China has received some diplomatic warnings in the past few months not to increase the scale and intensity of its crackdown on Uighur “separatists,” because doing so would make the entire Uighur people hostile, and it would be impossible to imprison them all.
In accounts heard from the separatists, before their heroes were imprisoned, many of them had made a courageous pronouncement: “My absence is equal to the disappearance of a single stone of the Tengri Tagh mountain [Tianshan, 天山], and my people, the Tengri Tagh, will live forever.”
However, in the last four years, China has cast doubt on
English By Asim Kashgarian Share on Facebook Print this page WASHINGTON - U.S. officials say China is targeting relatives of some Uighur activists with terrorism charges, while intimidating others who raise awareness about the plight of the Muslim minority in the Xinjiang region.
Citing a recent Chinese official announcement about sentencing Gulshan Abbas, sister of Uighur-American activist Rushan Abbas, to 20 years in prison on terrorism charges in Xinjiang, Nury Turkel, a commissioner at the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), said the Chinese government frequently uses relatives of Uighurs abroad as hostages to intimidate and silence activists.