India on Monday cancelled the e-visa issued to Chinese dissident Dolkun Isa last week following an objection from Beijing.
“We have cancelled the visa given to Dolkun Isa,” the Union Home Ministry spokesperson said on Monday without giving details or reasons for cancellation though it is clear the step is based on Chinese objections.
However, later reacting to questions on why India has cancelled the visa given to Dolkun Isa, Union Minister Kiren Rijiju said, “He (Dolkun Isa) had given wrong information on why he wanted to visit India. The e-visa application said he wanted to come as a tourist though he was coming here to attend a conference and that is why we had to cancel his visa.”
Dolkun is a Germany-based leader of World Uyghur Congress (WUC) and a prominent activist fighting for Uyghur cause in China’s Xinjiang province. He was to attend a conference organised by US-based ‘Initiatives for China’ in Dharamsala for which the Indian Government had issued him an e-visa last week. However, following China’s objections, India withdrew his travel permit.
India’s decision to allow WUC leaders whom China considers as supporters of terrorism in the volatile Muslim-dominated Xinjiang province had come in the backdrop of Beijing blocking India’s bid to get Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar designated as a terrorist by the United Nations.
Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying had objected to India’s move to grant visa to Dolkun, who is, at present, a German national. “What I want to point out is that Dolkun is a terrorist in red notice of the Interpol and Chinese police. Bringing him to justice is due obligation of relevant countries,” Hua had said.
Reacting to the latest development, Dolkun said he was disappointed by the visa cancellation which was possibly due to Chinese pressure on the Indian Government. “On April 23, I got a very short note by the Indian side that my visa is cancelled. There was no explanation,” Dolkun said.
“The Indian Government had granted me a tourist e-visa, but it was cancelled after my visit was widely reported in the Indian Press. I understand the difficult position that the Indian Government found itself, and regret that my trip has generated such unwarranted controversy,” Dolkun said in an emailed statement.
He added this was not the first time he had faced difficulties in international travels to advocate Uyghur rights. “In September 2009, I was detained briefly and denied entry to South Korea while travelling to attend the World Forum for Democratisation in Asia, to which I was an invited guest.
China also has regularly attempted to block or interfere with my human rights work at the UN in Geneva, in particular,” Dolkun said.
He also rejected any comparison or association to China’s recent veto by the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee of Pakistani militant leader, Mazood Azhar. “Such an unjustifiable comparison seeks only to delegitimise my decades of impassioned work as a strictly non-violent campaigner for Uyghur rights,” Dolkun said.
Dolkun accused China of suppressing human rights activists under the pretext of ‘War on Terror’. “I have been labeled a terrorist by China primarily as a means to delegitimise the human rights work that I do to support the Uyghur community. China often calls people it doesn’t like (e.g. peaceful human rights activists) ‘terrorists’ and tries to link credible activists with violence. Since 9/11, China has used the RsWar on Terror’ as a justification for its repressive measures in East Turkestan and tries to get the rest of the international community to see all Uyghurs as violent -- a claim that clearly does not hold up to scrutiny if reliable information is available,” Dolkun told The Pioneer in response to an email.
Dolkun is a leader of Uyghurs’ struggle for greater political and religious freedom in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. Uyghurs are Turkic Muslim ethnic group who consider Eastern Turkistan or Xinjiang their historical home and have been fighting for its independence. Isa left China in 1997 and sought asylum in Germany. Though now a German citizen since 2006 Isa has been actively campaigning against “atrocities” on Uyghurs and “human rights” violation by the Chinese government and its security forces in the Muslim dominated region Xinjiang.