As the Obama Administration makes plans to close Guantanamo Bay, 17 Chinese nationals in American custody are posing an especially thorny diplomatic problem.

The prisoners are members of the Uighur (pronounced ‘wee-gur’) Muslim minority in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang. Although Beijing has asked that its citizens be returned to their home country, the US has been reticent to send the men back to China where the Uighur community has long faced religious persecution.

Ilshat Hassan, a Uighur asylum-seeker living in the US, says (via The New York Times) that it is likely the detainees will be executed upon their return to China, where they are seen as a terrorist threat. Much like the situation in Tibet, Uighur nationalists have been listed as terrorists by the Chinese government, who have exploited the designation to justify harsh restrictions of Uighur liberties. Although the United States has recognized the Xinjiang-based East Turkistan Islamic Movement as a terrorist organization, China expert Dru Gladney of Pomona College says the importance of ETIM–whose membership may be less than 10– has been grossly exaggerated by Chinese officials.

Though still in US custody, the Uighur prisoners were actually cleared for release by the Bush Administration in 2008 given the dubious evidence linking them to regional terrorist organizations. The majority of the detainees were picked up in Pakistan during the American campaign in Tora Bora in 2001 and 2002. An American appeals court ruled in February that the United States had no legal grounds for holding the men as enemy combatants, and recommended that they be released.

Problem is no third party has been willing to take the prisoners in. This week, Germany rebuffed requests from American officials that they take in 12 of the Uighur prisoners. According to Uwe Schünemann, a conservative minister from Lower Saxony, accepting the detainees could pose a danger to German citizens. He demanded more information on the detainees before any final decisions are made. Providing political asylum for the Chinese citizens might also endanger pivotal economic relationships between Germany and China.

If no third party is willing to accept the Uighurs, the United States may be forced to take them in. Although members of the Uighur expatriate community like Hassan say they are willing to house the freed Gitmo prisoners, the release of one-time suspected terrorists to the US mainland is still a major point of contention in Congress. In order to make good on his promise to close Gitmo, the Obama Administration will need to sway public opinion in the Uighur’s favor.

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