30 January 2012 :

the US State Department said it was trying to confirm with China reports it has sentenced to death some of the 20 Uighurs who were deported from Cambodia in 2009. According to media reports , four were sentenced to death after their return, while another 14 were jailed for life. "We have repeatedly called on the Chinese government to provide information on the whereabouts of all 20 of the Uighur asylum seekers," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters. Washington has also asked Beijing "to allow access to them by international agencies and to treat them in accordance with international human rights obligations and commitments," Nuland said. The deportees, members of the mainly Muslim minority Uighur group who have long complained of oppression in Xinjiang, were wanted in connection with rioting that erupted in July 2009 in the regional capital of Urumqi between Uighurs and China's majority Han ethnic group which left nearly 200 people dead. They applied for UN refugee status in Cambodia, but were forcibly repatriated to China in December 2009, in a move that triggered strong international condemnation. Cambodia's decision to deport the Uighurs was quickly followed by a 1.2-billion-dollar aid and loan package from Beijing. China has rejected accusations of a link between the two. "Uighurs forcibly returned to China are in extreme risk of torture, detention and enforced disappearance," Rebiya Kadeer, president of the World Uyghur Congress, said in a statement emailed to AFP. "We call once again on international governments to pressure the Chinese authorities to immediately disclose the whereabouts of all the extradited Uighurs and to provide the charges, if any, that have been made against them."