Engnews February 2013

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RFA BREAKING NEWS: Three Lao-Americans Reported Missing in Savannakhet

by Parameswaran Ponnudurai

cid:image001.png@01CCE405.460E1840 Three Lao-Americans Reported Missing in Savannakhet FEB. 27, 2013— Three Lao-Americans have been reported missing while on a visit to southern Laos, with relatives concerned for their safety in the wake of the prolonged disappearance of prominent local activist Sombath Somphone. The three men, Souli Kongmalavong, Bounthieng Insixiengmai, and Bounma Phannhotha, U.S. citizens from Minnesota, disappeared in early January after traveling to a funeral in Savannakhet province, sources said. Local police contacted by RFA’s Lao Service confirmed that they were looking for the three men. During the investigations, they said they had recovered a burned van with three bodies—those of two men and one woman—but the remains could not be identified. Souli’s wife in Minnesota, Khammanh Kongmalavong, reported his case to the U.S. Embassy in Vientiane on Tuesday. "We ask the Lao authorities for their help. If Souli is still alive, we want him to come home to the U.S. If he has passed away, please send his remains home,” she told RFA this week. News on the missing Lao-Americans came as Lao authorities came under pressure to provide information about leading social activist Sombath, who has been missing since December 2012 after he was stopped at a police checkpoint in Vientiane. Some rights groups believe Sombath, one of Laos’s most prominent civil society figures, was forcibly disappeared by the authorities. Traveling for a funeral A close friend of Souli’s in Savannakhet city, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Souli had been missing since Jan. 6 after leaving Savannakhet city to drive to Kengkok village in Champon district for the funeral of Bounthieng’s brother-in-law. Souli, who owns land in Savannakhet and frequently visited the area, had traveled to Laos in September with plans to return to Minnesota in early March. The friend said she had expected him to return from Kengkok within a few days. Other sources said that Bounthieng and Bounma, who had arrived in Laos from Minnesota a few months later than Souli, were driving with him to the funeral. Police in Champon district told RFA Tuesday that Bounthieng’s relatives had reported him missing since Jan. 5. Police asked about the case in Sonburi district, which neighbors Champon, said they had found a burned van on Jan. 6, but that the passengers’ remains could not be identified because of their condition. The police officer who spoke to RFA added that the license number of the van could not be identified and that police believe the vehicle caught fire after running off the side of the road. Safety concerns Philip Smith, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Public Policy Analysis, which advocates on Lao issues, said the case was “very troubling,” particularly in light of Sombath’s recent disappearance. He expressed concern the three men “may have been abducted” suggesting a link to possible reasons for Sombath’s disappearance. He said that Lao-Americans returning to Laos have faced danger in the face of financial scams and corrupt officials. The United Lao for Democracy and Human Rights, Inc. (ULDHR), a Lao-American group, said it was also concerned over the whereabouts of the three men. “We are deeply worried that, based upon some reports, they may have been wrongly detained or arrested by the Lao military or secret police, said Boon Boualaphanh, President of the ULDHR in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Smith called for a “full investigation” by the U.S. Embassy. Reported by RFA’s Lao Service. Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink. View this story online at: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/laos/disappearance-02272013181425.html Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and publishing online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media. RFA’s broadcasts seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to “seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” RFA is funded by an annual grant from the Broadcasting Board of Governors. If you no longer wish to receive RFA news releases, send an e-mail to engnews-leave(a)rfanews.org. To add your name to our mailing list, send an e-mail to engnews-join(a)rfanews.org . ##### All media inquiries may be sent to Rohit Mahajan at <mailto:mahajanr@rfa.org> mahajanr(a)rfa.org.

