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A federal appeals court has temporarily blocked a judge's decision to immediately free 17 Chinese Muslims at Guantanamo Bay into the U.S. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued the emergency stay Wednesday at the request of the Bush administration so that government lawyers can prepare an appeal. It comes after U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina (ur-BEE'-nuh) on Tuesday ordered the government to free the detainees by Friday. Urbina said it would be wrong for the Bush administration to continue holding the detainees, known as Uighurs (pronounced WEE'gurz), since they are no longer considered enemy combatants....

The US has reacted angrily after a judge ordered that 17 Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay should be released into the United States. District Judge Ricardo Urbina said the US could not hold the 17 as they were no longer considered enemy combatants. The Uighurs (WEE'gurz) were cleared for release in 2004 but the US says they may face persecution if returned to China. The White House said the ruling could set a precedent that would allow "sworn enemies" to seek US entry. The government says the 17 also pose a security risk if released into the US. Lawyers...

Managing the restive Turkic people is developing into one of China's biggest challenges. Like the Tibetans, the Uighurs have been unwilling to buy into the government's plan: greater economic prosperity instead of greater religious freedom or autonomy. Several local governments have posted lists of warnings on their Web sites, including a detailed one by the township of Yingmaili in Xayar county, near Kuqa. Government employees, teachers and students can't fast during Ramadan. Mosques can't host out-of-town visitors or play video and sound recordings. Proselytizing in public is prohibited. Surveillance of mosques must be increased. Restaurants must stay open during the...

Uighurs threatened with family liability by security forces – children too are being arrested Göttingen, 27. August 2008 A new wave of arrests is rolling against the Moslem Uighurs in the north-west of China according to information received by the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV). Family liability is the order of the day and even children are being arrested. "About 150 children have been held for days in the Ba Jia Hu prison in the capital of the Autonomous region of Xinjiang because they took part in instruction on Islam”, reported the GfbV Asia expert, Ulrich Delius, on Wednesday in...

Suspected terrorist attack kills two in China's Xinjiang province Two policemen have been killed and several wounded in the latest attack in China's Xinjiang province, reports say. By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai Last Updated: 8:26PM BST 28 Aug 2008 The fourth attack in less than two months came in a village in Jiashi County, where reports said "fierce gunfire" had been exchanged. However, details of the attack remain unclear, and no Chinese state media has reported it. An official at the Public Security Bureau said eight Uighurs, local ethnic Muslims, were involved and that one man had been captured.

For Gansu’s Uighurs, Beijing’s Olympics are a world away By Anna Bodner DPA, LANZHOU, CHINA Friday, Aug 22, 2008, Page 9 Olympic fever that has swept most of China seems to have limited influence in Lanzhou, considered the geometrical center of China. For many, the 3 million inhabitant city capital of Gansu Province is still a frontier town, and while the Games’ influence is hard to miss in the city center with flags on mass display in shops and cars, hardly a trace of the Olympics can be found in the city’s Muslim quarters, where minarets tower over the roofs....

China's tough Xinjiang policy backfires By Antoaneta Bezlova BEIJING - China's success in eliminating clusters of Muslim insurgencies in the western province of Xinjiang may have pushed an alleged separatist movement across the border into Pakistan and Afghanistan, exposing it to greater influences by jihadi groups in those countries. With the Beijing Summer Olympic Games well underway, the Muslim majority province of Xinjiang has seen a spate of deadly attacks on government establishments and security personnel. Three violent incidents over the past 10 days have been interspersed with the release of two videos threatening the Olympics. In the latest assault,...

Muslim terrorists and their apologists insist that violent jihad is a justifiable reaction to their targets’ support of Israel. Since China is most definitely not an ally of the “Zionist entity,” how will Islamist apologists spin the jihadist attacks that have marred the Beijing Olympics? Uighur Islamic separatists killed eight people during a rash of suicide bombings on August 9, in the latest in a series of brazen terrorist attacks inside the communist police state. Terrorists targeted a dozen government offices with home-made explosives, just one day after the Turkistan Islamic Party released a video threatening to attack public transportation...

