Uighur students in Egypt face arrest, deportation to China
Cairo seems to be trying to please Beijing by continuing to arrest Uighur students in the country.
CAIRO — An ongoing security crackdown on Uighur students in Egypt is back in the news after the opposition Conservative Party demanded the ruling regime not hand them over to the Chinese authorities.
The Uighurs are a Muslim community accounting for 45% of the population of the far northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang. The Uighurs claim the Chinese authorities are practising ethnic discrimination against them, oppressing them and imprisoning them for religious reasons. China alleges the Uighurs are calling for a civil disobedience campaign to obtain their own independent state, following the 2009 riots.
In a Sept. 5 statement, Egypt’s Conservative Party said, “There have recently been reports of Egyptian authorities detaining a number of Uighur-Muslim minority students from the Xinjiang region of western China for the purpose of their extradition to the Chinese authorities.”
The party called on the Egyptian government not to hand over these students and protect them in line with humanitarian principles and international law.
