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The Obama Administration has been trying to find countries willing to take in several Uighur men who were detained at Guantanamo. The men fear persecution in their native China — and some have now been relocated to the tiny Pacific island nation of Palau. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad has their story.

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  Among the less fortunate detainees in the military facility in Guantanamo Bay have been members of a Muslim ethnic group from China known as “Uighurs.”  The U.S. acknowledges it has no evidence the Uighurs were ever involved in terrorism but placing them somewhere has been troublesome.  They might face arrest and torture if they were to return to China and many Americans don’t want them here in the U.S.  Some Uighurs have been placed elsewhere.  Six are in Palau in the western Pacific but The World’s Mary Kay Magistad reports that the new Uighur arrivals are not exactly feeling at home there.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD:  Palau is a land of swaying coconut palms and white sandy beaches. It’s not a land with many Muslims and even now, four months after six Uighur Muslims arrived here after their release from Guantanamo, there are still some misunderstandings about them, even at the leafy community college where they’re learning English.

ELIZABETH CRUZ:  I really don’t like them.

MAGISTAD:  Elizabeth Cruz is a student in office administration.  She’s sitting with friends at a shaded picnic table near where the Uighurs attend class.  She says the six men are friendly enough and their English has already become impressively good but they still make her uncomfortable.

CRUZ:  ‘Cause what I’ve heard, based on some of our workers’ research on where they came from, the Guantanamo, yeah, they say they were locked up because of making bombs.

MAGISTAD:  There was no evidence against them.  That’s why they were released.

CRUZ:  No, it’s just sometimes when you hear about terrorists, like in Palau, this is a really small island; you get afraid because this is a really small island.  I believe six people could ruin the whole island of Palau.

MAGISTAD:  Cruz isn’t the only one who’s weary of the Uighurs.  There was a public outcry among Americans when the White House considering resettling the 22 Guantanamo Uighurs in the United States so it instead found homes for them in Albania, Switzerland, Bermuda and Palau.  Those on the islands of Bermuda and Palau face a new kind of confinement, since they have no travel documents and these places are tiny.  The irony was noted in a Minnesota public radio satire.

SATIRE:  Well you spent 8 years in Guantanamo Bay, anybody would be bitter but you’re free today.  So let go your worries in the island way, get used to the place because you’re here to stay.

MAGISTAD:  These days, the Palau six aren’t talking much to the press but one of them spoke to the BBC soon after arriving in Palau, about how he came to be captured.  Abdul Ghappar Abdul Rahman said he had gone to Afghanistan to flee Chinese oppression of Uighurs in his own homeland.

SPEAKER:  At that time, Afghanistan was the only country in Central Asia.  It was not sending refugees back to China and I heard that there were some Uighurs living there.

MAGISTAD:  But soon after, U.S. forces invaded.  Abdul Rahman fled to Pakistan where he says he and the other Uighurs were arrested and sold to the U.S. military for a bounty of $5,000 each.  The Uighurs were sent to Guantanamo where they were kept for most of 8 years in small, isolated cells with little sunlight.  At one point early on, Chinese officials were allowed to come in and interrogate and threaten them.  The Chinese government says it still considers these men terrorists and wants them back, although it’s revealed no specific evidence against them.  The U.S. government has refused and has instead called in favors from old friends like Palau.  Palau’s President, Johnson Toribiong says his government accepted the Uighurs for three reasons.

JOHNSON TORIBIONG:  Number one, according to our culture, we always accept those who are washed up on our shores.  Number two, it’s a humanitarian gesture to advance the cause of freedom and democracy and number three, it’s an opportunity for Palau to return a favor to the United States, which has been most generous to Palau since World War II.

MAGISTAD:  The Uighurs have been given a roomy apartment in a villa owned by the President’s brother.  They’ve joined the one mosque on the island.  They’re still learning English but they’ll soon be expected to start working.  They have a Uighur translator for now.  They also briefly had an American coordinator, hired by the Palau government.  But after a couple of months, they refused to cooperate with him anymore.  They told President Toribiong the man reminded them too much of their American guards at Guantanamo.  That coordinator, former corrections officer, Ted Glenn, says he can understand why the Uighurs felt that way.

TED GLENN:  See, you’re dealing with the psychology of the captive.  If you’re a captive, you’re a captive.  No matter how good the amenities are, they’re still, you’re not free, these men are not free.  In their minds, they’re not free.  They can’t go, they can’t travel.

MAGISTAD:  Glenn says the Uighurs would understandably much rather be in a bigger country, beyond China’s reach, that has a Uighur community, like Australia or the United States.  That’s why five Uighurs who are still in Guantanamo, turned down the opportunity to come to Palau.  Instead, they filed a lawsuit asking to be allowed to live in the U.S.  The case has gone all the way to the Supreme Court, which just sent it back to a lower court for further consideration.  The original case made the argument that the Uighurs had nowhere else to go.  Now they do have other options.  They can go to Palau but they’d rather be in the United States and they feel the U.S. kind of owes them.  So, those Uighurs, in Guantanamo continue to wait.  And the Uighurs here in Palau wait too, in a lovely but alien, tropical limbo.  For The World, I’m Mary Kay Magistad, Palau.

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