The Long Arm of China

Why were members of China’s Uighur minority group recently deported from Cambodia?

On Saturday night under cover of darkness, a special Chinese plane departed from the military section of the Phnom Penh airport carrying 20 Uighur asylum seekers. For this group of men, women and children, this was the end of their failed effort to seek freedom from the Chinese regime.

Cambodia’s decision to deport the asylum seekers, who were in the process of applying for refugee status at the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, is a reminder that Beijing’s oppression of the Uighurs does not stop at China’s borders. The Uighurs are a predominantly Turkic, Muslim people who live in East Turkestan (also knows as the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region). For decades they have been the victims of systemic human-rights abuses at the hands of the Chinese government.

Fearing further persecution, these 20 Uighurs had fled to Cambodia in November with the assistance of Christian aid groups. The Cambodian Foreign Affairs Ministry initially declared it would cooperate with the UNHCR regarding the asylum interview process, but, in an about-face with tragic consequences, two days later issued a proclamation of “illegal entry” by the 20 Uighurs. UNHCR officials had yet to finish reviewing their cases when the Uighurs were handcuffed and forcefully taken from UNHCR protection by Cambodian authorities. China’s track record of mistreating repatriated Uighur refugees leads us to fear that they can expect even worse on Chinese soil.

A riot policeman holds back a crowd in Urumqi during protests on July 7, 2009.

There’s little hope these deportees will receive fair trial: Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesmen have already declared them to be criminals without offering any evidence to back up their claims (and despite the fact two of the Uighurs are children). China’s insistence on the guilt of these Uighurs in the absence of proof is consistent with its treatment of other Uighurs detained after the July unrest in Urumchi, whom Chinese officials declared to be criminals prior to the start of any criminal trials.

Beijing leaned hard on Phnom Penh to secure the deportation of these Uighurs, because once free they would no doubt contradict the official version of the events of July 5, when security forces cracked down violently on Uighur protestors and unrest spread through the city of Urumqi. The government has portrayed the unrest solely as a criminal act carried out by a small group of violent Uighurs, ignoring the security forces’ killings of Uighur protestors, the mass arbitrary detentions of Uighurs and the systemic human-rights issues that led Uighurs to engage in a peaceful protest on the afternoon of July 5. At least two of the recently deported Uighurs reported having witnessed security forces beating and killing Uighur protestors on July 5.

The Cambodian government must be held accountable for its act of complicity with the Chinese government. Cambodia is a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention, but turned a deaf ear to the entreaties of the U.S. and other democratic countries on behalf of these Uighur asylum seekers. Phnom Penh’s decision was no doubt influenced by enormous Chinese pressure, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and a reported $1 billion in foreign direct investment. Prime Minister Hun Sen has labeled China as Cambodia’s “most trustworthy friend,” and Cambodian officials were loathe to disappoint Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping on the eve of his Dec. 20 visit to Phnom Penh.

The deportation of the Uighurs in Cambodia is a sign of China’s increasing ability to resist international pressure regarding its human-rights violations. As China’s economic influence grows throughout Asia and the world, so too does its diplomatic clout. Economies in Central, South and Southeast Asia are increasingly dependent on cooperation with China, as the Chinese market seeks to feed its ravenous need for the natural resources available in these nations. Governments of countries neighboring China are reluctant to take any action that would displease Chinese authorities, leaving Uighurs nowhere to flee.

The United States and other nations committed to the preservation of human rights must call upon China to provide the 20 repatriated Uighurs with due process of law and must continue to express concern about their situation despite China’s protestations over what it terms “interference in its domestic affairs.” During my time in a Chinese prison, my jailers often told me the world did not care about me or the Uighurs’ struggle for freedom, but my treatment did improve when officials from the U.S. and other democratic countries campaigned for my release. If there is to be any hope for the safety and well-being of these Uighur asylum seekers, it is vital that world powers continue to press China regarding their welfare.

Ms. Kadeer is the president of the World Uighur Congress and the Uighur American Association.

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Full article and photo: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704376704574607001504303582.html

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Torture Survivors in Cambodia to Testify at Khmer Rouge Trial

Looking across the courtroom where he is on trial for crimes against humanity, the chief Khmer Rouge torturer cannot avoid seeing an artist and mechanic who sit together side by side, watching him but mostly avoiding his gaze.

One short and forceful, his feet dangling just above the floor, the other melancholy and drooping a bit, the men are rare survivors of the torture house he commanded, Tuol Sleng, where at least 14,000 people were sent to their deaths three decades ago.

In the weeks ahead, the two survivors will take the stand to testify against their torturer, Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, and both have terrible stories to tell about a place of horror from which almost no one emerged alive.

Bou Meng, 68, the short one, survived because he was a painter and was singled out from a row of shackled prisoners to produce portraits of the Khmer Rouge chief, Pol Pot.

Bou Meng, a survivor of Tuol Sleng prison under the Khmer Rouge, revisits the prison, which is now a museum of genocide.

The other, Chum Mey, 78, was a mechanic and was spared because the torturers needed him to repair machines including the typewriters used to record the confessions — very often false — that they extracted from prisoners like himself.

