Uyghur Muslems Want Liberty!

The "terrorism" talking points sound like they came right out Michael Chernoff's mouth. But this is China!
Chinese Police Raid Houses in Xinjiang
2008.04.02
HONG KONG—Chinese police have conducted raids on several houses in the restive northwestern region of Xinjiang, possibly looking for weapons, sources in the area have told Radio Free Asia (RFA).
Authorities in Yengiyer township near Gulja (in Chinese, Yili) city raided four familiy homes belonging to Muslim Uyghurs, detaining several people, the sources said.
Police dug up the yard at one house, although they gave no indication what they were looking for, a Uyghur source in Gulja told RFA’s Uyghur service.
[...] Police dug up the yard at one house, although they gave no indication what they were looking for, a Uyghur source in Gulja told RFA’s Uyghur service.
[...] A Han Chinese resident of Alamatuya village in Yengiyer township said that at least one house had been searched by police in his neighborhood.
“Because the Uyghurs were causing trouble...They had explosives in their house,” he told RFA’s Mandarin service.
Several people detained
“Maybe someone reported it,” he said, adding that he believed the Uyghurs had been influenced by recent unrest in Tibet and were possibly connected to unrest in Gulja which was brutally suppressed by Chinese security forces in the 1990s.
[...] Many Uyghurs, who twice enjoyed short-lived independence as the state of East Turkestan during the 1930s and 40s, are bitterly opposed to Beijing’s rule in Xinjiang.
Beijing blames Uyghur separatists for sporadic bombings and other violence in the Xinjiang region. But diplomats and foreign experts are skeptical. International rights groups have accused Beijing of using the U.S. “war on terror” to crack down on nonviolent supporters of Uyghur independence.
[...] The raids come one week after several hundred ethnic Uyghurs staged protests following the death in custody of a prominent Uyghur businessman and philanthropist.
Numerous sources said the demonstrations followed the death in custody of a wealthy Uyghur jade trader and philanthropist, Mutallip Hajim, 38. Police returned his body to relatives March 3 after two months in custody, saying he had died in hospital of heart trouble. According to an authoritative source, police instructed the family to bury him immediately and inform no one of his death.
[...] China has waged a campaign over the last decade against what it says are violent separatists and Islamic extremists who aim to establish an independent state in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which shares a border with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia.
In March 2008, Chinese authorities announced that they had foiled a plot by Uyghur terrorists targeting the Beijing Olympics. In the early 1990s, Uyghurs in Xinjiang launched large-scale riots, attacking and killing Chinese officials. Chinese authorities alleged that such acts killed 162 people and injured another 440, prompting a harsh crackdown.
U.S.-based Human Rights Watch says authorities in Xinjiang maintain “a multi-tiered system of surveillance, control, and suppression of religious activity aimed at Xinjiang’s Uyghurs...At a more mundane and routine level, many Uyghurs experience harassment in their daily lives.”
“Celebrating religious holidays, studying religious texts, or showing one’s religion through personal appearance are strictly forbidden at state schools. The Chinese government has instituted controls over who can be a cleric, what version of the Koran may be used, where religious gatherings may be held, and what may be said on religious occasions.” http://www.rfa.org/english/news/2008/04/02/uyghur_raids/

Chinese Police Imprison Tibetan Students, But Uyghur Muslims Join in Solidarity

Chinese Muslims Support Tibet
Tibetans Around China Feel Fallout From Crackdown
2008.03.19
KATHMANDU—Tibetans around China felt the weight of state power following Beijing’s armed crackdown on anti-Chinese protests and riots that have swept through Tibetan regions of the country since last week.
A Han Chinese teacher in the northwestern province of Gansu said students at the Maerkang Normal College had been forbidden to return to their homes in the rural area of Maerkang county, leading to clashes with police and campus security guards.
[...] Meanwhile, authorities in Beijing threw a police cordon around colleges with large Tibetan student populations.
A Tibetan student enrolled at the Southwest University for Nationalities in Sichuan’s provincial capital, Chengdu, said communication with his family and friends in rural Ngaba had been difficult.
[...] And a Tibetan student enrolled in a university in Shanghai said he was under surveillance by the authorities. “It is inconvenient for me to talk,” he said.
“My cell phone is under surveillance. I cannot tell you if there have been protests on campus. It’s inconvenient.”
Many remote areas of the Sichuan, Gansu, and Qinghai plateau are home to large Tibetan populations, many of whom are nomads. Tibet also has an internal border with China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang, home to the Muslim Uyghur ethnic group, who also deeply resent Beijing’s rule.
Exiled Uyghur leaders are expressing support for Tibetans who have been staging protests through much of western China over the last week.
Uyghur American Association president Rebiya Kadeer, a businesswoman and leading dissident, accused the Chinese authorities of “atrocities” and defended the Tibetans’ right to protest peacefully.
[...] “Tibetans and Uyghurs have been living under the yoke of Chinese oppression for decades. They have been subjected to Beijing’s assimilationist policies aimed at eroding their religious identity and at accelerating cultural alienation,” Kadeer said.
[...] “The world community cannot turn a blind eye to the obstinate refusal of the Beijing regime to fully engage in open, serious, and meaningful negotiations with leaders of Tibet and East Turkestan,” Kadeer said, using the Uyghurs’ own name for China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
Dolkun Aysa, chairman of the Eastern Turkestan Union in Europe and general secretary of the World Uyghur Congress, led a three-hour protest in Munich on March 18 to show solidarity with the Tibetans.
“The main purpose of this demonstration is to show solidarity and cooperation between Tibetan and Uyghur people and to inform the world” about Chinese repression, Aysa said in an interview with RFA’s Uyghur service.
“We are cooperating with Tibetans to organize demonstrations expressing our full support for the Tibetan people, while at the same time informing the public and the media regarding the existence of the same problems, the same political reality, and the same suffering of the Uyghur people in Eastern Turkestan,” he said.
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/2008/03/19/tibet-arrest/

We DO Care

At the top of this wonderful blog, An Arab Woman Blues - Reflections in a sealed bottle... is the question, "Do you care?" I want Layla to know how much we Americans want this terrible regime destroyed because the longer it exists, the harder it will be for working people to recognize that the pain in another's eyes as their own pain.
Yes, it's true that Code Pink can seems frivolous and silly, but remember they reach Americans who never heard of Fallujah and they scream at the murderers inside the Capital. Any action which distracts the war machine is a good action, I think.

But we will grieve and mourn together while the murderers play their Congressional war games. There is no distance between us because the children aren't really playing anymore. The Christians talk about a heaven, but seem immune from practicing Jesus' wishes. If there were a "supreme being" who took care of us, why would such misery exist?
No, I'd rather believe we are responsible for our lives and deeds. My responsibility to you, dear Layla, is the same as my responsibility to my daughter. Rage on, woman, until we have a world where every person can be exactly who they are, no exceptions.
An Arab Woman Blues - Reflections in a sealed bottle...
Pink and Red Clouds...
What do we need the Sharia’a for? Weren’t we Muslims before ? Weren’t we religious enough before ? Or maybe you think you have monopoly over the Truth, or maybe you think you have monopoly over God himself ?
And why should a non-Muslim be forced to live under a Sharia’a imported from Iran?
They tell me, don’t rock the boat. Why should I not rock the boat?
By God if I had the power, I would overturn that cursed boat and let all those on board ink right into the bottomless pits of the ocean.Why should I and other Iraqi women be forced to live under mullah rule? Has anyone asked for our permission? And who are these mullahs anyways?
http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2007/10/pink-and-red-clouds.html