More Uighurs sentenced to death in China

December 23, 2009
Michael Sainsbury, China correspondent
The Australian

The fresh trials are set to begin only days after Cambodia deported 20 Uighur asylum-seekers to China as the emerging economic superpower unveiled $1 billion in development aid to the impoverished south-east Asian nation. China has denied the money is linked to the return of the Uighurs

CHINA has begun sentencing 20 more ethnic Uighurs - some to death - for their part in riots which left 197 people dead in the remote western city of Urumqi on July 5, as the second batch of trials of more than 1200 people arrested as a result of the carnage began today, with at least one man sent for execution.

In early December five people were sentenced to death and a further eight given prison terms, bringing to 17 sent to be executed in trials of the first two groups of people from the bloody unrest. Nine have been executed so far.

The province of Xinjiang, of which Urumqi is the capital, remains locked down with internet, text messaging and international phone access cut off.

The Australian has learned that three new trials were held today with other accused expected to be given their final sentences in coming days.

On July 5, long simmering tensions between Muslim Turkic-speaking Uighurs and the majority ethnic Han erupted as members of the minority group attacked and killed dozens of Chinese, sparking citywide violence that lasted several days in which thousands were injured along with the casualty count.

The unprecedented events saw a massive lockdown of the city and others parts of Xinjiang province where Uighurs account for about 40 per cent of the 22 million population.

The military and police presence in Urumqi has been reduced in the past few months but machine-gun-toting groups of uniformed militia regularly patrol the streets in the Uighur sector south of the Urumqi business district.

Nineteen-year-old Uighur Mehmet Maheti was sentenced to death yesterday after being found guilty of two murders and robbery. He has five days to decide whether to appeal or not.

Maheti was accused beating 41-year-old Han businessman Yang Quanhong to death on the night of July 5 – leaving a widow, his seventy-year-old parents and a son born at the end of July.

“My husband didn't have a chance to have a single look at his son,” Mr Yang’s widow Luan Xingyan Yang told The Australian.

“He was hoping for a child for years, and got me pregnant when he was not young. It's a feeling nobody else can experience.

“We were driving on street the evening of July 5, they dragged me and my husband out of our car and started beating him. I ran away back home for help, and they stole my mobile too.

“I called my mobile, and got through at around 2am the next day. Maheti picked up my call and said 'we beat your husband dead, you come here’."

Ms Luan said that during the trial Maheti showed no regret. He said he beat Yang but didn't beat at fatal parts of his body.

“He showed no sign of regret, nor did he apologise as have some others at previous trials,” Ms Luan said.

But overseas Uighur groups have claimed that since an initial seven-week clampdown, dozens of Uighurs have “disappeared” and other have been regularly harassed by authorities and rounded up in mass detentions. Police announced on December 4 they had arrested a further 94 people as part of a “strike hard” campaign started in November that has so far netted an extra 382 in custody.

Xinjiang Information Office Director General Hou Hanmin said that about 825 people were arrested between the start of the riots and the end of August.

“The trials have been open to family and the media and have been according to the law,” Ms Hou told The Australian.

But journalists in Urumqi who spoke on condition on anonymity said that they had been given less than a day’s notice of the trials and warned by the government not to write detailed reports or conduct their own investigations into the murders or the accused.

Yet almost six months since the violence, it remains unclear how quickly the trials of the remaining detainees will progress through China’s opaque legal system.

The fresh trials are set to begin only days after Cambodia deported 20 Uighur asylum-seekers to China as the emerging economic superpower unveiled $1 billion in development aid to the impoverished south-east Asian nation. China has denied the money is linked to the return of the Uighurs.