The Forgotten Prisoners From Afghanistan
November 22, 2008

David Hicks is shortly to be freed. But what about all the other prisoners from the Afghanistan conflict still held in detention? I have been reading about one bizarre case.

US journalist Ron Suskind in his new book The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism (Sydney: Simon & Schuster) talks about the Chinese prisoners on Guantanamo. (http://www.ronsuskind.com/thewayoftheworld/).

Western China (known by some as East Turkestan) is the main Chinese location of Muslims: the Uighurs. Some Uighurs are resisting what they see as Han Chinese imperialism (this is a separate struggle from that of the Tibetans, to the south, who are also fighting the Han Chinese).

Before the “9/11” (September 11 2001) terrorist attacks on the US, a group of Uighurs had gone over the border into Afghanistan to escape Chinese persecution. They were fleeing the Chinese rather than seeking to assist the Taliban. They were caught by bounty hunters looking for supporters of Osama bin Laden. They were handed over (no doubt for a fee) to US authorities.

According to Suskind, most were deemed not to be enemy combatants in late 2003. But they remained incarcerated for years afterwards, sometimes held in shackles.

In 2006, just before their habeas petition was to be heard in a US court, five Uighurs were suddenly shipped off to refugee camps in Albania – the only country that would dare take them in. Albania is a westernized country with an Islamic population.

17 Uighurs remain in detention.

The US is in a dilemma. The Uighurs are not terrorists and so should be set free. But they cannot be sent back to China because they will be punished. US and international law both prohibit sending people back to a known place of torture or execution.

No other country wants to take them in as asylum seekers because that would annoy China. Given the increasing wealth and influence of China, no country wants to offend it and risk repercussions. (Most governments do not even recognize “East Turkestan” as a region on the map of China).

The Bush Administration does not know what to do about the detainees – and so it will presumably just pass this problem on to the new Obama Administration on January 20.

Meanwhile the Uighurs have lost a large slice of their life because they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.