Bermuda signs tax agreement with China

Bermuda and China have signed a tax-information agreement and Premier Paula Cox said that the recent controversy over the decision of her predecessor to offer sanctuary to four Chinese Muslim Uighurs last year was not mentioned during the talks.

"The negotiations and discussions that led up to the agreement did not touch on or reflect at all the issue of the Uighurs," she said.

However, a leaked document shows that a French official has asked how much Bermuda, a British Overseas Territory, was paid for accepting the former detainees at the US base at Guantánamo Bay on Cuba.

The tax agreement signed on Thursday coincided with the first reference to Bermuda in leaked US diplomatic cables made public through the whistle-blowing web site WikiLeaks.

In June 2009, four Uighurs were released from the US detention camp in Cuba and secretly flown to Bermuda.

Former premier Dr Ewart Brown, who organised the relocation without the knowledge of most of his government colleagues or permission from the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, has always maintained there was no 'quid pro quo' for Bermuda accepting the Uighurs.

humanitarian gesture

He said it was a humanitarian gesture, but the move was deeply unpopular with the majority of Bermudians. The British government has yet to determine the Uighurs' fate.

A month after the four men arrived in Bermuda, Deputy Director for the Office of Transnational Threats in France, Martin Julliard, asked how much money Bermuda received.

The issue was also discussed during a meeting in July last year between Eric Chevallier, a special adviser to the French Foreign Affairs Minister, and Dan Fried, US Special Envoy for Closure of the Guantánamo Detention Facility.

The European nation was considering accepting six former Guantánamo detainees.

China has always called the Uighurs 'terrorist suspects' and claims they want to create an independent homeland in the western province of Xinjiang. In 2009, the Chinese government condemned the transfer of Uighurs to Palau but made no mention of those coming to Bermuda.

Cox, who replaced Brown as premier in October, said that she hoped the island could strengthen links with the world's second biggest economy.

- CMC