Majority of the Arnhem city council voted for an immediate break of ties over human rights violations that are taking place on a massive scale in China…reports Asian Lite News
Terming Beijing’s treatment of Uyghurs as ‘genocide’, Netherland’s Arnhem city broke cooperation chains with their sister city of Wuhan.
In a surprise decision, the majority of the Arnhem city council voted against the mayor’s plan to continue the relationship with Wuhan and stay in dialogue with China about human rights, a majority of political parties of the Netherlands voted for an immediate break of ties, NL Times reported.
“We believe that human rights violations are taking place on a massive scale in China and the situation of the Uyghurs and other minorities in China is deteriorating by the day and that under these circumstances it is immoral to maintain city ties with China,” political parties said during the discussion.
The lower house of Dutch parliament also agreed that the way in which China treats the Uyghur people should be called genocide, GroenLinks, Partij van de Arbeid, Christian Democratic Appeal, PvdD, DENK, ChristenUnie, 50Plus and two individuals from Netherland parliament supported the Democrats66’s proposal for the Dutch government to stop mincing words around this issue, NL Times reported citing European media reports.
LEAD — Chinese President Xi Jinping (Source twitter@ChinaAmbUN) (3)
“This involves terrible abuses against the Uyghur Muslim minority. We should not mince words and call it genocide,” D66 parliamentarian Sjoerd Sjoerdsma said.
Meanwhile, a group of protestors including Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians, and human rights defenders from Hong Kong, Japan and China demonstrated against the human rights abuses by Beijing and called upon the world community to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games.
They pleaded for the world to act and save the lives of ethnic minorities inside mainland China, as also the political and civil rights of the people of Hong Kong. (ANI)
The bill has currently received unanimous consent, and has to mandatorily pass the House of Representatives before being sent to President Joe Biden to be signed into law…reports Asian Lite News
The US Senate passed a bill on Wednesday to impose a ban on the import of all products from or manufactured in China’s Xinjiang region. The ban will only be waived if importers can prove that the products weren’t made with forced labour, thereby marking the US’ latest effort to punish Beijing for their treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim groups.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act reportedly needs the US Department of Homeland Security to form a list of entities working with the Chinese government to suppress Uyghurs and other groups. The bill would create a “rebuttable presumption” assuming that all products made in Xinjiang are done with forced labour and thus banned under the 1930 Tariff Act, unless importers can prove otherwise.
The bill has currently received unanimous consent, and has to mandatorily pass the House of Representatives before being sent to President Joe Biden to be signed into law. Republication Senator Marco Rubio – who introduced the bill, with Democrat Jeff Merkley, called for fast action on the bill by the House.
“We will not turn a blind eye to the CCP’s ongoing crimes against humanity, and we will not allow corporations a free pass to profit from those horrific abuses,” Rubio said in a statement.
Democrat Merkley, on the other hand, highlighted that no US corporation “should profit from these abuses” and that no US consumers should be “inadvertently purchasing products from slave labour”.
The US administration has consistently criticised Beijing over its actions against ethnic groups, saying they amount to genocide and crimes against humanity. In 2018, UN experts cited that anywhere from tens of thousands to over 1 million Uyghurs have been detained in China, and coerced into taking jobs under a labour-transfer programme. After this, the US put a ban on Xinjiang solar products, tomatoes, and cotton. Besides the US, the European Union (EU), Canada, and the UK have declared sanctions on China for their treatment of ethnic groups. However, China, in retaliation, has called the allegations the “biggest lie of the century,” stating that the country’s policies are to lift it out of poverty, counter-extremism, and uplift the economy.
Last week, the US included 34 new entities to its blacklist, including 14 Chinese ventures with alleged links to human-rights abuses in the Xinjiang area of China. If passed, the latest Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act also brings in the chance of visa and asset-blocking sanctions in connection to Xinjiang to include foreign people and entities.
In November 2020, the former Donald Trump administration removed Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM)from America’s terror list, saying at the time there was “no credible evidence” that ETIM still exists, reports Asian Lite News
Amid the ongoing US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, China is worried about the instability to come in the country, a revival of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), its cross-border agitation and terrorism in Xinjiang region, said scholar Salman Rafi Sheikh.
The ETIM, also known as the Turkistan Islamic Movement, is an ethnic Uyghur group active in Afghanistan that has long sought to achieve independence for Xinjiang, which it envisions as a future “East Turkestan.”