12 years

RFA BREAKING NEWS: Burmese Farmers Shot in Land Clash

by Parameswaran Ponnudurai

cid:image001.png@01CCE405.460E1840 Burmese Farmers Shot in Land Clash FEB. 26, 2013— Police in southwest Burma on Tuesday shot and wounded at least nine farmers who were among hundreds trying to take back land they say was confiscated by a private company without compensation, according to police and activists. The violence erupted in a cluster of villages in Ayeyarwady division's Maubin township after about 300 to 500 farmers defied police warnings and moved to furrow some 500 acres (200 hectares) of land they say were seized over a decade ago. Police fired at the crowd after the farmers attacked them with sticks and knives, a police officer told RFA’s Burmese Service. The policemen took the action to prevent the farmers from taking over the land that had already been allocated to a private group. The police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the farmers had violated orders under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code—a provision allowing authorities emergency powers to control public order that has drawn criticism from rights groups. Twenty-six police personnel were wounded in the clashes and have been hospitalized, in addition to the nine farmers—five men and four women. A farmer named Maung Soe said that police used batons to beat men and women in the crowd, who hit back at them. “Although the police threatened us, we didn’t think they were going to shoot us. That’s why we didn’t move from the fields when they asked us to,” he told RFA. The farmers were from Kundinelay, Latpangone, Adate, Papin, and Palaung villages in the Malatto group of villages in Maubin, some 35 miles (50 kilometers) outside the former Burmese capital Rangoon. Reclaiming farmland Police had been deployed in the area since last week when the farmers started clearing the land for cultivation, according to activist Win Choe, from the Guiding Star Association, a non-governmental organization that is working with farmers in the area. “On February 21st, the farmers started clearing the land to get ready to farm and 150 police came to the area the next day. There were 200 police the next day and 300 in the area today,” she said on Tuesday. Some 1,000 acres (400 hectares) of land in the area that used to be rice paddies had been confiscated by a private company 10 years ago, with half of it bulldozed and turned into fishing ponds, she said. Earlier on Tuesday, farmers and activists had been barred from a meeting with authorities on the land dispute that they had been invited to, Win Choe said. The farmers say the land has belonged to them for generations and that it was taken illegally without any compensation. Concern over land disputes Land disputes have come to the fore in Burma as the country emerges from decades of military rule, with rights groups expressing concern about a potential “land-grabbing epidemic” in the country. Protests in northern Burma’s Sagaing division over land that farmers said was being confiscated for a Chinese-backed copper mine in the Letpadaung mountains drew nationwide concern after a brutal police crackdown in November. Analysts say many of the land disputes are not new, dating back a period when the former military junta attempted to open up to investors in the early 1990s, while others are linked to fresh conflicts emerging as the former pariah state opens up to global foreign investment. Reported by Moe Thu Aung and Win Naing for RFA’s Burmese Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink. View this story online at: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/burma/maubin-02262013183320.html Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and publishing online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media. RFA’s broadcasts seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to “seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” RFA is funded by an annual grant from the Broadcasting Board of Governors. If you no longer wish to receive RFA news releases, send an e-mail to engnews-leave(a)rfanews.org. To add your name to our mailing list, send an e-mail to engnews-join(a)rfanews.org . ##### All media inquiries may be sent to Rohit Mahajan at <mailto:mahajanr@rfa.org> mahajanr(a)rfa.org.

