(Tronto Star)
Mississauga man aided defection of 7 Chinese acrobats `They are very scared and worried for their families'
It was midnight last Saturday when Mohamed Tohti's cellphone rang in his Mississauga home.
On the other end of the line, in an Ottawa hotel, a man spoke in a quavering voice. "Please help us. We want freedom."
The man was a 40-year-old performer with a touring Chinese acrobatic troupe from the Xinjiang Uighur province of China, a mainly Muslim region where some feel persecuted by the Beijing government.
He and six fellow acrobats were due to check out the next day before flying back to China from Toronto. There would be a small window between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Sunday when the five men and two women could escape the watchful eyes of their tour leaders.
The seven, among a group of 13 who came to Canada to perform during Chinese New Year celebrations in Toronto and Ottawa, had no idea where they were. The man on the phone spelled out for Tohti the name of a nearby hockey arena where they would meet: "O-t-t-a-w-a C-i-v-i-c C-e-n-t-r-e A-r-e-n-a."
"We will see you at the entrance there at noon tomorrow," the man whispered before he hung up the phone.
At dawn the next day, the troupe leaders, who held the performers' travel documents, locked their belongings into a room and told the acrobats they had two hours of free time to see the city.
One of the seven acrobats said that they were only paid $35 a day and suggested selling parts of their costumes for money to buy souvenirs.
An unsuspecting troupe official gave the seven the key to their room. They grabbed their luggage and ran to the downtown Ottawa hockey arena, where they were greeted by Tohti and another Uighur émigré waiting in their vehicles.

"The moment they got in the car, they were relieved and said, `We are alive, in one piece and now we have freedom,'" Tohti said in an interview yesterday.
Tohti, a former professor at the Kashgar Teachers' College in Urumqi in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China, works for a large Toronto company. He is one of 55 members of the closely knit Uighur community in the GTA. The 39-year-old is the president of the Uighur Canada Association.
He didn't know much about the seven asylum seekers, who are between the ages of 28 and 40. He met them once briefly on Jan. 23 in the home of a friend after they contacted Tohti through a number posted on the association's Web site.
They talked about the political climate back home and how the acrobats were living on noodle soup during their tour.
Tohti, a former student movement leader who was labelled by the central government as a separatist (or "splittist" in Beijing's language) is familiar with the life of a fugitive. He fled China with his wife and their newborn baby in 1991, carrying fake passports as they travelled by train from Beijing through Mongolia, Russia and Romania before they arrived in Turkey. They came to Canada in November, 1998.

"Most people leave there because of the political persecutions and ethnic discrimination by the Chinese government," Tohti said. "For me and my family, getting the fake documents was the only way out."
A 2002 Amnesty International report documented "gross violations of human rights" in the predominantly Muslim Xinjiang region as a result of the Communist regime's crackdown on Uighur separatists and Muslim militants.
Christian Tyler, author of Wild West China: The Taming of Xinjiang, describes the northwest border region as an apartheid-like society.
"It's a split society: You have Uighurs on the bottom end and new immigrant (Han) Chinese on the top end taking all the administrative jobs," Tyler said in an interview.
"(This) reminds me of the old Soviet days when artists and dancers were people who wanted to defect because they had the opportunity to go abroad and they would try to stay abroad."
Tohti said there are about 1 million Uighur refugees around the world. Fewer than 200 are in Canada, with the majority in Kazakhstan and Turkey.
The seven acrobats filed refugee claims in Canada Monday, but Tohti would not reveal their names or whereabouts.
"They are still very scared now and they are worried for their families back home. Government officials in Xinjiang have already questioned their families," Tohti noted. "Life for their families won't be easy."
On Wednesday, the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa issued a statement denying that the seven are refugees. "All of them are married with their families back in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China.
Their families and relatives are now anxiously looking forward to their safe return at an early date," it said.
With files from Gabe Gonda