A body that fights for the rights of the Uyghur people in China and abroad had to meet in practical secrecy with police protection in the Bosnian capital after threats and pressure to cancel it, Reuters reported.
The Germany-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) held a four-day conference until Sunday with several hundred delegates from 25 countries in a Sarajevo hotel – but few in the outside world knew it.
There were no signs or posters, reception staff were reluctant to provide information, and plainclothes police officers were in the lobby while special forces parked vehicles outside the building.
Organizers and participants told Reuters that social media and email messages were received in advance pressuring them to cancel the event and threatening to shut it down.
”We saw the Chinese here in the hotel taking photos of our delegates during the event, which was a way to intimidate them,” said Zumrety Arkin, who was elected vice-president of the WUC at the meeting.
She and the other participants mostly stayed at the hotel for safety reasons, Arkin says.
The Chinese Embassy in Sarajevo did not respond to requests for comment on the allegations surrounding the conference.
The event proceeded normally, without incident.
Human rights groups accuse China of repression, including forced labor, mass surveillance and the placement of one or more million members of the predominantly Muslim ethnic group in a network of internment camps in the northwestern province of Xinjiang.
China denies abuses and claims it has created “vocational training centers” to combat terrorism, separatism and religious radicalism.
Arkin and WUC chief coordinator Erkin Zunun said the harassment began when the assembly was announced in June, with delegates receiving threatening messages, some of which suggested killing them or their relatives, and a fake cancellation email.
Some emails were also hacked, they said.
The WUC said it has hired private insurance for the event.
”Some of our delegates were afraid to leave the hotel. For some of our candidates, security was stationed 24 hours a day in front of their rooms,” said Arkin.
The authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) did not comment on the conference.
