Sudan reaffirms support to China over Uighur unrest
July 25, 2009 (BEIJING) – Sudan has reaffirmed its support to the Chinese government in the handling of July 5 riots by members of Xinjiang’s Uighur minority.
Beijing said deadly ethnic unrest in China’s Muslim Xinjiang region was planned and coordinated in a bid to ignite violence across the regional capital Urumqi.
The official Xinhua news agency said rioters involved in the July 5 violence, China’s worst ethnic unrest in decades, appeared to have prepared weapons in the days leading up to the unrest which left at least 192 dead.
China has said the attacks by members of Xinjiang’s Uighur minority, which targeted members of China’s dominant Han ethnic group, were orchestrated by exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer.
During a visit to China, Sudanese defense minister Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein on July 15, said that Sudan firmly supports the Chinese government’s measures to deal with the Uighur unrest.
“The measures adopted by the Chinese government after the riot aim to defend its sovereignty, safeguard social stability, and protect people’s lives and property, said Ambassador Mirghani Mohamed Salih in a statement to Xinhua.
“The incident had an obvious political motivation and had nothing to do with Islam,” Salih further said.
The Sudanese Ambassador also stressed that Uighurs hold important positions in government agencies in their autonomous province, adding that China and the Islamic countries have forged a profound and traditional friendship.
The Washington based Rebiye Kadeer, a Chinese opponent from Xinjiang’s Uighur minority, urged Islamic world recently to put pressure on the Chinese government to stop the use of violence against Uighurs.
“The rulers of Islamic states should put pressure on China to stop using terrorism as an excuse to persecute our people. The world should be aware that about 90 per cent of the Uyghur students who have studied Islam in Saudi Arabia and in Egypt are detained in Chinese jails at present,” she said.
The crackdown on the Muslim Uighur minority has drawn a muted response from many Muslim countries. The Organization of the Islamic Conference, Iran and Turkey have been among the few to criticize China. However the Chinese repression generated little reaction in most of the Arab world states.
Sudan is China’s third largest trade partner in Africa.The volume of trade exchange between the two countries in 2007 reached 5.6 billion US dollars, while the trade volume in the first nine months of 2008 was at 6.5 billion dollars comprising different sectors, particularly oil, machinery, equipments and goods.
(ST)