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On December 18 a ministry spokesman declared that the Uighurs “were not real
refugees” but rather “criminals escaping from China and involved with a terrorist organ-
ization.” 5 Police armed with machine guns entered the safe-house compound, and forced
the Uighurs to board a bus with curtains drawn over the windows. Those who asked
where they were going were answered with kicks and blows. The group was driven to an
Interior Ministry detention center where they were held in two small cells, some in hand-
cuffs. Shortly before their departure, Sara Colm, a researcher for Human Rights Watch,
had received a text message from one of the Uighurs, a young man named Yusup. “Please
help us out,” he wrote, “otherwise we are going to be killed.” 6 A few hours later Yusup
and his compatriots were gone.
Most observers were stunned by the speed of the reversal. Denise Coughlan, the Aus-
tralian nun who headed JRS and was closely involved in the Uighur case, was shocked
at how quickly a house of refuge became a house of betrayal. “Like sheep going to the
slaughter, the people went to the safe-house clearly believing they were going to be pro-
tected,” she told me. “How they can call a pregnant mother with two children in her arms
a terrorist is beyond my imagination.”
The next morning, Xi Jinping and his entourage touched down in Siem Reap and drove
into town along a sunny street lined with waving schoolchildren and strings of Chinese
flags. Beijing's president-in-waiting posed for photos at Angkor Wat and then flew to Ph-
nom Penh, where Cambodian soldiers in white uniforms saluted him outside the Sino-
modernist building housing the Council of Ministers—a recent $30 million “gift” from
Beijing. After inking their seven-figure deal, Xi and Hun Sen toasted the agreement with
champagne. The two men clinked glasses, and the news cameras flashed their silver over
a new apogee in Sino-Cambodian relations.
The deportation of the Uighurs was a vivid illustration of China's growing power in Cam-
bodia, capping a decade in which it had risen to become perhaps the most important for-
eign influence over Hun Sen's government. Today Chinese state banks act like a giant
cash box for the Cambodian government, bankrolling the construction of bridges, hydro-
power dams, real estate projects, and tourist resorts. Chinese-built highways have opened
up remote corners of the country. Beijing has given around $2.7 billion in loans and grants
since 1992, most of them in the last decade. 7 Bilateral trade has also boomed. While Thai-
land and the United States remain Cambodia's top trade partners, China is well on the
way to eclipsing both.
Chinese influence has also taken softer forms. In recent years dozens of Chinese-lan-
guage schools have opened their doors in Phnom Penh; with more than 15,000 students,
the Duanhua School is the largest in the world outside mainland China. Chinese tour
groups flood in increasing numbers to the temples of Angkor, while businessmen from
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