccoli simmer in an iron pot over an open wood fire. Her companions, two men also from the western city of Kashgar, open and close their cellphones to check the time.

Chinese authorities said Monday that Islamic radicals trained in Pakistan to wage "holy war" were responsible for attacks over the weekend in the western city of Kashgar that left at least 19 dead. The violence in Kashgar — along with a similar incident last month in the nearby city of Hotan in which 20 people were killed — are the most serious in the region since 2009. Kashgar was under a strict curfew Monday, with most schools and many businesses closed. Kashgar's local government said on its website Monday that one of the attackers had confessed to receiving training in explosives and firearms at a camp in Pakistan run by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a group opposed to Chinese rule in western China.

At least 19 people were killed over the weekend in the far-western city of Kashgar in attacks that China blamed on members of the local Uighur minority who had been training at Islamic camps across the border in Pakistan. Chinese and Uighur sources presented different versions of events, neither of which could be independently verified. In the first attack just before midnight Saturday, the perpetrators hijacked a truck that had been stopped at a red light, killed the driver, then used the truck to plow into a crowd of bystanders, Chinese media said.

At least four people were killed Monday when police and protesters clashed in China's restive Xinjiang region, the official New China News Agency said. Security forces in the western frontier city of Hotan opened fire on a crowd after people attacked a police station, set it on fire and took hostages, the report said. One police official, a security guard and two hostages were killed in the incident. Dilxat Raxit of the exile group World Uyghur Congress told Reuters news service that police opened fire on peaceful demonstrators, which sparked the fighting.

BEIJING -- The most prominent Uighur intellectual in China was taken into custody Saturday at Beijing's international airport with his daughter as he tried to board a flight for the United States. The detention of Beijing professor Ilham Tohti recalled the circumstances of artist Ai Weiwei's detention in 2011 at the airport. Tohti is an economist who teaches at the Central Minorities University and runs a website, Uighurbiz.net. "I, Ilham Tohti originally planned to go to the U.S. They stopped me and prevented me from leaving.

At least 19 people were killed over the weekend in the far-western city of Kashgar in attacks that China blamed on members of the local Uighur minority who had been training at Islamic camps across the border in Pakistan. Chinese and Uighur sources presented different versions of events, neither of which could be independently verified. In the first attack just before midnight Saturday, the perpetrators hijacked a truck that had been stopped at a red light, killed the driver, then used the truck to plow into a crowd of bystanders, Chinese media said.

The Supreme Court this week ended the quest of five exonerated Guantanamo detainees who are seeking release in the United States. The defeat for the Uighurs, members of a Muslim minority group in China, shouldn't be the end of the story. The problem is that other paths to settling them here are strewn with obstacles. The Uighurs' story is a poignant one: They had traveled to Afghanistan, where they joined training camps run by a Uighur separatist group. After the United States launched a military offensive in Afghanistan, they fled to Pakistan, where they were swept up by Pakistani and other coalition forces and brought to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

It's a high compliment when someone seeks to live in a country that imprisoned and abused him. That's what five Chinese Muslims held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility want to do, but they're encountering resistance from the Justice Department. It is urging the Supreme Court not to review an appeals court decision holding that a judge may not release them into this country. The Muslims, members of an ethnic group called the Uighurs who want independence from China, had traveled to Afghanistan, where Uighur military training camps had been set up. After the United States launched a military offensive in Afghanistan, they and others were captured by Pakistani and other coalition forces and brought to Guantanamo.