The ETIM is also active in Syria’s civil war, where battle-hardened fighters have largely been grouped in Idlib and other northern regions. The United Nations has categorised the group as a “terror organisation” since 2002.
In November 2020, the former Donald Trump administration removed ETIM from America’s terror list, saying at the time there was “no credible evidence” that ETIM still exists.
In an opinion piece in Asia Times, Sheikh said as the Taliban surges north in the wake of America’s troop withdrawal, it seems likely only a matter of time before the group overruns Kabul and its US-backed government, and establishes in its place a new “Islamic Emirate”, as it has repeatedly said it aims to do.
“A Taliban takeover, analysts and observers believe, will open new space for groups like ETIM to recruit and radicalize Uyghur youth, many of whom are already reportedly deeply disaffected by reports of Beijing’s Uyghur “vocational camps” and authoritarian control of Muslim religious practices in Xinjiang,” Sheikh added.
He further stated that for Beijing, however, the concern is not merely the spread of radical ideas among Uyghur Muslims in neighboring Afghanistan. Rather, it is the threat a resurgence of extremism could pose to its strategic Belt and Road Initiative in the region, not least in Pakistan.
Four of China’s six so-called Silk Road networks, including the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), emanate from or pass through Xinjiang. Those roads aim to connect China with Russia, Central, Southern, and Western Asia, reaching the Mediterranean Sea.
Specifically, Silk Road networks other than the CPEC that run through Xinjiang include the China-Central Asia-West Asia Economic Corridor, the New Eurasia Land Bridge Economic Corridor, and the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor.
Sheikh said that while the departure of US and NATO forces from neighboring Afghanistan is no doubt broadly welcomed by China, it also puts Beijing in a new strategic quandary – one that could make or break its BRI ambitions in the region.
“Beijing’s concerns about the ETIM in Afghanistan are not simply an exaggerated threat assessment to justify its authoritarian control of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. In 2008, China’s Ministry of Public Security released a list of eight “terrorists” linked to ETIM with detailed charges against them, including threats to bomb the 2008 Beijing Olympics,” Sheikh added.
Citing the recent United Nations Security Council report, Sheikh said, despite the Trump administration’s denials ETIM not only exists and operates in Afghanistan but is also pursuing a “transnational agenda.”
According to the report, ETIM is among the “foremost” foreign terror groups operating in Afghanistan. The report said ETIM is situated mainly in Badakhshan, Kunduz and Takhar provinces and that Abdul Haq (Memet Amin Memet) remains the group’s leader, he said.
The report goes on to say approximately 500 ETIM operate in the north and northeast of Afghanistan, primarily in Raghistan and Warduj districts, Badakhshan, with financing based in Raghistan. Those northern areas connect with China through the narrow Wakhan Corridor, a potential passageway for Xinjiang-bound militants.
The UN report said ETIM collaborates with Lashkar-e-Islam and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, two banned Pakistani groups. It also said ETIM “has a transnational agenda to target Xinjiang, China, and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, as well as Chitral, Pakistan, which poses a threat to China, Pakistan and other regional states,” he said.
US soldiers prepare to depart from Kunduz, Afghanistan. (Brian Harris Planet Pix ZUMA_dpa_IANS)
Citing another report, Sheikh said that it indicates Beijing is trying to get a grip on the situation in Afghanistan. According to media reports, in December 2020, a Chinese spy ring was arrested in Afghanistan.
Although Beijing denied the allegation, Ahmad Zia Saraj, the chief of Afghanistan’s National Directorate Security, confirmed to the Afghan Parliament that the arrests had indeed been made. What information the reputed spies may have gathered and transmitted to Beijing before their apprehensions, however, is unknown, he added. (ANI)
According to officials, a total of 197 people died, with 1,721 suffered injuries in the riot…reports Asian Lite News.
Members of the Uyghurs and the Tibetan communities protested outside the Chinese embassy in London to commemorate the 12th anniversary of the Urumqi massacre.
On July 5, 2009, violent riots broke out in Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang. The Chinese government launched a crackdown against Uyghurs protesting against the killing of two Uyghurs. Thousands of protestors were killed, disappeared or injured.
According to officials, a total of 197 people died, with 1,721 suffered injuries in the riot.
Uyghur-run mosques were temporarily closed. By November 2009, over 400 individuals faced criminal charges for their actions during the riots. Nine were executed in November 2009, and by February 2010, at least 26 had received death sentences.
Reports from non-governmental organisations based on interviews with eyewitnesses indicated that security forces deliberately used live ammunition during the protest.
