Tribunal hears ‘grave’ allegations

A London panel investigating the plight of Uyghurs in China yesterday heard witness testimony of torture and gang rapes, in a process slammed by Beijing as a mendacious smear.    

One witness described squalid conditions and brutality in camps in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang, and said one woman had died after undergoing forced sterilisation.

The nine UK-based jurors of the "Uyghur Tribunal", including lawyers and human rights experts, convened the first of two evidence sessions and intend to publish a report in December on whether China is guilty of genocide.

"Allegations made against the PRC (People's Republic of China) are grave," tribunal chair Geoffrey Nice said at the opening of the first four-day session, explaining they included numerous breaches of the UN declaration on human rights.

The body is not affiliated with any government, and China has refused to participate, branding it a "machine producing lies". It has slapped sanctions on Nice, a former UN war crimes prosecutor, and others involved.

It was set up at the request of the World Uyghur Congress, the largest group representing exiled Uyghurs, which lobbies the international community to take action against China over alleged abuses in Xinjiang.

Qelbinur Sidik, an ethnic-Uzbek teacher from Xinjiang's capital Urumqi, said she was ordered by communist party bosses to teach Chinese in two fetid and crowded "re-education" camps, one male and one female, for Uyghurs.

The so-called students were made to wear shackles during hours-long classes, she told the tribunal.

Female prisoners were not only tortured but also raped, sometimes gang-raped, Sidik said.

Forced sterilisation of Uyghur women was common, she said.

Sidik said she was also subjected to forced sterilisation before she was given a visa to visit her daughter in the Netherlands, and fled China.

Rights groups say up to one million Uyghurs and people from other ethnic-Turkic minorities are detained in internment camps in Xinjiang.