The Gulja Massacre
Remembrance Vigil
Bergen, Norway

4pm (1600) Tuesday 5th February
Human Rights Plaza (Menneskerettighetenes plass 1) in Bergen

February 5, 2007 marks the 11th anniversary of a brutal crackdown on a peaceful demonstration in the city of Gulja in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. Dozens of people were killed during the crackdown; hundreds, possible thousands, lost their lives or were seriously injured in the unrest that occurred the following day. Remembering the massacre, the Rafto Foundation invites friends of the Uyghurs to attend a ceremony at the Human Rights Plaza (Menneskerettighetenes plass 1) in Bergen on 5 February at 4 p.m. (16:00).

Several thousand Uyghurs, mostly young men, took to the streets of Ghulja on February 5, 1997 and marched to the Ghulja Municipal Government offices. They were demanding equal treatment, religious freedom, and an end to racial discrimination in response to ever more repressive policies and practices against the majority Uyghur community in Ghulja.

The Chinese authorities responded to the thousands of Uyghurs marching in the streets of Ghulja by sending fully armed paramilitary police to confront the unarmed demonstrators with batons, tear gas and high-pressure water sprayed from fire trucks. Eyewitnesses report that Chinese police fired indiscriminately into the crowd, killing as many as 30 Uyghur demonstrators and wounding more than 100 on the spot.

Armed Chinese police then rounded up fleeing demonstrators and loaded them on to military trucks already stationed by the sides of the roads and took them to different detention facilities in and around Ghulja. When all of the facilities in Ghulja were filled, police took several hundred demonstrators to a sports stadium and soaked them with cold water from a fire hose. Several people developed frostbite in the winter conditions, and later had to have hands, feet or whole limbs amputated.

According to an Amnesty International report issued in April 1999, China executed more than 200 Uyghurs in February 1997 for their participation in the demonstration. Detainees suspected of organizing the demonstration, including Abduhelil Abdumejit, were the victims of severe torture in prison, and Abduhelil Abdumejit himself died in 2000 as a result of the injuries he sustained during torture.

The Rafto Foundation calls upon the Chinese authorities to allow a full and open independent enquiry into the events of the Ghulja Massacre and to immediately and unconditionally release anyone found to have been detained for their non-violent protests in Ghulja in February 1997.

The Chinese government promised the International Olympic Committee that it would improve human rights if Beijing was awarded the 2008 Olympic Games. However, the human rights situation in China, of Uyghurs in particular, worsened after Beijing was given the chance to host the Olympics. Today, less than a year away from the Beijing Olympics, the Uyghurs human rights are being systematically, grossly and widely violated by the Chinese authorities.

Uyghurs continue to face political repression, religious persecution, discrimination in employment, education and healthcare, restriction on freedom of speech, press, and movement as well as arbitrary detention, arrest and execution. Family members of Uyghur activists continue to face official reprisals.

For these reasons, we call on the Chinese government:

  • To immediately remove Ablikim Abdureyim, son of the 2004 Rafto laureate, Rebiya Kadeer, from the prison facility to a hospital for treatment of his heart and other health problems.
  • 1. To allow family members of Rebiya Kadeer, including Kahar Abdureyim and Rushangul Abdureyim, to frequently visit Ablikim Abdureyim in prison.
  • 2. To stop arbitrarily harassing, detaining, interrogating or threatening Uyghur activists or family members of Rebiya Kadeer and other Uyghur activists.
  • 3. To stop the forced transfer of young Uyghur women from East Turkestan into China's East Coast and to return home those who are already transferred. If the local authorities were genuinely interested in providing employment for these young women, they should be provided local jobs.
  • 4. To stop the official ban on the use of Uyghur language as an official language of instruction in all schools in Xiniang/East Turkestan.
  • 5. To stop the execution of peaceful Uyghur political activists and those deported back to China.

Report about the 2007 Bergen vigil from the Rafto Foundation web site.