The Chinese Foreign Ministry has indicated that 20 Uighur asylum seekers who were deported from Cambodia to China in December are being or have been put on trial for what China considers criminal activities. 'China is a country ruled by law,' Ma Zhaoxu, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in a written statement to The New York Times. 'The judicial authorities deal with illegal criminal issues strictly according to law.' Ma's statement came last week in a brief reply to a list of detailed questions The New York Times sent to the Foreign Ministry inquiring about the fate of the Uighurs. Chinese officials promised to deal with the Uighurs in a transparent manner when they were returned to China in December, but the Chinese government has so far refused to release any information on the whereabouts and well-being of the Uighurs. After the Uighurs showed up in Cambodia late last year, Chinese officials said they were being investigated for possible crimes related to deadly ethnic rioting that broke out in the western region of Xinjiang in July. The Uighurs had applied for asylum at a U.N. office in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. Since the rioting erupted in Xinjiang, a desert region that the Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim ethnic group, call their homeland, Chinese authorities have been detaining Uighurs, trying them and on occasion sentencing them to death. Even before the unrest last year, many Uighurs in Xinjiang had been complaining about intense discrimination by the Han, who dominate China. In the rioting on July 5, when Uighurs rampaged through the streets of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, nearly 200 people died and at least 1,700 were injured, most of them Han, the Chinese government said. Han vigilantes took to the streets after July 5 to seek revenge. A group of 22 Uighurs arrived in Cambodia in November with the aid of a Christian network in China that helps North Koreans get to countries where they can apply for asylum. The Cambodian government deported 20 of them right before Vice President Xi Jinping, expected to be the next top leader of China, arrived in Cambodia on a visit. China is the biggest investor in Cambodia. The two Uighurs who were not sent back to China had somehow disappeared, Cambodian officials said at the time. No word has emerged of their fate since. 