12 years

RFA BREAKING NEWS: Tibetan Burnings Reach 100

by Parameswaran Ponnudurai

Tibetan Burnings Reach 100 FEB. 13, 2013— A Tibetan man set himself on fire in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu on Wednesday in a protest calling for freedom for Tibet, while a separate burning was reported in China’s Sichuan province that brought to 100 the number of Tibetans who have self-immolated in China. Speaking to RFA’s Tibetan Service, sources in Kathmandu said the self-immolation took place in the morning next to Nepal’s famous Boudhanath Stupa, a favorite gathering place for Buddhist pilgrims, tourists, and Tibetan residents of the area. “Before the man set himself ablaze, he drenched himself in kerosene and was seen walking against the flow of traffic of devotees who were circumambulating the stupa in a clockwise direction,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Witnesses heard him identify himself as Dawa and heard him call for the long life of [exiled spiritual leader] the Dalai Lama and for freedom for Tibet.” A second source said that Nepalese police put out the fire and took the protester to Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu. Hospital sources identified the man as Dondrub Lotsey, a name they said was given by police. The burned protester’s condition was described by a doctor as “critical,” Human Rights in Nepal Organization president Sudip Phatak said, speaking to RFA. Self-immolations by Tibetans outside China challenging Beijing’s rule in Tibet have also taken place previously in India and as far away as France. The number of Tibetan self-immolations in China rose to 100 after it was learned Wednesday that a former monk from Kirti monastery in Sichuan province’s Ngaba (in Chinese, Aba) prefecture had self-immolated last week. Reports also recently emerged that a Tibetan woman, Pasang Lhamo, 62, had self-immolated in Beijing on Sept. 13 after officials in Sichuan's Yulshul (in Chinese, Yushu) prefecture had refused to allow her to keep her ancestral home. Her case was not previously included in lists of Tibetan self-immolators. 'A grim milestone' The former Kirti monk, Lobsang Namgyal, 37, self-immolated in Ngaba at a site close to a police station on Feb. 3, according to exiled Tibetan monks Kanyak Tsering and Lobsang Yeshi in India, citing sources in the region. “He ran toward the police station, calling out slogans with his body on fire, and died at the scene,” Tsering and Yeshi said. “Police then cremated his remains and handed them over to his family,” they said. Namgyal, one of a family of four brothers and four sisters, was detained and harassed last year by police, forcing him to seek shelter with relatives living in a nomadic area, Tsering and Yeshi said, adding that authorities had accused him of not being “a genuine monk.” “[But] he is reported to have been a well-behaved monk who took his studies very seriously without missing his classes at Kirti monastery,” they said. Namgyal is believed to be the 100th Tibetan living in areas governed by China to have self-immolated in protest against Beijing’s rule. “This grim milestone should be a source of shame to the Chinese authorities who are responsible and to the world leaders who have yet to show any leadership in response to the ongoing crisis in Tibet,” Stephanie Brigden, director of the London-based Free Tibet advocacy group, said in a statement. “China employs brutal repression, propaganda and bribery to no avail: protest and resistance will continue as long as the Tibetan people are denied their freedom,” Brigden said. Reported by RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee and Lumbum Tashi. Written in English by Richard Finney. View this story online at: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/tibet/burnings-02132013165012.html Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and publishing online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media. RFA’s broadcasts seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to “seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” RFA is funded by an annual grant from the Broadcasting Board of Governors. If you no longer wish to receive RFA news releases, send an e-mail to engnews-leave(a)rfanews.org. To add your name to our mailing list, send an e-mail to engnews-join(a)rfanews.org . ##### All media inquiries may be sent to Rohit Mahajan at <mailto:mahajanr@rfa.org> mahajanr(a)rfa.org.

