ANCHOR: Uighur people living in Japan and their supporters take to the streets to
protest against the Beijing Olympic. Let's join our correspondent in Japan for more on the story...
STORY: More than 100 human rights activists rallied in Tokyo on Wednesday to protest the passing of the Olympic torch through East Turkestan, a Chinese communist party-controlled region, populated by ethnic-minority Muslim Uighurs.
Their protest came after a report on Monday indicated that Chinese authorities in the restive far western region of Xinjiang, demolished a mosque for refusing to put up signs supporting this August's Beijing Olympics.
[Ilham Mahmut, Japan Representative of the World Uighur Congress]:
"The world is going in the direction of democracy and maybe some 90 percent of the countries are by now, democratic. Nonetheless, the Chinese government is going in the opposite direction and they are trying to eliminate us."
Mahmut has been living in Japan for seven years, working as an engineer.
Beijing says al Qaeda is working with militants in Xinjiang in an effort to use terror as a means of establishing an independent state called East Turkistan. Oil-rich Xinjiang is home to 8 million Turkic speaking Uighurs, many of whom resent the growing economic and cultural influence of the Han Chinese.
One protester joined the rally after finding out that human rights conditions in Uighur, are very similar to those in Tibet.
[Fumiyo Mukai, IT Agent]:
"Originally, I'm a Tibet supporter, but the more I learned about human rights issues in China, I've come to realize that Tibet and Uighur are having the same problem."
Nensyu Shirakawa,a former Silk Road traveler, has been accepting exchange students from East Turkestan for the past two decades.
[Nensyu Shirakawa, Former Silk Road Traveler]:
"The Chinese government takes 80,000 Uighur women to the mainland every year and that's just one of the unjust policies imposed upon Uighur people."
There are an estimated 700 Uighur people living in Japan.
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