Dolkun Isa, a German national of Uighur ethnicity who’s in the middle of the latest diplomatic stand-off between India and China, has requested Indian and German authorities to ensure his safety during his next week’s visit to Dharamsala.
Mr. Isa, a leader of the so-called World Uighur Congress (WUC) and has been declared as a “terrorist” in China, said he has been granted an electronic visa by India to attend a conference in Dharamsala. “My struggle is non-violent and I wish to engage Indian politicians and activists during the visit,” Mr. Isa told The Hindu from Germany on the phone.
Beijing was quick to protest. “What I want to point out is that Dolkun Isa is a terrorist on red notice of Interpol and the Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is a due obligation of relevant countries,” said Hua Chunying, spokesperson of Chinese Foreign Ministry, without naming India.
However, Vikas Swarup, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, maintained a cautious position saying the MEA is yet to “ascertain” the details of the conference. “As you know, the conference is not being organised by the MEA. So we are yet to have full details of the event,” he said during his weekly news briefing.
The WUC is a member of the Unrepresented Nations and People’s Organisation (UNPO), founded in 1991 in The Hague, according to the UNPO website. The Dharamsala conference is being organised by the Citizen Power of China, an organisation based in the U.S.
A UNPO statement of April 20 acknowledged that “Citizen Power for China, is about to hold its 11th Interethnic and Interfaith Leadership Conference, which brings together Tibetans, Uighurs, Mongols, and Han Chinese, as well as Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, and Falun Gong practitioners, leaders of the Hong Kong Umbrella Protest movement, and representatives from Macau and Taiwan, as well as statesmen, scholars, and officials of major human rights NGOs.”
Advocating regime change, it pointed out that these conferences, “mark the first successful attempt to unite leaders from all of these ethnic, religious and regional groups and human rights advocates to work jointly to press for changing the Chinese Communist Party dictatorship”.
Mr. Isa said he is looking forward to his first trip to India which has “thousands of years of cultural, spiritual, and economic ties with the East Turkestan (Xinjiang) region of China. Mr. Isa, who began his activism as a student leader in the Xinjiang University during the 1980s, was part of the series of student movements that took place in China before the crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
“We want self determination of the Uighur people from China’s rule. The Uighur homeland is historically known as the East Turkestan but Beijing calls our homeland as Xinjiang, which means ‘New Land’ or ‘New Body’. We do not agree even with the Chinese name of our homeland,” Mr. Isa told The Hindu.
Mr. Isa said he has lived out of China since 1994. “I spent two years in Turkey and then moved to Germany in 1996 and ever since I have stayed in this country, though the Chinese government has been trying to get me arrested,” he said. Mr. Isa said he wishes to interact with the Tibetan exiled leaders based in India and share experiences.
He, however, remains concerned about his safety. “Germany is a democratic country and the Chinese have been unable to pressure the government here to arrest me. But in 2009 I was detained for three days in South Korea where I was participating in a conference. China almost succeeded in bringing me back to Beijing. I want to spend several days in Delhi also and I hope proper security measures will be in place for me,” he said.