12 years

RFA BREAKING NEWS: Uyghur Scholar Faces Heart Problems After Grilling

by Joshua Lipes

Uyghur Scholar Faces Heart Problems After Grilling FEB. 26, 2013-Chinese police are intensively questioning a prominent Uyghur scholar and have refused to allow him to see a doctor despite his complaints of heart problems triggered by the continuous nature of the interrogations. Ilham Tohti, a professor at the Central Minorities University in Beijing, said he had been persistently interrogated in recent days by the police and held under a 24-hour watch at home since he was barred on Feb. 2 at the Beijing airport from leaving to the United States to take up a position at Indiana University. "Last Friday, officers of the Public Security Bureau questioned me for more than six hours, leaving me exhausted and sweating and having problems with my heart," Ilham Tohti told RFA's Uyghur Service by telephone on Monday. Tohti had been questioned from 3:00-9:00 p.m., leaving him tired and weak, he said in a microblog message sent out to friends and supporters at midnight on Feb. 22. Police questioned him again on Monday, but noticed he was having physical difficulties, Tohti said. "They said that I could take a break from questioning to see a doctor on Tuesday," he said. But police came to take him away for questioning again on Tuesday, one of Tohti's students told RFA, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Because they are questioning him again, he cannot see a doctor," the student said. Tohti, who has been detained several times before, is a vocal critic of the Chinese government's treatment of the minority Uyghurs, most of whom live in the northwestern Xinjiang region. Visiting scholar Tohti was questioned by police at the Beijing airport for eight hours before he was taken back to his home in Beijing on Feb. 2 as he was about to fly to the U.S. to take up a post on a U.S.-issued J-1 visa as a visiting scholar at Indiana University. His teenage daughter, who was to have accompanied him, was allowed to take the American Airlines flight to the U.S. and is now safe in Indiana. A group of global scholars and human rights organizations had criticized the Chinese authorities for imposing the travel ban on Ilham Tohti, saying the case epitomized intimidation of intellectuals generally in China and suppression of ethnic rights. Scholars at Risk (SAR), a New York-based international network of over 300 universities and colleges in 34 countries, sent a letter to President Hu Jintao asking him to investigate the case and urging the appropriate authorities to explain publicly the circumstances surrounding the travel restriction on the professor. In August last year, Chinese authorities interrogated the professor, warning him not to speak to foreign media or discuss religion online after he alleged that Chinese security forces had been sent to mosques in Xinjiang to monitor Muslims during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. A year earlier, the Central Minorities University canceled a class taught by Tohti on immigration, discrimination, and development in Xinjiang, where many Muslim Uyghurs say they suffer ethnic discrimination, oppressive religious controls, and continued poverty and joblessness under Chinese rule. Reported and translated by Mihray Abdilim for RFA's Uyghur Service. Written in English by Richard Finney. View this story online at: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/scholar-02262013173932.html Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and publishing online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media. RFA's broadcasts seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to "seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." RFA is funded by an annual grant from the Broadcasting Board of Governors. If you no longer wish to receive RFA news releases, send an e-mail to <mailto:engnews-leave@rfanews.org> engnews-leave(a)rfanews.org. To add your name to our mailing list, send an e-mail to <mailto:engnews-join@rfanews.org> engnews-join(a)rfanews.org . ##### All media inquiries may be sent to Rohit Mahajan at <mailto:mahajanr@rfa.org> mahajanr(a)rfa.org.

12 years

Radio Free Asia Wins Gracie Award

by Rohit Mahajan

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 26, 2013 Contact: Rohit Mahajan 202 530 4976 <mailto:mahajanr@rfa.org> mahajanr(a)rfa.org Radio Free Asia Wins Gracie Award Cantonese Story on Trafficked Woman's Family Reunion Recognized WASHINGTON - Radio Free Asia (RFA) has won a prestigious Gracie Award for its Cantonese language entry "Kidnapped Woman Reunites with Family" in the international contest's category of outstanding investigative program or feature. The annual Gracie Awards recognize programming created by women and focused on issues relating to women. They are sponsored by the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation. "Radio Free Asia strives to tell the stories of the subjugated, oppressed, and those left without recourse," said Libby Liu, President of RFA. "Unfortunately, women and girls too often fall into this category, as they are trafficked, abused, and left vulnerable without any way to reclaim their lives. "We are thrilled to earn this award and appreciate the attention it helps bring to human trafficking and the struggle too many women face in Asia and throughout the world." For RFA's winning entry, Cantonese Service reporter Vivian Kwan produced a two-part feature about the reunion of a Chinese woman with her birth parents, from whom she was kidnapped as an 8-year-old before being forced to do housework for an adoptive family almost a thousand miles from her hometown. The woman, originally from China's Southwestern province of Guizhou, met her parents and siblings after tracking them down following 22 years of separation. RFA's story dramatizes the plight of young girls trafficked in China by focusing on the torturous life of one of its many victims. This report was broadcast by RFA's Cantonese Service in January 2012. RFA's accomplishment will be recognized at the 38th annual Gracie Awards Gala on May 21 in Los Angeles. Winners <http://www.thegracies.org/2013-grace-awards.php> in this year's competition included CNN, Al Jazeera English, ABC News, NPR, Bloomberg Radio, and Univision, among others. # # # Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and publishing online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media. RFA's broadcasts seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to "seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." RFA is funded by an annual grant from the Broadcasting Board of Governors Rohit Mahajan Media Relations Manager Radio Free Asia Email: mahajanr(a)rfa.org Desk: (202) 530-4976 Cell: (202) 489-8021 www.rfa.org