Suicide pipe bombers made a dozen attacks on police stations, government offices and businesses yesterday as Muslim separatists in the far northwest of China stepped up their Olympics bombing campaign. At least 11 people died in the raids, which took place before dawn in Kuqa, an oasis city on the northern edge of the Taklimakan desert in the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang. Ten of the dead were reported to be attackers, three of whom appear to have blown themselves up to avoid capture. It was an unprecedented event in China, which has no history of suicide bombing, and a...

/begin my translation Xinjiang Terrorists are Predominantly Women in 20's Terrorists who were behind a series of Aug. 10 bombings in Kuqa county of Xinjiang, China, are predominantly women in 20's. Quoting sources, Ta Kung Pao(大公報) in Hong Kong reported that four suspects, three women and a man, were pursued by police and hit the dead end, at which they killed themselves by setting off bombs they carried. Around 2:30 am, Aug.10, Uyghur terrorists armed with guns, and home-made bombs made a series of attacks on police station, government offices, and markets, moving as a group. A doctor at a...

Has China got a terrorist problem? The Uighur attack in the northwest was shocking but not a precursor to a bigger outrage Rosemary Righter The Olympics will open on Friday inside a triple ring of steel. Anti-terrorism precautions have been an unavoidable feature of the Games since the PLO massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972, but China has taken things to extremes. It has mobilised 110,000 police and other security forces in Beijing itself, plus 1.4 million security “volunteers” with Red Guard-style armbands and no fewer than 300,000 spy cameras. The security bill for Beijing alone exceeds £3...

BEIJING (Reuters) - A police station in China's restive Xinjiang region was attacked on Monday morning, four days before the Beijing Olympics begin, killing 16 officers and wounding 12, state media reported. "Rioters drove two vehicles to break into the border patrol armed police division" near Kashgar and threw two grenades, Xinhua reported. The brief report did not describe the attackers. But the Xinjiang region in the far northwest has been at the heart of China's security fears leading up the Olympics, which begin in four days. Xinjiang is home to a large Uighur Muslim population, many of them discontent...

BEIJING: Chinese authorities have replaced top police and security officials in the Muslim dominated Xinjiang province, which is the hotbed of separatism and political violence. They have also closed down 41 "illegal" places of worship. These places of worship were used as training ground for conducting a "holy war", Chen Zhuangwei Chen, the police chief of Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang province, said.

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US lawmakers on Friday "strongly condemned" what they called Beijing's harsh pre-Olympic crackdown in China's Muslim-populated far northwest Xinjiang region. The bipartisan leadership of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus in a statement cited "credible" reports about a July 9 conviction in a closed trial of 15 minority Muslim Uighurs on terrorism charges that led to "the immediate execution of two" of them. Three others were given suspended death sentences and the remaining 10 received life imprisonment, it said. These are "abuses of due process and rule of law," said caucus co-chairmen Democrat Jim McGovern and Republican Frank...

BEIJING: Chinese authorities have replaced top police and security officials in the Muslim-dominated Xinjiang province, which is the hotbed of separatism and political violence. They have also closed down 41 "illegal" places of worship.These places of worship were used as training ground for conducting a "holy war", Chen Zhuangwei Chen, the police chief of Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang province, said. Xinjiang, which borders central Asia and Pakistan, has been the scene of a pro-independence movement by a section of the eight million Uighurs living there for a long time. The authorities also announced they have detained 82 "suspected terrorists"...

(BEIJING) — China said Thursday that it had uncovered a plot by members of a Muslim minority group to sabotage the Beijing Summer Olympics with suicide bombings and kidnappings of foreign visitors. Chinese officials offered no evidence to back up the allegations, the latest in a series of dramatic terrorism charges against ethnic minorities in the run-up to the Summer Games. China says violent separatists are behind recent unrest in Muslim and Tibetan areas that has drawn increased attention to China's treatment of minority groups. Pro-Tibetan protesters have also outraged China by disrupting sections of the global Olympic torch relay....

Muslim extremists attempt uprising in western China: government 57 minutes ago China has accused Muslim extremists in the nation's northwest of trying to start a rebellion, an incident that an exile group said Wednesday was mainly a women's protest against Chinese rule. According to a statement from the Khotan government in the Uighur Muslim dominated Xinjiang region, extremist forces tried to incite an uprising in a local marketplace on March 23. "A small number of elements... tried to incite splittism, create disturbances in the market place and even trick the masses into an uprising," the statement said. The statement said...

some photos abt the biggest muslim city in china: Urumchi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China.