To mark the 12th anniversary of the riots, protests were organised in several cities around the world.
In London, a peaceful protest was held outside the Chinese embassy. This annual anniversary, attended by about 50 people, coincided with the monthly protest organised by the Uyghur Solidarity UK.
Uyghur
Pro Uyghur organisation, World Uyghur Congress (WUC), is commemorating the “Urumchi Massacre.”
Meanwhile, on Sunday, members of the Uyghur community held a protest march in Japan’s Tokyo.
On July 4, a 15-day walking protest has been launched against China’s massive human rights abuses of Uyghur Muslims by the East Turkistan Association of Canada. (ANI)
Early this year, the US became the first country in the world to declare the Chinese actions in Xinjiang as “genocide….reports Asian Lite News
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday virtually met Uyghur internment camp survivors, and relatives of individuals detained in Xinjiang, and expressed Washington’s commitment to pressure China to halt ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs minority.
The State Department said Blinken wanted to hear directly from the seven former detainees, relatives of others and advocate about conditions that they and the Uyghur community more broadly face.
“Today Secretary Blinken met with seven Uyghur internment camp survivors, advocates, and relatives of individuals detained in Xinjiang to express the United States’ commitment to work with allies and partners in calling for an end to the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s ongoing crimes against humanity and genocide against Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang,” said State Department spokesperson Ned Price.
China has been rebuked globally for cracking down on Uyghur Muslims by sending them to mass detention camps, interfering in their religious activities and sending members of the community to undergo some form of forcible re-education or indoctrination.
Early this year, the US became the first country in the world to declare the Chinese actions in Xinjiang as “genocide.
Recently, US State Department released its 2021 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) placing China among the worst countries in human trafficking following its increasing repression of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.
The report accused China of using surveillance technologies and criminal charges to abduct and detain more than one million Muslims, including Uyghurs, ethnic Hui, ethnic Kazakhs, and more, in up to 1,200 state-run internment camps.
The United States will continue to place human rights at the forefront of our China policy and will always support the voices of activists, survivors, and family members of victims who courageously speak out against these atrocities, said the spokesperson. (ANI)
The majority of targeted Uyghurs are located in Muslim-majority countries including Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey…reports Asian Lite News
China’s persecution of Uyghurs overseas has spread to nearly 30 countries around the world, largely because the governments of these host countries fear Beijing’s power and influence, claims a new report.
At least 28 countries across the world complicit in China’s harassment and intimidation of Uyghurs, with countries in the Middle East and North Africa as worst offenders, reported Voice of America (VOA), says the report compiled jointly by rights group Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs and the Uyghur Human Rights Project.
Titled ‘No Space Left to Run, China’s Transnational Repression of Uyghurs’, it argues that Beijing uses a number of methods to intimidate Uyghurs living in other countries, including everything from the use of spyware and hacking, to releasing red notices against targeted individuals through Interpol.
“Since 2017, the most common method for silencing overseas dissent is to threaten an individual’s relatives residing within China’s borders with detention, and in some cases, have a target’s close family issue public statements as part of government smear campaigns designed to undermine an activist’s credibility,” Bradley Jardine, research director at Oxus Society and one of the authors of the report, told VOA via email.
The majority of targeted Uyghurs are located in Muslim-majority countries including Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which have been called the largest offenders of transnational repression of the Uyghurs, according to Jardine. He said that some of these countries have no legal protections for vulnerable minorities and the rule of law tends to be weak or susceptible to political interference.
“This has made the Middle East fertile ground for China’s campaign of global intimidation,” Jardine added.
According to the report, the first such case happened in Pakistan in 1997, when the Pakistan government deported 14 Uyghurs to Beijing who were accused of being separatists. All of them were executed upon arrival in China, VOA reported.
Between 1997 and December 2016, China was involved in the detention or deportation back to China of more than 851 Uyghurs across 23 countries. Since 2017, Beijing’s actions have expanded dramatically, resulting in at least 695 Uyghurs detained or deported to China from 15 separate countries, the report said.
Additionally, upon Beijing’s request in 2017, Egyptian police detained scores of Chinese students of the Uyghur ethnic minority. Some had to flee to Turkey, others were sent back to Beijing.
The report indicated that often, these major offenders are economically dependent on China. They tend to use Uyghurs living overseas as bargaining chips when negotiating with Beijing.
“The main motivations tend to be opportunism. The major offenders in the report tend to have very strong economic or security ties with China, cracking down on Uyghur minorities in exchange for investments, concessions or military hardware,” Jardine told VOA.
