About those Chinese Muslim detainees…
When Chinese President Hu Jintao comes to Washington this week, there will be plenty of topics on the agenda: Iran, energy, Taiwan, and trade policy. Will those ethnic Uighurs being held at Guantanamo come up in conversation? More than four years after nearly two dozen Uighurs from the western Chinese province of Xinjiang were mistakenly picked up ...
When Chinese President Hu Jintao comes to Washington this week, there will be plenty of topics on the agenda: Iran, energy, Taiwan, and trade policy.
When Chinese President Hu Jintao comes to Washington this week, there will be plenty of topics on the agenda: Iran, energy, Taiwan, and trade policy.
Will those ethnic Uighurs being held at Guantanamo come up in conversation? More than four years after nearly two dozen Uighurs from the western Chinese province of Xinjiang were mistakenly picked up in Afghanistan and Pakistan — and later deemed to pose no threat to the United States — the administration (rightly) refuses to hand them over to China because, according to the Associated Press, "they likely will be tortured or killed" there for their efforts to fight religious persecution in China (Uighurs are largely Muslim). Washington is trying to find a country to provide the Uighurs refuge, but after nearly two dozen attempts, no one will accept them for fear of offending the Chinese.
Josh Kurlantzick, way back in 2004, reviewed a few books on Chinese repression in Xinjiang and makes the astute observation that China's unquenchable energy thirst may provide important leverage in tempering China's policies in the petroleum-rich region. "China's own weaknesses — its dependence on foreign oil and its need to keep opening its economy," Kurlantzick wrote, may be used by the United States and particularly oil-producing Muslim-majority countries to promote better treatment. Surely a long shot, but worth a moment while Hu is at the White House.
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