Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on the Chinese government to disclose the whereabouts of 20 ethnic Uighurs deported by Cambodian authorities on December 19, saying they have disappeared into a “black hole”. In a statement issued on Friday, the group said Beijing should allow the deportees to meet with lawyers, relatives and officials from the UN. “There is no information about their whereabouts, no notification of any legal charges against them, and there are no guarantees they are safe from torture and ill-treatment,” Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said in the statement. HRW claims to have received an unconfirmed report that some of the Uighurs, who travelled to Cambodia in November after witnessing deadly ethnic riots in July, were sentenced to death by a court in China’s Xinjiang province. When contacted Sunday, Qian Hai, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh, declined to comment.
