UN High Commissioner for Human Rights must ascertain fate of 376 condemned prisoners

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay, must find out what has happened to the 376 Uighurs convicted of "crimes against the national security" of China in 2010. The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) made this demand on Tuesday. Previously the official news organ of the Communist party, "People's Daily," had reported on the high number of "state protection" trials, quoting a judge on the highest court in the Xinjiang region. "Human rights activists knew about only a fraction of these trials, because they are held in secret," said Ulrich Delius of the STP's Asia section. "In most cases, not even the immediate family members are informed of the trials, nor of the draconian sentences."

"Often we only hear of the fate of the disappeared months later, when other prisoners are released," reported Delius. For example it was not known until 31 December 2010 that the 19-year-old Uighur Pezilet Ekber had been condemned to death in April 2010. A fellow prisoner heard about the sentence and passed along the information in a letter. The execution of the student was deferred for two years. On Christmas Eve 2010 it became known that the journalist Memetjan Abdulla had been sentenced eight months earlier to life imprisonment. The 33-year-old reporter from the national broadcasting service was accused of translating a call to protest and publishing it on the Internet.

"Everything points to that fact that this trial was not carried out under the rule of law," criticized Delius. Dedicated Chinese attorneys are routinely intimidated to discourage them from representing Uighurs. If an attorney ignores the threats and carries on with the defense, they may be prevented from accessing case files or not given sufficient time to prepare for the trial.

Since the riots in July 2009 during which at least 200 Han Chinese and Uighurs died, China's justice system has been working non-stop to blame Uighurs. "Most of the defendants would go unpunished in Europe, since the acts of which they stand accused are not crimes here," stated Delius. "But in Xinjiang, even giving journalists information about a demonstration is enough to put you behind bars for years. This has nothing to do with the global war on terror. This is arbitrary justice, intended solely to silence the critics in their own country."