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TAIPEI: Taiwan Premier Wu Den-yih on Saturday defended the government's decision to bar a planned visit by exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer over security concerns.
"The interior ministry decided not to allow the visit based on concerns for national security and public interest. I respect and support the decision," Wu told reporters in southern Kaohsiung county.
"Kadeer is a political figure .... Her World Uighur Congress overlaps with an East Turkestan organisation to a certain extent," Wu said when asked why the ministry associated the Nobel Peace Prize nominee with a terrorist group.
It was unclear if Wu was referring to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which is listed as a terrorist organisation by the United States. East Turkestan is a name used by some for Kadeer's home region of Xinjiang.
Kadeer on Friday expressed deep disappointment after Taiwan banned her from visiting and voiced fear that the island may be falling under the spell of China.
Kadeer, a rights activist from China's Uighur minority who lives in exile in the Washington area, had accepted an invitation from independence-leaning groups to visit Taiwan, which China considers part of its territory.
"The accusations levelled by the Interior Ministry of Taiwan are irresponsible and inflammatory ... It is a great disappointment that a democratic government of Taiwan should choose to bar me from entry," she said.
She said her World Uighur Congress, which is based in Munich and has enjoyed support from a US congressionally funded National Endowment for Democracy, was peaceful and denounced terrorism.
If Taiwan's government had granted Kadeer a visa, it would in all likelihood have infuriated Beijing, which says she is a "criminal" who orchestrated ethnic violence in Xinjiang in northwest China in July.
Beijing is already angered by the screening this week in Taiwan's second-largest city Kaohsiung of Kadeer's biopic.
- AFP/so
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