China pressures Palau over Uighurs

Last Updated: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 16:39:00 +1000

Palau's president says Chinese investment in his country has dried up since it granted aslyum to six ethnic Uighurs who spent time in America's Guantanamo Bay military prison.

The tiny island nation accepted the Uighurs in 2009 on a temporary basis after the United States refused to send them back to China, which had described them as terrorism suspects.

The Uighurs were part of a group of 22 arrested in Afghanistan but were cleared of any wrongdoing.

Facing a US Senate committee that is determining how Washington should fund the Pacific nation, Palau's President Johnson Toribiong said his government had been put under pressure from Beijing over the issue.

He said construction of a five-star Chinese-backed hotel stopped soon after the Uighurs arrived.

"I am advised that the Chinese investor, who by that time had invested several million dollars into the project, can no longer get money out of China for the project," he said.

Mr Toribiong said China had repeatedly told Palau's UN mission it considered the matter very serious for Chinese-Palauan relations.

"[China said] that the issue was 'not a legal issue but a political one' and, ominously, that China had 'a long memory'," he said.

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