{"id":1100,"date":"2019-10-12T23:57:59","date_gmt":"2019-10-12T14:57:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/?p=1100"},"modified":"2019-10-12T23:57:59","modified_gmt":"2019-10-12T14:57:59","slug":"family-of-uyghur-in-belgium-under-house-arrest-after-abduction-from-embassy-in-beijing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/2019\/10\/12\/family-of-uyghur-in-belgium-under-house-arrest-after-abduction-from-embassy-in-beijing\/","title":{"rendered":"Family of Uyghur in Belgium Under House Arrest After Abduction From Embassy in Beijing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

https:\/\/www.rfa.org\/english\/news\/uyghur\/arrest-10102019142104.html?fbclid=IwAR2zn4TeSHQID5dNpICOJ4-9r1z6Hjvp-Dni4UW_nYcIwsFaQSWTk47o1B0<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

OCtober 10, 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wife and children of a Uyghur man living in Belgium are under house arrest in northwest China\u2019s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), months after they were abducted from the Belgian Embassy in Beijing by Chinese authorities, according to the man.

Huriyet Abdulla, 43, had travelled to Beijing from the XUAR with her four children in late May seeking visas from the Belgian Embassy that would allow them to join her 51-year-old husband Ablimit Tursun in Brussels, where he was granted refugee status in late 2017 after his brother was sent to an internment camp, Tursun told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service in June.

On May 28, when staffers at the embassy informed her that the documents would take longer than expected to issue, she replied that she was too afraid to return to her hotel room in the city after police had visited them twice already to determine the purpose of their visit, and refused to leave the building, Tursun said.

Shortly after midnight on May 29, Chinese authorities entered the grounds of the embassy, forcibly removed Abdulla and her children to their hotel, where they spent the following night, and on May 31 confiscated their phones and drove them nearly 30 hours home to the XUAR capital Urumqi.

After 18 days without contact, Tursun briefly spoke with his wife, who told him that authorities had returned her phone and that she and the children were \u201csafe at home\u201d in Urumqi, although it was unclear what kind of situation they were in and whether police were in their house when the call was made.

Earlier this month, however, French media outlets and the Brussels-based Hurriyet Daily, cited Tursun as saying that his wife and four children\u2014ages five to 17\u2014are under house arrest and cannot travel anywhere without special permission.

He expressed frustration with Chinese authorities for refusing to issue passports for his wife and children, and thereby preventing them from reuniting with him in Belgium.

Speaking with RFA this week, Tursun said he was extremely concerned about the safety of his family, who are \u201cunder strict house arrest and surveillance\u201d at their home in the XUAR capital.

\u201cThey are being watched all the time and are not allowed to leave the city,\u201d he said.

He also told RFA that his wife is currently \u201cunder criminal investigation\u201d for carrying \u201cstate secrets\u201d after she brought his computer containing their family\u2019s personal documents with her to Beijing in May.

\u201cIf there was anything sensitive, why would I ask her to carry it around,\u201d Tursun asked.

\u201cTheir claims don\u2019t make any sense. My wife was asked to sign a document [while she was detained] which stated that she took documents relating to state security to Beijing. My wife refused to sign it.\u201d

Ablimit Tursun in Belgium, in an undated photo. Credit: Ablimit Tursun<\/a><\/strong>Criticism for Belgium<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier, Tursun told RFA that he had spent months since he was granted asylum in Belgium applying to the country\u2019s immigration and foreign affairs departments to have his family join him, but could do little because Chinese authorities refused to issue them passports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During that time, he said, he received multiple calls from security agents in China threatening his family\u2019s safety as part of a bid to force him to return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following their abduction, Tursun said that both Belgium\u2019s Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs in Brussels and the Belgian Embassy in Beijing had been \u201cpassive\u201d in response to his inquiries about his family members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time of their detention, The New York Times<\/em> quoted rights lawyers as saying that the Belgian Embassy had failed to adequately assess the situation of Abdulla and her family, adding that international law obliges governments not to send people to countries where they are at substantial risk of persecution and torture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Belgian officials had initially refused to disclose who was responsible for allowing Chinese authorities onto the grounds of the embassy, Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs Didier Reynders recently disclosed that Brussels had given the order to do so, according to Vanessa Frangville, a lecturer in Chinese Studies at the Universit\u00e9 libre de Bruxelles, who has been following Tursun\u2019s case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[Reynders] said that was the best solution for [Tursun\u2019s family], somehow,\u201d she told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service in a recent interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[He said], \u2018because people can\u2019t apply for asylum in a Belgian embassy \u2026 there was no other solution than to let them go for their own good,\u2019 and that means that they let the police in, which doesn\u2019t make sense at all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The confirmation from Reynders follows an article in Foreign Policy<\/em> magazine in June which cited an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs defending the embassy\u2019s decision, saying that as a small nation, Belgium cannot afford to offend China over the fate of one family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reynders also said that Tursun is under investigation in China, according to Frangville, which she pointed out is untrue, adding that his wife Abdulla has only been accused of violating the state secrets law \u201cas an excuse to keep [her and her children] away from the diplomats.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In July, Tursun told RFA that while Belgian authorities had twice sent diplomats to China to see his family members, they were refused access to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frangville said that a journalist with the Belgian newspaper La Libre, who recently travelled to the XUAR, met with Abdulla and her children and confirmed that they are being held in a difficult situation under house arrest, adding that on the same day the paper published an article about their situation it received a letter from China\u2019s embassy in Brussels disputing all of its details as \u201clies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[The Chinese] seem to be sending letters to many newspapers in Europe about this,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reported by Gulchehra Hoja for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Translated by RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/www.rfa.org\/english\/news\/uyghur\/arrest-10102019142104.html?fbclid=IwAR2zn4TeSHQID5dNpICOJ4-9r1z6Hjvp-Dni4UW_nYcIwsFaQSWTk47o1B0 OCtober 10, 2019 The wife and children of a Uyghur man living in Belgium are under house arrest in northwest China\u2019s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-1100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-human-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1100"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1102,"href":"http:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100\/revisions\/1102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}