Exiled Uighurs oppose Olympic torch legs in disputed China region

Posted : Mon, 16 Jun 2008 07:28:00 GMT

Author : DPA

Beijing - Exiled Uighurs stepped up their opposition to Olympic torch relay legs through China's far west on Monday, one day before the flame is scheduled to be paraded in the vast Central Asian region of Xinjiang. "Chinese authorities are trying to use this event to conceal the widespread discontentment of Uighurs," Dilxat Rexit, the Munich-based spokesperson for the World Uighur Congress, said a statement on the torch relay.

Uighur Muslims walk across People's Square with Olympic decorations in Kashgar

Dilxat Rexit said China wanted to show a "false atmosphere of harmonious society" and hide "systematic violations of human rights in East Turkestan", using the name still given to Xinjiang by Uighurs seeking an inpedendent state there.

He said Chinese authorities had "closely monitored all activities of Uighurs" in an apparent bid to prevent any protests during the three days of torch relay legs in Xinjiang, which start in the regional capital, Urumqi, on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the Olympic flame will be paraded through Kashgar, an ethnically divided city more than 3,000 kilometres from Beijing along the ancient Silk Road.

The dates of the relay in Xinjiang were brought forward one week, and the changes were only announced on Sunday.

Dilxat Rexit said the World Uyghur Congress still planned hold a protest rally in Brussels on June 25, the original start of the Xinjiang relay.

He said the sudden change of date appeared to be "a deliberate and tactical decision by Chinese authorities to disrupt the symbolic effect of the worldwide protest of Uighurs".

The group will appeal to the European Council to put pressure on the Chinese government to "end its repressive treatment of Uighurs" and will urge EU leaders to boycott the opening of the Beijing Olympics "unless China makes any substantial effort to improve its human rights record".

It plans a second rally on June 26 outside the International Olympic Committee headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, Dilxat Rexit said.

The torch relay is scheduled to move to China's Tibet region after legs in two other cities in Xinjiang on Thursday, although doubts remain about the exact schedule in Tibet.

A spokesperson for the Beijing Olympic organizers (BOCOG) on Monday said she was "unclear" about the arrangements for Tibet, while another BOCOG official last week said the official schedule for Tibet would be announced two or three days before the event.

The BOCOG website still listed a relay leg on Thursday in the Shannan district, close to the Tibet regional capital of Lhasa, followed by two days in Lhasa.

Exiled Tibetan groups and their supporters accuse the Chinese government of taking the Olympic torch to Tibet, including a separate leg last month to the summit of Mount Everest, to reaffirm its sovereignty over the region.

Xinjiang borders Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. More than 60 per cent of its 20 million people are from the Uighur, Kazakh, Kirgiz, Hui, Mongol and other ethnic minorities, according to government statistics.

Some 7.5 million Uighurs, most of whom are Muslims, form the largest minority in Xinjiang.

Millions of ethnically Chinese people have migrated to the region since it came under Communist Party control in 1949.