Published by: THE WORLD UYGHUR NETWORK NEWS October 31, 1997

10/28/97, Eastern Turkistan Information Center

My name is Rizvangul Uighur, I am an Uighur from East Turkistan which Chinese call Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. I am grateful for the opportunity to testify on the Chinese Human Rights Abuses in my motherland. As you can see from my appearance, I am not a Chinese, my mothertouge is not Chinese, my culture is Turkic culture, the Uighur history has no connection what so ever to Chinese. My motherland was taken over by Chinese communist in 1950.

It is obvious to everyone, Chinese government's policy, especially after implementing the so called No. 7 Act of PRC Central Standing Committee hosted by Mr. Jiang Zeming, clearly stated the discriminatory policy towards Uighur and other indigenous population of East Turkistan. I regret that I don't have time to list all abuses caused by PRC. However, I would like to take this chance to give you what I know about the February 5-6 incident which Chinese government shamelessly labeled as "riot organized by a small number of separatist". The

reality is nowhere close to Chinese official description of the event.

Ghulja is a city with Uighurs majority. In Uighur cultural tradition, there are a cultural gatherings called 'Mashrap', county level unofficial soccer competition organized by Uighurs and some other religious gatherings. All these normal activities are considered "counter revolutionary activities" by Chinese official and banned completely. The purpose is obvious, they want to systematically destroy our culture, religion, history and traditional activities and finally to genocide Uighur as a whole.

Uighurs are born Muslim, it is our religious tradition to gather together to pray during the holy Ramazan. On the eve of Ramazan on February 5 in Ghulja, ordinary believers were offended by the arrests of 30 prestigious religious leaders by Chinese government. They were shocked by the arrests, especially the young folks could no longer tolerate. 600 young people took to the street walking towards city government demanding release of those religious figures. On their way, they were brutally stopped by police and paramilitary forces. Police

violently dispersed crowd using electrical clubs, water cannon and tear gas in the freezing day. The second day, even bigger demonstration was held after Uighurs all over town heard about the incident. Chinese police and paramilitary forces were ordered to shoot to the crowd and killed 167 people and succeeded in suppressing the rally. Afterwards, the Chinese policemen arrested over 5,000 demonstrators including elder, young, women and children in a single day on the charge of "intending to split motherland", "conducting criminal activity"

"fundamental religious activity" and "counter revolutionary element".

One of my friend was among the arrested. She is only 20 years old. She described to me what happened to her that day as follows. Chinese policemen forced all the arrested Uighurs to take off shoes and stand barefoot on snow for hours, they also released police dogs to bite them. One by one, the arrested individual were called in for questioning. My friend is a devote Muslim, when she was called in. She was asked: "Are you a Muslim?" My friend replied: "Yes, of course I am.". "Where is your God?" the policeman asked. The girl replied: "God is in my heart." Then, you would not believe what the policeman did to her. He tore off her cloth and pressed a burning cigarette on her bare breast and crudely yelled: "If your God is in your heart, then let him rescue you right now!" Afterwards, all the girls from the age 14 up were locked into Han Chinese male prison cells. The Han prisoners took full advantage of these innocent souls, destroyed their

spiritual purity.

After the demonstration, we were little surprised about the patience of Chinese government in making open executions. Everything was clear, they were waiting for U.S. to offer Most Favored Nation Status to China. Right after MFN was approved by the congress, the Chinese government made the first open execution of 7 Uighurs and sentence of 23 demonstrators ranging from 5 to life time. In order to "kill the chicken to scare the monkeys", Chinese military forces load them on the open truck guarded with heavily armed soldiers humiliatedly drove

slowly through the busy Uighur bazaar and neighborhoods. During that time, crying crowd including relatives, family members and friends of so called 'criminals' followed the tucks to say good buy. Guess what Chinese soldiers did? Would you believe such cruelty could ever happen in a civilized society? They opened fire to the ordinary crowd! Killed 9 Uighurs in the spot and injured over 25. Chinese media could not hide the incident and officially admitted the soldiers opened fire to the 'mobs who wanted to rescue the criminals'- a biggest lie one can ever create!

I heard Chinese made large scale secret execution to the demonstrators, religious figures who refuse to comply with government. One of my friend's brother was among the secret executed Uighurs. His brother was arrested one night in April after the Ghulja incident, at 3pm next day, his father and spouse were informed to pay final visit for five minutes. The young man was executed afterwards without any judicial trial. Nobody knows where is his dead body.

As I told you in the beginning, I was born an Uighur, I didn't see any Chinese and couldn't speak Chinese when I was young. But now I saw millions Chinese migrated in my country. All of them are transferred by Chinese government. We have already became a minority in our own motherland. Let me give you some more examples of the human rights violation of government that every single Uighur is experiencing nowadays in their own motherland.

1. Because of the Nuclear testing, there are many deformed children, unknown diseases and all kinds of untreatable skin diseases. Chinese government claims that Nuclear test is safe and no harm to the Uighurs who live surrounding test site. I want to ask Jiang Zeming that why doesn't he let Chinese test their Nuclear bombs in their own land if it is safe and harmless to the human. We Uighurs don't need bombs of any kind.

2. The birth control policy toward Uighurs is unbearable. Babies are being killed in delivery room without seeing the mother's face and world. Those pure souls died without knowing what is wrong and who is their mother. The mothers lost their children even had no chance to say good bye to their newborns, whom they had for ten months of pregnancy, to whom they have many wishes and the new life they were dreamed to have with. The reason for those innocent souls death is that their mothers have no birth permission. For those who gave birth to such a child would encounter maltreatment and ignorant in hospital for their

violation of government birth control policy, many of them die after given birth from the infection and other decease caused by such treatment. After all, their family would face a financial punishment for their violation of government birth control policy.

3. On a train from Urumqi to Beijing, there were only two Uighurs including me. Suddenly, we saw two policemen walked directly to us bypassing all the Chinese in the train. They rudely yelled to us: "Show us your identification!" and searched over all our belongings. We were so offended and felt deeply humiliated. But, both of us didn't say anything, since we know from our experience we would got into big trouble if we show any resentment. This is what every Uighur experiencing everyday, everywhere in the People's Republic of China.

4. We were deprived off our religious rights. The government employee and workers are not allowed to pray, to attend religious school or to go to Mosques openly. I was once warned by a Chinese official that I had to took off my veil, otherwise, I could not keep my job. I was forced to pray secretly at home as a consequence.

Thank you very much for your attention. I sincerely hope you could help my people by stopping Chinese inhumane treatment of Uighurs.