“We are asking President Toribiong to help us leave Palau, help us, we need to go out, we hope he help us,” Adel Noori said in an interview with Horizon.
Noori, said since they arrived in Palau in November, the Palauan community has been hospitable and supportive.
“Since we arrived in Palau there has been no big problem,” Noori said.
Noori said they have been told living in this lush tropical island will be temporary.
The Uighurs however thinks that it might be a long while before they find a permanent home, they are not losing hope though that a third country will agree to take them.
“We need a country who will give us passports,” Noori said.
Two of the former Guantanamo Bay detainees Edham Mamet and Ghappar Abdul have found their wives and brought them to this island-country to join them and begin their new lives.
They however expressed desire to leave Palau and be somewhere else bigger, like Australia where there is a sizeable number of Uighurs.
Mamet, a few weeks ago got married- his wife is a Uighur living in Australia. Abdul meanwhile met his wife through the internet, who he said is from East Turkistan.
Abdul’s wife flew to Palau last week and married her in a simple ceremony at the Uighur house, Friday.
The six Uighurs are making effort to fit in and has learned the English language fast. However, Palau seemed to be a tough place for them appealing to President Johnson Toribiong to help them find a permanent place where they will feel at home.
Mamet’s wife and two children from a previous marriage joined him here and his new family is now living outside of the Uighur house.
Mamet was reluctant to talk about how he met his wife but said he has already applied a petition to migrate to Australia.
Noori said , the five others are hopeful that if the Australian government approves Mamet’s petition, their pleas will also be granted.
Noori added that “married or not married, we want to leave Palau.”
The six are continually attending English classes at the Palau Community College, five days in a week that run for six hours.
The classes will end in August, but the men are unsure of the prospect of finding a job, saying that they still need time to improve conversing in English.
“I think to me it is not enough. We need some time to understand grammar and practice,” Noori said.
He said that, they will wait until their English is better and starts finding work.
Earlier, President Toribiong has asked the Australian government to allow the six former Guantanamo Bay detainees permanent settlement in their country.
The president said he understands, the men wanting to have social relationships.
Although Palau is a tropical paradise, for the six men being physically free is not enough because of the lack of Uighur community here and the uncertainty of getting a permanent home.
Although most of the Uighurs has yet to fully converse in English, their understanding of the language has improved.
The Uighurs were held at Guantanamo Bay for more than seven years despite being cleared of all charges. They said they had fled to Afghanistan to escape persecution from China, which wants the men returned home to be tried, saying they belong to an Islamic separatist movement.
Noori clarified that they are peace-loving people who have been declared non-enemy combatants by the United States government.
