Uighurs pleased in Albania

TIRANA, June 15 – Three years in Albania have served to well accommodate the four Uighurs that came from the Guantanamo Bay in 2006.
The attention was turned to them last week after their co-patriots went to Bermuda and more are expected to go to Palau.
Four Uighurs were settled in Bermuda and seemed to be pleased with that decision. Thirteen others are expected to resettle on the tiny Pacific nation of Palau – a land of lush beach resorts.
Three years ago, the U.S. freed five Uighurs who were detained at Guantanamo and resettled them in Albania. Less than two weeks after they arrived in their new home country, lawyers for two of them filed a motion demanding they be moved to a more suitable place, like Washington.
The lawyers said the men were afraid to venture out of the U.N. refugee compound in Albania where they lived because the local media had branded them “terrorists.” They also couldn’t find jobs in one of Europe’s poorest countries, the attorneys said.
But one of the former detainees, Abu Bakker Qassim, 40, told The Associated Press on Friday that he has learned the local language and likes living in Albania. The government pays his rent, and he even gets $330 a month for food and clothes.
However, he’s jobless and hasn’t been able to reunite with his wife and three children in Xinjiang.
“It is hard to find a job at this difficult time. I took a training course for making pizza and Albanian cooking. The two other (Uighurs) are also learning how to make pizza,” said Qassim, who hopes to open a restaurant.
Another Uighur is studying computer science, while one was granted political asylum in Sweden, where he had family.
Qassim said he spent two hours Thursday chatting on the Internet with the four Uighurs in Bermuda. “They told me they were very pleased with the living conditions there,” he said.
Albania has allegedly denied to take more of them, obviously fearing China’s reaction.
The detainees were captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001, but the Pentagon determined last year that they were not “enemy combatants.”
They have been treated like global untouchables since the U.S. decided to free them, saying they weren’t a danger to the country. No nation agreed to take the 13 men until Palau – a former U.S. trust territory – welcomed them to the tropical tourist getaway, about 500 miles east of the Philippines.
Sending them back to China wasn’t an option for Washington because of concerns that Chinese authorities would immediately arrest the men who belong to the minority ethnic Uighur group. The restive Turkic people live in China’s far western region of Xinjiang – a territory three times the size of Texas that shares borders with Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other Central Asian nations.
Most Uighurs are Muslim and many want Xinjiang to become independent. In recent years, they’ve staged bombings and other attacks, mostly against Chinese police, government and military targets. The Uighurs detained in Guantanamo were accused of being militants seeking training in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Back in the Uighurs’ desert home, camels haul cargo across dusty deserts, cold winds blow off snowy mountains, and women usually cover up with head scarves. Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most remote city from any sea in the world.
China still insists the Uighurs are terrorism suspects who should be repatriated. But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang declined to say Thursday whether China would pressure Palau to return the men.
Four other Uighurs left Guantanamo Bay on Thursday for a new home in Bermuda – a move that displeased some residents of the North Atlantic Island. Even Britain, which handles Bermuda’s defenses, security and foreign affairs, expressed unhappiness at the deal, saying Bermuda’s leaders failed to properly consult with them.