Riyadh: A 13-years-old girl is included among four people who were in danger of being sent back from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to China, where they could be held in repressive detention camps.
Amnesty International on Monday called on Saudi Arabia to remove four members of China’s Uyghur minority.
According to the statement released by the human rights group,
Buheliqiemu Abula and her teenage daughter were arrested near Makkah on Thursday, March 31, without any reason for the arrest. Police told them that they faced deportation to China along with two Uyghur men already held.
As per the sources, Buheliqiemu Abula is the ex-wife of Nuermeiti Ruze, who has been imprisoned without any charges in Saudi Arabia for two years, along with religious scholar Aimidoula Waili.
According to Lynn Maalouf, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Office at Amnesty International, “The displacement of these four people – including a child – to China, where Uyghurs and other ethnic juvenility are facing a horrific campaign of mass incarceration, persecution and suffering, would be an outrageous violation of international law.”
“With time running out, it is critical for our governments that have diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia to step in now and urge the authorities in Riyadh to fulfil their obligations and stop the deportations,” Maalouf added.
In March, family members of the two Uyghur men—Nuermeiti Ruze and Aimidoula Waili told Amnesty International that Waili and Ruze were transmitted from Jeddah to Riyadh on March 16 – a move they believe signals their looming extradition to China.
It is reported that Waili faced several tortures in Xinjiang prison; she travelled to Saudi Arabia from Turkey two years back in February 2020 in order to perform Umrah, a religious pilgrimage, with his friend Ruze.
In November 2020, the police of Saudi Arabia arrested Waili and Ruze, and on top of that police did not give a reason for the arrest of Waili and Ruze or not even inform them about any charges against them.
In June 2021, As per the reports by Amnesty International released which revealed that how hundreds of thousands of Muslim men and women in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region were targetted to mass random detention, indoctrination and torture.