China
Police arrest two Uighur journalistsPosted Nov 11 2009
Chinese police arrested two journalists for publishing Uighur issues in Xingjiang on their Web sites. Hailaite Niyazi, a former editor, manager and journalist of the Web site Uighurbiz.net was taken from his home on Oct. 1 and has been detained since, Committee to Protect Journalists and International Press Institute reported.
Dilixiati Paerhati, a manager of a popular Web site Diyarim, has been missing since Aug. 7. AP reported that unidentified men detained him in his apartment in Urumqi.
Both detainees have been suspected of endangering national security after publishing information about the riots in July in the Xinjiang province, CPJ and IPI reported. Ethnic tensions between Uighurs and Han Chinese created violent riots. China responded with a “sustained crackdown,” IPI reported. More than 200 people were killed in the violence.
Bob Dietz, CPJ Asia program coordinator said, “Urumqi authorities must clarify their status immediately. Managing a Web site is not a crime.”
Ilham Tohti, owner of Uighurbiz, told AP that he believed the arrest of Niyazi may have been connected to interviews he gave the foreign media after the July riots.
China has targeted Uighur journalists before for allegedly endangering national security or fostering separatism. Mehbube Ablesh, a reporter with Xinjiang’s People’s Radio Station, was arrested in August 2008 and is still detained. Uighur journalist Nurmuhemmet Yasin was sentenced ten years in prison in 2004 for writing a story about a caged bird that longs for freedom.
The Internet is heavily censored in Xinjiang. Eighty-five percent of Web sites dedicated to the Uighur community are unreachable within Xinjiang, IPI reported. Xinjiang’s People’s Congress Standing Committee passed a law called the “Information Promotion Bill” that bans people in the region from using the Internet “in any way that undermines national unity, incites ethnic separatism, or harms social stability,” IPI reported.