From: "Nury A. Turkel" <nury@uyghuramerican.org>

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 EXECUTED UYGHUR REFUGEE LEFT BEHIND TAPED RECORD OF TORTURE IN CHINA
Chinese police used electric chair, nails, in bid to extract
confession

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23, 2003--Chinese authorities in Xinjiang have
executed a
Uyghur dissident who detailed a grim litany of torture sessions in an
unprecedented testimony recorded for Radio Free Asia (RFA), which he
requested be held until he was "in a safe place."

Officials in Hotan confirmed Oct. 22 that Shirali had been executed
in Hotan
but declined to say when the execution had occurred. Shirali was
tried and
convicted Nov. 12, 2002, and sentenced to death in March 2003 for
"manufacturing and stockpiling illegal weapons and
explosives," separatism,
and "organizing and leading a terrorist organization."

Shirali--also known as Shaheer Ali and Ghojamamt Abbas--spoke to RFA's
Uyghur service in May 2001, describing eight months of torture from
April to
December of 1994 in the Old Market Prison, in Guma (in Chinese,
Pishan)
County, in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. In several interviews
conducted
by telephone from Nepal, Shirali described how he was beaten with
shackles,
shocked in an electric chair, repeatedly kicked unconscious, and then
drenched in cold water to revive him for more torture.

His account spanned torture sessions that recurred every 10 or 15 days
during his detention. He referred to his interrogators throughout as
"executioners," saying they told him to confess to
separatist activities or
risk dying in the interrogation room. He was frequently interrogated
through
the use of an electric chair.

"One executioner winked at the other, who then came over and
pressed down
the switch of the chair. As if someone was pouring me with boiling
water and
peeling off my skin, my entire body was in a harsh pain. I was
tortured
this way for about three minutes," Shirali, who would have been
31 this
year, said. "After a short while, that executioner turned off
the chair
switch. He came to me and said to me using the interpreter, 'Just
like what
we said, you will not get out of here alive. So you must
confess.'"

Shirali said he belonged to the Eastern Turkestan Islamic Reform
Party,
which he described as a nonmilitant organization. Chinese news reports
claim, however, that Shirali was a member of the East Turkestan
Islamic
Hezbollah group--part of what Beijing describes as "one of the
most
dangerous terrorist organizations." Beijing at one time offered
a bounty of
500,000 yuan (about U.S. $60,000) for his capture.

"They tied my hands and hung me up high. Then they beat me for
about half an
hour with shackles. I screamed loudly because I could not stand the
pain.
During this time my body was covered with blood. [Then] they took me
down and poured a bucket of water over me," Shirali said.

On another occasion, Ali said he was asked for details of an
organization
working for independence for the predominantly Muslim Xinjiang
Autonomous
Region of China, known among Uyghurs as East Turkestan. "I told
them, 'I
became a member of the organization following the leadership of
Ablikim
Mamatimin and Ablimit Oshur. But I don't know anything other than
this. And
I don't have anything else.'"

"That heavy executioner said nothing and turned on the chair
switch. As if
someone was pulling out my heart and sticking a needle through my
body, this
time I was suffering from an unbearable burning pain. I screamed and
bit my
tongue... By this time I had already unconsciously had a bowel
movement. My
cellmates changed my clothes."

In one such session, Shirali said, "They shouted at me and broke
a couple of
nails on my right foot--then they pushed nails into two of the toes
on my
left foot. I lost consciousness because I couldn't stand this
torture. When
I opened my eyes, I saw my cellmates sitting around me. I had been
unconscious for exactly seven hours."

"I was in cell number three. It was three meters long and two
meters wide.
It had no window. There were only a couple of tiny openings on the
roof for
some light. Including me, there were eight people in this cell,"
he
said.

Shirali escaped from Xinjiang to Nepal in November 2000 by stowing
away
inside the tanker of an oil truck headed for Tibet, where he arrived
drenched in toxic fuel. He then spent six months trekking from Tibet
to
Nepal. In December 2001, while awaiting resettlement as a
U.N.-recognized
refugee, his home was raided by Nepalese police, who detained him in
Hanuman
Dhoka Prison.

Human rights observers believe he and another Uyghur, Abdu Allah
Sattar,
were forcibly repatriated together by either Nepalese police or
Chinese
Embassy officials in January 2002--taking advantage of the political
momentum
against terrorism following the Sept.11, 2001 attacks on the United
States.

Amnesty International issued an appeal on behalf of the two men,
together
with Kheyum Whashim Ali, in April 2002. The U.N. High Commissioner for
Refugees had recognized all three as refugees.

Chinese authorities describe the East Turkestan Islamic Hezbollah
group--of
which they say Shirali was a member--as "one of the most
dangerous terrorist
organizations." In a series of allegations published in
September 2002,
Beijing said the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) had used
various
names including East Turkestan Islamic Hezbollah and East Turkestan
Party.
Together, Chinese officials said, ETIM factions had killed 166 people
and
injured some 440 through its activities. Both the United Nations and
the
United States have blacklisted ETIM as a terrorist organization.

Uyghurs constitute a distinct, Turkic-speaking, Muslim minority in
northwestern China and Central Asia. They declared a short-lived East
Turkestan Republic in Xinjiang in the late 1940s but have remained
under
Beijing's control since 1949.

According to a Chinese Government white paper, in 1998 Xinjiang
comprised 8
million Uyghurs, 2.5 million other ethnic minorities, and 6.4 million
Han
Chinese-up from 300,000 Han in 1949. Most Uyghurs are poor farmers,
and at
least 25 percent are illiterate.#####