The Uighur World Congress said that a man detained in Sweden suspected of spying on his Uyghur colleagues there for China served as spokesperson for the exile group for two decades.
The WUC said on Wednesday in a statement that Dilshat Reshit, was its spokesperson for the Chinese language since 2004. The WUC said that its presidency had decided during an emergency meeting to withdraw Reshit from its position “in accordance with our commitment to integrity, transparency and security of our community”.
Reports citing the Swedish Prosecution Authority said that an anonymous Uighur resident of Stockholm had been arrested on the weekend suspected of spying of OGHUR compatriots in Sweden. The WUC said that a judicial document has identified the individual as a reshit.
RFA was unable to contact Reshit or a legal representative for him to comment.
The WUC is the main group of world umbrellas pleading for Uighurs, a group of Muslim minorities which is seriously persecuted in China.
The Swedish prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said in a statement on Wednesday that the man “was suspected of having illegally collected information and information on people in the Uighur Environment on behalf of the Chinese intelligence service,” said Reuters.
The Chinese Embassy in Sweden told Reuters in an email that he was not aware of the case and had not commented more.
WUC’s statement did not give any explanation of how their organization would have been infiltrated by someone spying for Beijing, but said that he has long warned of the international scope of Chinese spy networks.
He declared that he had implemented “internal counterattack measures”, but “we do not have the institutional and financial resources to face the full scale and the sophistication of transnational repression by ourselves”. He called for closer cooperation with governments foreign to counterintelligence.
The press release indicates that China’s efforts to silence dissent abroad “not only in danger of the security and cohesion of the Uighur diaspora communities, but also a direct threat to sovereignty, public security and national security of host countries.”
China is deeply sensitive and briefly rejects international criticism from its severe treatment of Uighurs, which, according to researchers, is well documented and which, according to the United States government, is equivalent to a genocide.
In 2022, a United Nations report declared that the “arbitrary and discriminatory detention” of China of Uighurs and other Muslims in the far west of Xinjiang could constitute crimes against humanity.