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China executes ethnic Muslim for trying to 'split the homeland'
 China has executed an alleged Muslim separatist with a bullet through the heart, prompting condemnation from Semed was accused of being a founding member of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which Beijing and Washington have designated as a terrorist organisation. He served two jail sentences in connection with a 1990 uprising in Baren, which left 22 dead. In 1997, he fled to Pakistan, but was deported in 2003. Amnesty warned in a report last year that Semed's confession may have been extracted under torture. The US-based Human Rights Watch said the trial was flawed. "The death penalty was widely disproportionate to the alleged crimes," said Nicholas Bequelin, the group's China researcher. "We don't think there was sufficient evidence to condemn him." The most prominent exile from Xinjiang, Rebiya Kadeer, said the death penalty was another case of injustice. "His trial, like most Uighur political prisoners' trials, was not fair," said Kadeer, who is president of the Uighur American Association. Overseas Uighur and human rights groups accused the Chinese government of exaggerating the threat of violence to crackdown on movements committed to democracy and freedom of religion. Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs account for 8 million of the 19 million people in Xinjiang.
Posted by: Fred & Seafarious 2007-02-10 |
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| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=180001 |