Authorities have rounded up some 100 ethnic minority Uyghurs in China’s southwestern province of Yunnan in recent weeks amid a hunt for suspects fleeing to the Lao border following a deadly clash, according to local sources and police.
The arrests came after authorities in the restive northwestern Xinjiang region—home to most of China’s 10 million mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uyghurs—dispatched police hundreds of miles south to Yunnan to pursue seven wanted men from Xinjiang's violence-hit Hanerik township.
At least 30 Uyghurs were apprehended at the town of Mohan on the border with Laos in Yunnan’s Mengla county in late September, and scores of others were detained around the province in recent weeks, a Uyghur merchant in the province told RFA’s Uyghur Service.
“So far around 100 Uyghurs have been detained in all of Yunnan,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“They have been detained on suspicion of trying to escape across the border or of helping suspects named on the wanted list.”
The merchant, who witnessed a group of Uyghurs arrested by Yunnan police in Mohan being transferred to Xinjiang police, said eight were captured in the town on Sept. 24 and 22 were arrested there earlier in the month.
Some of the 100 held were in Yunnan because they were trying to escape across the border into Laos without passports, but most were living there and working at restaurants or as street vendors, he said.
“Women and children were among the detainees,” he said.
Hanerik hunt
Xinjiang police contacted by RFA in Hotan and the Yunnan capital Kunming confirmed forces sent to the province had detained Uyghurs in a search for suspects wanted in connection with the Hanerik incident in Xinjiang's Hotan prefecture in June. But they refused to say how many were held.
On June 28, amid a spate of violent incidents in Xinjiang this spring and early summer, police in Hanerik fired on hundreds of Uyghurs protesting the arrest of a young religious leader and the closure of a mosque.
Chinese officials and media have acknowledged the incident, saying 15 people may have been killed and 50 others injured.
Exile Uyghur rights groups have said the incident was the result of an alleged “terror” raid and that police responded with a harsh crackdown.
Chinese authorities blame outbreaks of violence in the region on Uyghur "terrorists," but rights groups and experts say Beijing exaggerates the terrorism threat to take the heat off domestic policies that cause unrest or to justify the authorities' use of force against the Uyghur minority.
Wanted men
According to the merchant, police have distributed a poster of seven men wanted as suspects in the Hanerik violence among the Uyghur community in Yunnan.
