Switzerland agreed on Wednesday to accept two Chinese Uighurs currently being held at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. China criticized the move, warning that “the position of Switzerland will surely undermine China-Switzerland relations,” according to a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu.
China’s alleges that the two Uighurs were members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a group listed by the UN as a terrorist group, and maintains that the two should be returned to China for prosecution. The pair has been detained at Guantanamo for nearly eight years.
“We have stable, good relations with China and we want to keep them that way,” Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf has said. The Swiss government has stressed that the decision to take the inmates was approved on humanitarian grounds and should not be interpreted as favoring one country over another.
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