China Secretly Detained 43 Uighur Men, Group Says

Three months after deadly ethnic rioting in China's far west, dozens of men from the Uighur ethnic group remain unaccounted for after being detained in police sweeps, a human rights group said Wednesday.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said the 43 missing men and teenagers were among hundreds rounded up by security forces in the days and weeks following the July 5 riots in Urumqi city and their families have been unable to find out where they are or why they are being held.

The rioting left nearly 200 people dead, as the mainly Muslim Uighurs (WEE'-gurs) attacked people from the Han Chinese majority, and was the deadliest communal violence in at least a decade in Xinjiang, the oil-rich region that abuts Pakistan and Central Asia. In its wake, the government has smothered Urumqi, the regional capital, and much of Xinjiang with security but has failed to restore calm or ease ethnic tensions. More protests broke out in September, this time by Hans.

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The Human Rights Watch report appears to be "a sober and even conservative documentation of the disappearances that have devastated Urumqi's Uighur community," said Rian Thum, a Uighur history researcher at Harvard University. Thum said in an e-mail that the disappearances add to "a long list of Uighur grievances and have only deepened the sense of injustice that most Uighurs share."

Human Rights Watch said its report is based on dozens of random interviews with Han and Uighur people living in Urumqi in the months following the riots. Victims and their family members are not identified by their real names for their protection and exact interview dates are also withheld.

One woman is quoted as saying her 14-year-old brother was seen being taken away by soldiers on Aug. 7 and that police have denied holding him. Most of the cases involve men in their 20's who were allegedly taken from their homes in early July, shortly after the riot, it said.

"The actual number of 'disappeared' persons is likely significantly higher," it said. "Our ability to collect information was limited. Out of fear of retaliation, few witnesses or family members were willing to come forward with their stories."