12 years

RFA BREAKING NEWS: Uyghur Scholar Put on 24-hour Watch

by Parameswaran Ponnudurai

Uyghur Scholar Put on 24-hour Watch FEB. 7, 2013— An ethnic Uyghur scholar who was blocked last week from leaving China to take up a post at a U.S. university said Thursday that he is being watched around the clock by police stationed outside his Beijing home and that his website has also been hacked. Ilham Tohti said one of his students at the Central Minorities University in Beijing where he teaches is also being harassed by the authorities, who have warned him against giving interviews to foreign news organizations. “Because I speak to foreign media, they question me and warn me, but I will never stop speaking out,” Ilham Tohti told RFA’s Uyghur Service by telephone from his Beijing residence. “In China, there is no freedom for anyone,” he said. On Saturday, Tohti was detained at an airport in Beijing while attempting to board a flight that would take him to the U.S., where he was set to take up a post on a U.S.-issued J-1 visa as a visiting scholar at Indiana University. Daughter safe His teenage daughter, who was to have accompanied him, was allowed to take the American Airlines flight to the U.S. and is now safe in Indiana, Tohti said. After being questioned by police at the airport for eight hours, Tohti was taken back to his home in Beijing, he said. “Now, a police car is parked outside my home 24 hours a day, and police question anyone who speaks to me in person or on the phone,” he said, adding that the Public Security Bureau in Beijing has warned him not to speak to foreign media. “But I speak for freedom and democracy, and I want the world to know about the situation of the Uyghurs,” Tohti said. A vocal critic Tohti, who has been detained several times before, is a vocal critic of the Chinese government’s treatment of the minority Uyghurs, most of whom live in the northwestern Xinjiang region and complain of discrimination by the county’s majority Han Chinese. Following his airport detention, unknown hackers attacked his website uyghur.net, which is hosted overseas and discusses Uyghur social issues and news from Xinjiang, Tohti said. The website, a successor to the Uyghur Online website which he founded but was shut down by Beijing in 2009, had reported details of his detention, he said. Chinese authorities have also harassed his student Atikem Rozi, Tohti said, with police taking her on Feb. 5 from her home in Toksu county in Xinjiang’s Aksu district and questioning her for four to five hours. “Things are very bad for her right now, and her parents are very worried,” he said. Canceled class Ilham Tohti told RFA in December that speaking out on Uyghur issues was negatively impacting his family’s life in Beijing as well as his own. In August 2012, Chinese authorities interrogated the professor, warning him not to speak to foreign media or discuss religion online after he alleged that Chinese security forces had been sent to mosques in Xinjiang to monitor Muslims during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. In September 2011, the Central Minorities University canceled a class taught by Tohti on immigration, discrimination, and development in Xinjiang, where many Muslim Uyghurs say they suffer ethnic discrimination, oppressive religious controls, and continued poverty and joblessness under Chinese rule. Reported and translated by Mihray Abdilim for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Richard Finney. View this story online at: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/watch-02072013144048.html Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and publishing online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media. RFA’s broadcasts seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to “seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” RFA is funded by an annual grant from the Broadcasting Board of Governors. If you no longer wish to receive RFA news releases, send an e-mail to engnews-leave(a)rfanews.org. To add your name to our mailing list, send an e-mail to engnews-join(a)rfanews.org . ##### All media inquiries may be sent to Rohit Mahajan at <mailto:mahajanr@rfa.org> mahajanr(a)rfa.org.

