China Tells US Not To Send Wrong Signal To Uighur 'terrorists'

BEIJING, Aug 18 (AFP) - China has appealed to the United States not to send the "wrong signal" after Washington said a handful of detained Uighurs being held at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay would not be returned to China.
The United States should "handle the issue according to international rules and with a view toward international anti-terrorism cooperation and bilateral ties," said foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan.
About a dozen Uighurs, of Turkic descent, are among the hundreds of detainees held at the Cuban base since the US intervention in Afghanistan.
They face harsh religious restrictions and repression in China since authorities associate the group with separatism and terrorism.
Human rights and non-governmental groups had urged Washington not to repatriate them to China where they claim they face torture or even execution.
Kong called East Turkestan separatists "part of the international terrorist forces that pose a vital threat to people`s life and property safety worldwide, including in China and the United States as well".
"The group is colluding with al-Qaeda, Taliban remnants, Chechen terrorist groups and other international terrorist organizations," Xinhua news agency cited the Chinese Ministry of Public Security as saying.
It said East Turkistan separatists had staged more than 260 attacks inside the northwestern Xinjiang region in which 162 people had been killed and more than 440 wounded.
Xinhua gave no timeframe but there have been no reported incidents in recent years.
Rights groups say China is using the global war on terror to justify repression of its Uighur community and US Secretary of State Colin Powell said last week the Guantanamo detainees would not be returned to China.
"The Uighurs are not going back to China, but finding places for them is not a simple matter, but we are trying to find places for them." he said.
Exiled Uighur Muslim groups are seeking to re-establish an independent East Turkestan in Central Asia that has existed historically and was established in the 1940s in the presently Chinese-controlled Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.