AUSTRALIA has been asked to grant asylum to a group of Chinese Muslim men who have been released from detention at Guantanamo Bay, amid fears that they would be executed if they are sent back to China.
Australia's Chinese Muslim community is urging the Howard Government to settle the men following a request from the US, which no longer considers them a terrorist threat.
According to a report in The New York Times, Australia is one of nearly 100 countries that have been asked by the US to settle the men — with little success.
Chinese officials have pressured many countries to refuse to settle them and want them returned to China, the paper reports.
Only Albania, a staunch ally of the US, has agreed to accept five of the men, who are now languishing in a squalid refugee camp in the former communist country.
International human rights groups say China's communist Government has led a heavy-handed campaign of religious repression against the Uighur ethnic Muslim minority in western China.
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