12 years

RFA BREAKING NEWS: Jailed Vietnamese Blogger Blasts Government

by Parameswaran Ponnudurai

Jailed Vietnamese Blogger Blasts Government FEB. 6, 2013— In a petition that has been smuggled out of prison, Vietnam's most prominent jailed blogger has blasted the communist authorities for imposing a harsh sentence on him and questioned the relevance of the law under which he was punished. Nguyen Van Hai, a founding member of the banned ‘Free Journalists Club’ website, also said in the petition that he was hopeful that Article 88 of the Penal Code, which has been used by the one-party Communist government to muzzle dissent, will be abolished before he leaves prison. A copy of Hai's petition appealing his harsh 12-year prison sentence in September last year was provided to RFA's Vietnamese Service by Vietnamese-American pro-democracy activist Nguyen Quoc Quan, who was freed last week by Hanoi after being jailed for nine months on subversion charges. Hai, who is popularly known by his pen name Dieu Cay, gave the petition to Quan while they were in the same prison block for two weeks last year. Quan, worried that prison guards would seize the petition, gave it to another source to smuggle it out. It was handed to Quan on his release last week. The prison officials had refused to submit Hai's critical appeal petition to the authorities and he had to water it down, Quan said. "The wording of that petition is very strong and that was why the prison authorities did not want to accept it," Quan told RFA in an interview following his return home to California. "They told him to tone it down but he argued with them. They said that if he did not rewrite his petition, they would not take it [to the higher authorities]. That was why he rewrote his petition," Quan said. "I was moved when I read it." 'Failure to build democracy' Hai said in the petition that his trial "is an obvious evidence of the failure of building a democracy in Vietnam." "The setting up of the Free Journalists Club is an effort to exercise the freedom of the press, and the freedom of expression, association and gathering, and does not violate the law," according to the petition. Hai wrote the petition a day after he was sentenced on Sept. 24 for political blogging that included hundreds of articles posted online. His appeal was eventually turned down in December last year. Hai, who had been imprisoned on other charges since 2008, was among several detained journalists mentioned by U.S. President Barack Obama in a speech on World Press Freedom Day last May. Obama said the blogger’s first arrest in 2008 had “coincided with a mass crackdown on citizen journalism in Vietnam.” Hai said in the petition that Article 88, under which he was convicted for “conducting propaganda” against the state, "will see its demise before he is free." "I think that is the main message [in the petition], Quan said, adding that Hai had wanted his original petition to be publicized to the outside world so that the Vietnamese authorities could be pressured to embrace political reforms. Hai wanted Article 88 and several other laws used by the Vietnamese government to silence dissent to be "eliminated" from the Penal Code, Quan said. Hai's articles before his arrest had criticized human rights abuses, corruption and foreign policy in Vietnam. Vietnamese authorities have jailed dozens of political dissidents since launching a crackdown on freedom of expression at the end of 2009, many of them charged with “aiming to overthrow the government.” Reported by RFA's Vietnamese Service. Written in English by Parameswaran Ponnudurai. View this story online at: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/vietnam/blogger-02062013212755.html Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and publishing online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media. RFA’s broadcasts seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to “seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” RFA is funded by an annual grant from the Broadcasting Board of Governors. If you no longer wish to receive RFA news releases, send an e-mail to engnews-leave(a)rfanews.org. To add your name to our mailing list, send an e-mail to engnews-join(a)rfanews.org . ##### All media inquiries may be sent to Rohit Mahajan at <mailto:mahajanr@rfa.org> mahajanr(a)rfa.org.

