Four Uighurs locked up for seven years in Guantanamo Bay were released Thursday in Bermuda, where they hailed their new freedom after the United States refused to settle them and China pressed to take them.
Ignoring demands hours earlier by China for custody of the men, US authorities freed four Uighurs who flew from the Guantanamo prison in Cuba to Bermuda, an Atlantic archipelago that accepted them in a guest-worker program.
"Growing up under communism, we always dreamed of living in peace and working in free society like this one," Abdul Nasser, speaking on behalf of all the four, said in a statement released by their lawyers.
"Today you have let freedom ring," he said of Bermuda.
The Uighurs are a mostly Muslim minority living in China's northwestern Xinjiang province. The latest US State Department human rights report says China has stepped up repression of the community.
US President Barack Obama is trying to shut down the Guantanamo Bay camp, seen by many as a symbol of excesses in his predecessor George W. Bush's "war on terror."
Bermuda's Premier Ewart Brown said the United States would pay for their resettlement. He said the men eventually would be eligible for citizenship, which would allow them to travel elsewhere.
But Britain chided Bermuda, a self-governing British overseas territory, saying that it should have first consulted London about whether it was safe to accept the men.
In Washington, a State Department official said the United States consulted close ally Britain about the case, although possibly not long before the men boarded the plane.
Bermuda's leader said he felt a responsibility to help the men trapped in a cycle of "tragic events" but who committed no crime.
"Those of us in leadership have a common understanding of the need to make tough decisions and to sometimes make them in spite of their unpopularity, simply because it is the right thing to do," Brown said.
While US authorities say the Uighurs are some of the several dozen Guantanamo inmates that pose no security threat, US lawmakers cut off funds to resettle them in the United States, saying they could pose a risk.
The United States refuses to hand them to China, fearing they would suffer torture.
The Obama administration could nonetheless be ordered to free remaining Uighurs in the United States if it does not resolve their case before a Supreme Court meeting on June 25.
US Attorney General Eric Holder voiced gratitude to Bermuda, a hub of tourism and international finance that is home to some 70,000 people.
"By helping accomplish the president's objective of closing Guantanamo, the transfer of these detainees will make America safer," Holder said.
A tiny Pacific island country, Palau, has also offered to accept the Uighurs. Palau is among the dwindling number of nations that recognizes Taiwan as China's government rather than Beijing.
US-led forces seized 22 Uighurs in Afghanistan after the 2001 invasion that toppled the Taliban and shipped them to Guantanamo Bay, where Washington has sent hundreds of inmates to be held indefinitely without trial
Authorities cleared the Uighurs of wrong-doing and in 2006 sent five to Albania, incurring the fury of Beijing.
Susan Baker Manning, one of two lawyers who accompanied the men to Bermuda, said that the United States had a responsibility to free the rest of the Uighurs at Guantanamo.
"If we believe in our constitution and if we believe in the rule of law, we need to do that," she said.
Nury Turkel, a Uighur-American lawyer on the men's defense team, saluted the "courage" of Bermuda but questioned how men who grew up in the deserts and mountains of Xinjiang would adapt to sun-kissed, English-speaking Bermuda.
"Any country, any place, any street that these guys can walk or live freely without fear of China's persecution is preferable to Guantanamo," he said.
"But we wish that our brothers were released inside a Uighur community in the United States so that all the necessary cultural, economic and linguistic support can be provided."
The United States went ahead with the transfer to Bermuda despite renewed pressure from China, which has demanded custody of all 17 who were in Guantanamo Bay.
The United States should "stop handing over terrorist suspects to any third country," foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters.
Qin alleged the Uighur detainees belonged to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which seeks an independent Islamic state in Xinjiang and is considered a terrorist group by Washington. The men deny the charges.
Source: AFP American Edition
