Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia freed 11 ethnic Uighur Muslims who fled to the Southeast Asian nation after a Thai jailbreak last year because they did nothing wrong there, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said on Monday.
Reuters, citing the men’s lawyer, reported last week that Malaysia had released the 11 from detention and sent them to Turkey, disregarding China’s request to hand them to Beijing.
“They have done nothing wrong in this country, so they are released,” Mahathir said in brief comments to reporters in parliament, the first from the Malaysian government since their release.
Malaysia‘s move was likely to strain ties with China, which have already been tested since Mahathir won a stunning election victory in May and cancelled more than $20 billion worth of projects awarded to Chinese companies.
China, which had asked for their extradition, said on Friday that it “resolutely” opposed Malaysia‘s decision to release the 11 Uighurs and send them to Turkey.
Prosecutors in Muslim-majority Malaysia dropped charges against the Uighurs on humanitarian grounds, their lawyer said.
The men were detained and charged with illegally entering Malaysia after November’s daring prison break, during which they punched holes in a prison wall and used blankets as ladders.
Reuters reported in February that Malaysia was under great pressure from China to send the men there. Some Western missions sought to dissuade Kuala Lumpur from sending them to China, which has been accused of persecuting Uighurs.
The persecuted Uighur community
China has been accused of persecuting members of the Uighur community, clamping down on their religion as well as culture in Xinjiang (East Turkestan). According to Al Jazeera, this is part of the ethnocentric ideology of the Chinese Communist Party to ensure the dominance of the Han community.
China has categorically denied all charges and has conversely charged the region with festering separatist movements.
There have been growing international concerns about the disappearance of multiple Uighur people. A report released by The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said that some one million Uighurs have been detained into “counterterrorism” centres in China and that two million have been forced into “re-education camps for political and cultural indoctrination,” according to Al Jazeera. BBC reported, earlier this week, that China had written ‘vocational training centres’ for Uighur Muslims into law.
A report published by Human Rights Watch, highlights the psychological torture that the Uighur detainees are forced to endure. According to the report, “Inside political education camps, detainees are forced to learn Mandarin Chinese, sing praises of the Chinese Communist Party, and memorise rules applicable primarily to Turkic Muslims. Those outside the camps are required to attend weekly, or even daily, Chinese flag-raising ceremonies, political indoctrination meetings, and at times Mandarin classes.”
Over the years, hundreds, possibly thousands, of Uighurs have escaped the unrest by travelling clandestinely via Southeast Asia to Turkey.
(with agency inputs)