China defends detention of Uighur model

BEIJING, July 18 (BBC): A Uighur fashion model who filmed himself handcuffed to a bed in an epidemic prevention centre in Xinjiang was lawfully detained, Chinese officials have said.
Merdan Ghappar sent video of himself, and a series of accompanying text messages, to his family in February.
They were passed to the BBC and published earlier this month.
The messages offered a rare, detailed account from inside Xinjiang's highly secure and secretive detention system.
In his account, Mr Ghappar described 18 days spent shackled and hooded with over 50 others in a jail. He said he was then isolated in an epidemic prevention centre, where he filmed the video.
Relatives say the 31-year-old was forcibly transported back to the far-western region of Xinjiang in January after completing a 16-month sentence for a drugs offence in the southern Chinese city of Foshan, where he'd been living and working.
Now, more than two weeks after the BBC sent a list of questions to Chinese authorities, a response has come in the form of a written statement by the Xinjiang government press office.
"According to article 37 of the Prison Law of the People's Republic of China, the people's government shall help released prisoners to resettle," it says.
"During the transfer, Merdan Ghappar committed acts of self-harm and excessive acts against the police."
It continues: "They took legal measures to stop him, and lifted those measures once his mood had stabilised."
Although Mr Ghappar had spent years in Foshan - where friends and relatives say he made good money modelling clothes - he was taken back to his city of birth of Kucha in Xinjiang.
We showed the Chinese government statement to Merdan Ghappar's uncle, Abdulhakim Ghappar, who now lives in the Netherlands after leaving Xinjiang in 2011.
"If the police wanted to arrange help to get him resettled for work or something, they should have helped him in Foshan because he is working there, he has a house there," he told me.