Muslims, Han Chinese clash in north China - group 04 Sep 2007 04:25:00 GMT Source: Reuters Alert Me | Print | Email this article | RSS [-] Text [+] BEIJING, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Thousands of Han Chinese and members of the Muslim Hui ethnic minority group clashed over a dispute in north China, resulting in one death, a Hong Kong human rights group said on Tuesday. Relations between the Han, who make up more than 90 percent of China's 1.3 billion population, and the 10-million-strong Hui Muslims have long been sensitive. Huis complain about offences to their religion and...

The Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday from two Chinese Muslims who were mistakenly captured as enemy combatants more than four years ago and are still being held at the U.S. prison in Cuba. Lawyers for the two contend they should be released, something the Bush administration opposes, unless they can go to a country other than the United States. The U.S. government has been unable to find a country willing to accept the two men, along with other Uighurs. They cannot be returned to China because they likely will be tortured or killed. President Bush meets with Chinese President...

WASHINGTON - A federal judge is considering ordering the release of two Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay, which would be an unprecedented step in the legal battles surrounding the Bush administration's treatment of detainees. U.S. District Judge James Robertson raised the possibility, eight months after the U.S. military found the two men were not enemy combatants. A Justice Department lawyer told the judge at a hearing this week that the Bush administration is still trying to find a country that will take the ethnic Uighurs, who say they fear torture or death if they are returned to China. The...

A group of 15 Chinese Muslims, or Uighur, being held in the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are still being kept at the prison, although they had been cleared for release nearly two years ago. The Washington Post reports that the US does not know what to do with the prisoners. Experts believe that if they were sent to China, they could face torture or execution. The US has asked about 20 countries, including Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey to give them asylum. Johanna Suurpää, head of the human rights policy unit of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs,...

Aug. 24, 2005, 9:19AM 15 Chinese detainees still in limbo at GitmoBy ROBIN WRIGHT Washington Post WASHINGTON - In late 2003, the Pentagon quietly decided that 15 Chinese Muslims detained at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be released. Five were people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, some of them picked up by Pakistani bounty hunters for U.S. payoffs. The other 10 were deemed low-risk detainees whose enemy was China's communist government ?not the United States. More than 20 months later, the 15 still languish at Guantanamo Bay, imprisoned and sometimes shackled, with...

China has been accused by two US-based human rights groups of conducting a "crushing campaign of religious repression" against Muslim Uighurs. It is being done in the name of anti-separatism and counter-terrorism, says a joint report by Human Rights Watch and Human Rights in China. It is said to be taking place in the western Xinjiang region, where more than half the population is Uighur. China has denied that it suppresses Islam in Xinjiang. It says it only wants to stop the forces of separatism, terrorism and religious extremism in the region, which Uighur separatists call East Turkestan. Detentions and...

In a classroom barely heated by a little iron stove, Zhen Shuzhen bent over her desk, her head covered by a scarf, as she carefully copied a passage of Arabic from the blackboard into her exercise book. A student at a nearby textile college, 19-year-old Ms Zhen is spending her winter vacation studying the Koran. "At college we don't really have a clue about Islam, but being a Hui we should know about our religion," she said. Along with about 20 other young women in this village in Central China, Ms Zhen represents a deepening interest in the theology of...

A group of drug smugglers from Honduras established in multiple cities have their main operations in Boston. According to WABC 77 talk radio show, John Bachelors program, there is 50% chance that Al-Queda perhaps Al-Zarqawi with guidance from Bin Laden has used this Honduran network of drug smuggling route to send terrorists through Mexico into United States. Some one called the authorities and tipped them off. The whole homeland security apparatus homed into these two Iraqi individuals and four Islamic Chinese individuals trying to move towards Boston. It seems Boston is an easy Radiological dirty bomb target. The radio talk...

150 dead as riots break out in China Catherine Armitage, China correspondent November 02, 2004 As breakneck economic growth increases social tensions, China is experiencing one of its most violent interludes in decades with almost 150 people reported dead in riots that erupted in two provinces over the past week. Martial law was declared at the weekend in central Henan province when fighting broke out between the ethnic Han majority and Muslim Hui minority, apparently over a road accident death. The New York Times reported 148 people had died, though this figure could not be confirmed. A woman who gave...