12 years

RFA BREAKING NEWS: Uyghur Scholar, Daughter Held in Beijing

by Parameswaran Ponnudurai

cid:image001.png@01CCE405.460E1840 Uyghur Scholar, Daughter Held in Beijing FEB. 1, 2013 — An outspoken ethnic Uyghur scholar said he and his daughter have been detained by Chinese authorities as they were about to leave Beijing airport for the United States. “My daughter and I are kept in two separate rooms," Ilham Tohti, a professor at the Central Minorities University in Beijing, told RFA's Uyghur Service by mobile telephone at 10.17 a.m. Beijing time on Feb 2 (9.17 p.m. Washington time, Feb 1) before the device was believed to have been taken away by the authorities. When asked whether RFA could report his detention, he said, "Yes." The connection then dropped. RFA then tried calling his mobile phone repeatedly but kept getting a recording, "Unable to connect." Ilham Tohti had been detained several times before and he and his family faced a number of restrictions in Beijing since July 2009 when deadly ethnic violence between Uyghurs and Han Chinese rocked China's northwestern Xinjiang region's capital Urumqi, leaving about 200 people dead. The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the homeland of China's Uyghur minority who complain of discrimination by the country's majority ethnic Han Chinese group. Text messages Ilham Tohti, who has constantly and fearlessly voiced the grievances of the Uyghurs, earlier on Saturday told his friend via text messages that he and his teenage daugter were detained "as they were going through security checks" at the airport. The friend, speaking on condition of anonymity to RFA, said that Ilham Tohti informed him that two policemen were watching him at the airport, providing the identification badge numbers of them. A few minutes later, RFA received a text mesasage from Ilham Tohti saying that "now there are four policemen watching me." He provided the identification badge numbers of the two additional policemen. When his friend asked him how he could help, the scholar said, "Report it to the outside world." Ilham Tohti was the founder of Uyghur Online, a moderate, intellectual website addressing social issues. It was shut down by authorities in 2009. A new version of the site, which reports Xinjiang news and discusses Uyghur social issues, reopened last year and is hosted overseas and blocked by censors in China. Party congress He was taken away from Beijing to Urumqi and Atush, his hometown in the Xinjiang region, in October last year ahead of the 18th National Congress of the ruling Chinese Communist Party in the Chinese capital. His six-year-old son had also been refused entry to primary school in Beijing last year. Ilham Tohti told RFA in December that he was afraid that speaking out about Uyghur social issues in Xinjiang has been negatively affecting his family’s life in Beijing in addition to his own. In August, Chinese authorities interrogated Ilham Tohti, warning him not to speak to the foreign media or discuss religion online, after he alleged on his website that the authorities had sent armed forces to mosques in Xinjiang to monitor Muslims during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. In September 2011, the Beijing Minorities University cancelled a class taught by him on immigration, discrimination, and development in Xinjiang, where many Muslim Uyghurs chafe under Beijing's rule. Ilham Tohti, who has called for implementation of regional autonomy laws in his home region, was also detained for two months following the July 2009 ethnic violence. Uyghurs say they have long suffered ethnic discrimination, oppressive religious controls, and continued poverty and joblessness despite China's ambitious plans to develop its vast northwestern frontier. Chinese authorities blame Uyghur separatists for a series of deadly attacks in recent years and accuse one group in particular of maintaining links to the al-Qaeda terrorist network. Reported by Mihray Abdilim for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Parameswaran Ponnudurai and Jennifer Chou. View this story online at : http://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/scholar-02012013225438.html Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and publishing online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media. RFA ’s broadcasts seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to “seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” RFA is funded by an annual grant from the Broadcasting Board of Governors. If you no longer wish to receive RFA news releases, send an e-mail to engnews-leave(a)rfanews.org . To add your name to our mailing list, send an e-mail to engnews-join(a)rfanews.org . ##### All media inquiries may be sent to Rohit Mahajan at mahajanr(a)rfa.org .

12 years, 1 month

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Engnews February 2013