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UIGHUR

Sweden extends sentence for Uighur spy

A Uighur previously convicted of passing information to China about other members of Sweden’s Uighur community had his sentence prolonged by a Swedish appeals court Friday.

Published: 18 September 2010 09:21 CEST

Swedish citizen Babur Maihesuti, who came to Sweden in 1997 as a political refugee, was originally convicted in March and sentenced to 16 months in prison.

On Friday, his sentence was extended to one year and 10 months in prison for illegal espionage activities, according to documents of the Svea Court of Appeal in Stockholm.

The court said its ruling came after the prosecutor in the case had requested the sentence handed to Maihesuti by the lower court be extended.

Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Central Asian people residing in northwest China’s Xinjiang region, have accused Beijing of decades of religious, cultural and political oppression.

The Stockholm district court found in March that Maihesuti had from January 2008 to June 2009 collected personal information about exiled Uighurs, including details on their health, travel and political involvement, and passed it on to Beijing.

The court ruled that the espionage was especially serious since Maihesuti had infiltrated the World Uighur Congress and the information passed on “could cause significant damage to Uighurs in and outside China.”

The appeals court said Friday it agreed with the lower court’s judgment but wanted the sentence to be extended.

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CHINA

Germany halts deportation of Chinese Muslims over human rights concerns

Germany said Thursday it would refrain from deporting members of China's mostly Muslim Uighur minority over human rights concerns, after admitting a Uighur man was sent back by mistake in April.

Published: 24 August 2018 10:56 CEST
Germany halts deportation of Chinese Muslims over human rights concerns
Photo: DPA

In a case that made waves earlier this month, German authorities acknowledged that the 22-year-old asylum seeker, who was not named, was deported to China by the German state of Bavaria due to an administrative error.

The Uighur's lawyer Leo Borgmann has said he has had “no sign of life” from his client since the expulsion and fears that he has been “detained” by Chinese authorities.

After an outcry by human rights groups and opposition politicians, the interior ministry said in a written response to a query by  Greens MP Margarete Bause, that the practice had been halted.

“Until further notice, we will desist from repatriating Uigurs and their families,” the ministry said.

It cited “recent” guidance by Germany's Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) and the foreign ministry on the situation in China in its decision not to send Uighurs back.

“The highly critical situation in terms of human rights, which are stressed in the BAMF report, has been known to German authorities for months,” Bause told AFP, citing a “danger to life and limb” for Uighurs in China.

“The fact that the Uighur was expelled by the Bavarian authorities in the dead of night is scandalous.”

Bause called on the German government to do “everything in its power” to secure the return of the deported man from China.

Many of the Uighur minority say they face cultural and religious repression in China.

Members of the Uighur diaspora say relatives have been arrested for seemingly innocuous acts such as sending Ramadan greetings to friends or downloading popular music.

Chinese authorities are also believed to have detained hundreds of thousands of Muslims in a secretive network of extra-judicial political re-education centres, where inmates are given language and ideological training and forced to participate in military-style drills.

The German foreign ministry recently updated its travel advisory for China's far-west Xinjiang region.

“In Xinjiang there have for months been rising numbers of arrests and passports revoked,” it said.

“Those affected are, in particular, people of Uighur origin.”

China has pointed to a series of attacks in Xinjiang by suspected Islamist radicals in recent years as justification for a draconian clampdown in a region with a long history of tensions with Beijing.

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