Originally posted by the Voice of America.
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Families of Uighurs Abroad Increasingly Targeted by China

Asim Kashgarian

   WASHINGTON - A recent arrest of a Uighur mother and her four children
   by the Chinese police at the Belgian Embassy in Beijing highlights a
   growing pattern of persecution by Chinese authorities against members
   of the Muslim minority who have families living abroad, rights groups
   charge.

   Horiyet Abla, 43, was arrested by Chinese police after she refused to
   leave the Belgian embassy where she was applying for a visa in hopes of
   reuniting with her husband who lives in Belgium as a refugee, according
   to her husband.

   "The staff member who handled my wife's case at the embassy told her
   that they would wait for at least three months for the visa to be
   issued and she should go home and wait," Ablimit Tursun, Abla's
   husband, told VOA.

   When his wife asked embassy employees if she could meet with the
   ambassador, they told her he was away that day.

   "My wife then said she would wait for the ambassador and refused to
   leave the building. The embassy's security services dragged her and my
   children outside the building to the embassy's yard where my family
   remained, unwilling to leave and asking for the embassy's protection,"
   Tursun said in a phone interview.

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