New Homes Sought for Detainees

The State Department said Thursday it was trying to get third countries to accept people from China’s Muslim far west who were being detained at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba.

Some of the Turkic-speaking Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang province have staged riots and bomb attacks to try to establish an independent state. China has cracked down on the separatists, and advocacy groups accuse it of systematic rights violations.

Some Uighurs are among the Chinese held at Guantanamo Bay who were captured while fighting with the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Washington believes that some of the Uighurs no longer pose a threat, and it is willing to release them -- but they have said they do not want to return home for fear of persecution.

“We’re certainly not in a position to say that they wouldn’t be tortured or persecuted,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. “So we’re still looking into resettlement of the Uighurs outside of China.”