Chum Mey, along with fellow prisoner Bou Meng, will testify against their torturer, Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, the first of five arrested Khmer Rouge figures to go on trial in a U.N.-backed tribunal.

Mr. Bou Meng and Mr. Chum Mey are living exhibits from the Khmer Rouge years — tangible evidence like the skulls that have been preserved at some former killing fields, or like hundreds of portraits of their fellow prisoners that are displayed on the walls of Tuol Sleng.

The photographs were taken at the moment detainees were delivered to the prison, before they were stripped and fettered and tortured and sent to a killing field.

Those killed at Tuol Sleng are among 1.7 million people who died during the Communist Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979 from starvation, disease and overwork as well as from torture and execution.

Duch, now 66, is the first of five arrested Khmer Rouge figures to go on trial in the U.N.-backed tribunal.

He is accused of ordering the beatings, whippings, electric shocks and removal of toenails that Mr. Bou Meng and Mr. Chum Mey describe — indeed he has admitted in the courtroom to ordering the beating of Mr. Chum Mey.

Both men endured torture that continued for days, and Mr. Chum Mey said, “At that time I wished I could die rather than survive.”

But both men did survive, and today they are describing scenes that none of their fellow prisoners lived to recount.

“Every night I looked out at the moon,” Mr. Bou Meng recalled. “I heard people crying and sighing around the building. I heard people calling out, ‘Mother help me, mother help me!”’

It was at night that prisoners were trucked out to a killing field, and every night, he said, he feared that his moment had come. “But by midnight or 1 a.m. I realized that I would live another day.”

Though many Cambodians have tried to bury their traumatic memories, Mr. Bou Meng and Mr. Chum Mey have continued to return to the scene of their imprisonment and torture, as if their souls remain trapped there together with the souls of the dead.

During the first few years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Mr. Bou Meng returned to work in an office at Tuol Sleng, which was converted into a museum of genocide. Now he uses it as a convenient rest stop, spending the night there on a cot when he visits the capital, Phnom Penh, from the countryside, where he paints Buddhist murals in temples.

Mr. Chum Mey, retired now from his work as a mechanic, spends much of his time wandering among the portraits, telling and retelling his story to tourists and their guides, as if one of the victims on the walls had come to life.

An eager and passionate storyteller, he will show a visitor how he was shoved, blindfolded, up the stairs during 12 days of torture, and he will drop to the floor inside a small brick cubicle where he was held in chains.

“As you can see, this was my condition,” he said recently as he sat on the hard concrete floor holding up a metal ammunition box that was used as a toilet. “It upsets me to see Duch sitting in the courtroom talking with his lawyers as if he were a guest of the court.”

Apart from their survival, both men’s stories are similar to those of many Tuol Sleng prisoners — country people who joined the Communist revolution during the Indochina war to liberate their nation from what they saw as foreign domination.

They were swept up in Khmer Rouge purges, like many others in Tuol Sleng, and they were tortured until they admitted being members of the C.I.A. or K.G.B., organizations they had barely heard of.

Both men lost their wives and children in the Khmer Rouge years, and although both have rebuilt their families, the past still holds them in its grip.

Mr. Bou Meng does not wander like his friend among the Tuol Sleng pictures, but he does keep one in his wallet — a snapshot-sized reproduction of the portrait of his wife, Ma Yoeun, who was arrested together with him but did not survive.

The picture shows a small woman, dressed in black like the others, looking forlorn and lost, her hair tousled — a record of the last time her husband saw her alive.

“Sometimes when I sit at home I look at the picture and everything seems fresh,” he said. “I think of the suffering she endured, and I wonder how long she stayed alive.”

The photograph reminds him of those most terrible moments of his life, but also of the happiest.

“We were still young, a boy and a girl together,” he said. “It’s my best memory. It was the day of our honeymoon. We slept together. It was a perfect day.”

Mr. Bou Meng has since remarried twice, but he remains shackled to his memories.

“I know I should forget her,” he said, “but I can’t.”

She visits him, he said, in visions that are something more than dreams, looking just as she did at that final moment — still 28 years old, leaving Mr. Bou Meng to live on and grow old without her.

Sometimes she appears together with the spirits of others who were killed, he said. They stand together, a crowd of ghosts in black, and she tells him, “Only you, Bou Meng, can find justice for us.”

Mr. Bou Meng said he hoped that the trial would cauterize his wounds, that testifying against Duch and seeing him convicted would free him from the restless ghosts and let him live what is left of his life in peace.

“I don’t want to be a victim,” Mr. Bou Meng said. “I want to be like everybody else, a normal person.”

But he said he knows that this may be asking too much of life.

“Maybe not completely normal,” he said. “But at least 50 percent.”

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Full article and photos: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/world/asia/14cambo.html?ref=global-home

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See also:

Row threatens Khmer Rouge trials

http://abluteau.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/row-threatens-khmer-rouge-trials/

Disorder in the Court

http://abluteau.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/disorder-in-the-court/

Court hears Khmer Rouge testimony

http://abluteau.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/court-hears-khmer-rouge-testimony/

Masters of Cambodia’s killing fields face justice at last

http://abluteau.wordpress.com/2009/02/14/masters-of-cambodias-killing-fields-face-justice-at-last/

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