TOKYO: The exiled leader of China’s Uighurs said today nearly 10,000 of her people were detained or killed this month in ethnic unrest and appealed to the United Nations to investigate their fate. Rebiya Kadeer, the US-based head of the World Uighur Congress, also said she was “perplexed” at the muted US response to the violence as she spoke during a visit to Japan that has drawn angry protests from Beijing. Citing local sources and speaking through an interpreter, she said almost 10,000 people “disappeared” in one night on July 5 when authorities cracked down on the unrest in the mainly Muslim region of Xinjiang. “Where did those people go?” she said. “If they died, where did they go?” Kadeer, 62, said Chinese police opened machine-gun fire at Uighur people after dark once the electricity was turned off, and that the following morning large numbers of Uighur men had gone missing. “Uighur people who were there must have been either killed or taken away,” she told a Tokyo press conference. “The next morning, the streets were cleaned and the bodies of ethnic Han (Chinese) were left in the streets.” Kadeer said she had asked Japanese lawmakers during a meeting today to push for a UN investigation. “I want to urge the international community to dispatch an independent, third-party investigation mission to investigate what happened,” she said. “If China can confidently say the Uighur people are at fault, then open up the area, tell the third-party commission what really happened.” Beijing accuses the mother-of-11 and grandmother of being a “criminal” and a separatist who instigated the unrest. China has said police opened fire to prevent further bloodshed, killing 12 “mobsters,” according to state media reports, and that more than 1,400 people were detained for their involvement in the unrest. Kadeer said she was not involved in fomenting the riots, which came after Uighur protests over violent clashes at a factory in southern China. “If China says I did it, I want them to show evidence,” she said. “If the international community judges it as evidence, I would acknowledge that.”

Japanese envoy summoned

BEIJING: China on Wednesday summoned Japan’s ambassador in Beijing to protest the visit to Tokyo of exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer, the foreign ministry said in a statement on its website. Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei summoned Japanese Ambassador Yuji Miyamoto to raise “stern representations” over Kadeer’s visit and “demanding the Japanese government immediately take effective measures to deter Kadeer. — AFP