US court grants appeal of Uighur Guantanamo detainee from China -- Europe must now provide refuge

As a "great success for human rights" and a "late victory for justice" the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) termed the finding of a US court of appeal on Monday, which stated that the classification of a Uighur from China held in the US prison-camp Guantanamo as an "enemy fighter" was invalid. The judgement makes it clear that this prisoner had been arbitrarily declared a "terrorist" by the US military authorities. It is now not only the US government, but also Europe , which is being asked to provide refuge for the Uighur plaintiff and 16 other Uighurs held in the camp. The GfbV documented in a 25-page human rights report the background to the arrest of the Uighur plaintiff Houzaifa Parhat and the inhuman prison conditions of all 17 Uighurs held in Cuba .

"Europe must take action at last after simply looking on and doing nothing for six and a half years while these 17 political refugees from China became the pawns of international power politics and were slowly collapsing in inhuman prison conditions as innocent victims of the worldwide fight against terror" said the GfbV Asia consultant, Ulrich Delius. Europe cannot on the one hand call for the controversial prison camp to be closed and on the other take no initiative for restoring freedom to the innocent inmates of the camp. It is a disgrace for the human rights politics of the EU, Norway and Switzerland that these 17 men have to date been refused refuge out of consideration for China . In the People's Republic the Guantanamo Uighurs face the threat of the death penalty. Now the European countries must accept their responsibility at last, prove their steadfastness and take up these Uighurs even against the resistance of China , said Delius.

Houzaifa Parhat, who was born on 11^th January 1971 in the town of Gulya in East Turkestan/Xinjiang in China , witnessed many arbitrary arrests and politically motivated death sentences in his hometown following a massacre carried out by Chinese security forces in February 1997. He fled to Pakistan in May 2001. For fear of being deported to China he then fled to Afghanistan and sought refuge in a village inhabited only by Uighurs.

Since the settlement lay near Osama Bin Laden's base, Tora Bora, the village was bombed in October 2001 by the US military. During their flight from their destroyed village the Uighurs fell into the hands of bounty hunters, who handed them over to the US military in return for a handsome reward. For months the US authorities declared that the captured Uighurs were not suspected of terrorism until they were at some point arbitrarily classified as "enemy fighters" in order to justify their remaining in custody in Guantanamo. It was against this classification that Parhat's lawyers had appealed.