By Catherine Putz
THE DIPLOMAT - August 17, 2016
In May, 98 Uyghurs
from China’s Xinjiang were arrested at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport
carrying Kyrgyz passports. The group was attempting to make a pilgrimage
to Saudi Arabia. They had reportedly left on their Chinese passports
from Urumqi. According to the Hurriyet Daily News,
thye bought tickets to Northern Cyprus and passed through passport
checks with those tickets before meeting four men in the transit hall
who passed them fake Kyrgyz passports and boarding passes for a flight
to Jeddah.
The Uyghurs were to be deported back to China (it’s not
clear they have been already) and the four fake passport peddlers were
detained by Turkish police. The fake passports reportedly costs 2,500
euro each and the tickets $300.
According to the head of the Kyrgyz passport authority,
Taiyrbek Sarpashev, the counterfeiting ring is making a lot of money off
Uyghurs trying to get to places like Saudi Arabia. “[The] average for
Chinese citizens [to make the Saudi pilgrimage] costs between $10,000 to
$20,000; the income of the criminal group is estimated to be more than
$1 million,” he said in an interview with RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz service.
READ MORE....
