China Reported To Have Executed Uyghur Activist
February 09, 2007
February 9, 2007 -- A U.S.-funded broadcaster says China has executed a Uyghur activist after a court found him guilty of "attempting to split the motherland" and possessing firearms and explosives.
Radio Free Asia quoted Ismail Semed's widow as saying the execution was carried out on February 8 in the western city of Urumqi.
A spokeswoman for the city's Intermediate People's Court confirmed there were executions that day, but said she had no information on specific cases.
Semed was deported to China from Pakistan in 2003 and was sentenced to death in October last year on what rights groups say was insufficient evidence.
Scores of Muslim Uyghurs have been executed in China since the mid-1990s, when a small group of nationalists launched a campaign to liberate the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region from Chinese rule.
(Radio Free Asia, Reuters)