Close to two million Uyghurs are currently held in internment camps in Xinjiang. Rights organisations and former detainees refer to them as concentration camps, while Chinese officials maintain them as “vocational education centres established in accordance with the law in the face of frequent violence and terrorism in the past.”
China has been globally rebuked for cracking down on Uyghur Muslims by sending them to mass detention camps to undergo some form of forcible “re-education or indoctrination”.
Over the past four months, the Canadian, Dutch, British, Lithuanian, and Czech parliaments adopted motions recognising the Uyghur crisis as genocide. (ANI)
As Chinese Communist Party celebrates the centenary, the Campaign for Uyghurs (CFU) has asked the world to hold China accountable for the human rights abuses and genocides in Xinjiang. 100 years of CCP control is nothing to celebrate, it said, reports Asian Lite News
Campaign for Uyghurs, a Washington-based advocacy group working for democratic rights and freedom of Uyghur community in China and around the world, has condemned the centenary celebration of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as an offensive show of force.
The CFU sees CCP as “a brutal regime that is nothing more than a colonising force driven by imperial and genocidal aims.”
It said, 1949, when the CCP seized power, marked the “beginning of a dark era in history, defined largely by bloodshed, mismanagement, brutal repression, and slavery.” “Today, that has morphed into active genocide in East Turkistan,” it added.
“As the Chinese regime looks to celebrate a milestone of achievement, millions of Uyghurs are being held in concentration camps where their very culture is made criminal, where they are subjected to sexual abuse, and tortured. Campaign for Uyghurs (CFU) condemns this celebration as an offensive show of force. 100 years of CCP control is nothing to celebrate,” the CFU said in a press release.
Gulshan Abbas is a victim of the CCP's genocide against Uyghurs, falsely imprisoned in retaliation for her sister's advocacy. #FreeGulshanAbbashttps://t.co/iBMXsdT7Bl
The CFU also called on world leaders to hold China accountable for the human rights abuses and genocides in Xinjiang.
“President Xi Jinping will call for 100 more years of Chinese Communist rule, but that is a decision that can be up to the international community. We must hold the CCP accountable, for Uyghurs all over the world, and for every person who has seen their life destroyed in the Chinese regime’s relentless pursuit of power,” it said.
Rushan Abbas, Executive Director of Campaign for Uyghurs remarked “The Chinese Communist Party has been an oppressive force of destruction globally. Under the guise of economic improvement, they have seized the basic rights of everyone living under their iron thumb.”
“Now, they have instigated this horrific genocide of the Uyghur people, a crime that invalidates the right of any perpetrator to rule. This is a deeply sad day for the world, since we have yet to stop the CCP’s reign of terror. The genocide of the Uyghurs is ongoing still, and each day the Party is becoming bolder. This is our final wake-up-call that the CCP must be stopped if we are to preserve a global system of dignity and order that is respected by all,” he added.
The CFU said, Uyghurs are kept in the dark about their families, with millions missing, loved ones unable to contact them or know anything regarding their condition. They also said that the world will only grow darker so long as the international community remains willfully blind to the truth of what is happening in China.
The CCP’s aims are becoming more broad, and they seek international influence through their Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). They desire more control and more power, and have demonstrated clearly what they are willing to do to get it, they said.
According to a report, Beijing uses a number of methods to intimidate Uyghur people living in other countries, including everything from the use of spyware and hacking, to releasing red notices against targeted individuals through Interpol, reports Asian Lite News
China’s persecution of Uyghurs overseas has spread to nearly 30 countries around the world, largely because the governments of these host countries fear Beijing’s power and influence, claims a new report.
At least 28 countries across the world complicit in China’s harassment and intimidation of Uyghurs, with countries in the Middle East and North Africa as worst offenders, reported Voice of America (VOA), says the report compiled jointly by rights group Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs and the Uyghur Human Rights Project.
Titled ‘No Space Left to Run, China’s Transnational Repression of Uyghurs’, it argues that Beijing uses a number of methods to intimidate Uyghurs living in other countries, including everything from the use of spyware and hacking, to releasing red notices against targeted individuals through Interpol.
“Since 2017, the most common method for silencing overseas dissent is to threaten an individual’s relatives residing within China’s borders with detention, and in some cases, have a target’s close family issue public statements as part of government smear campaigns designed to undermine an activist’s credibility,” Bradley Jardine, research director at Oxus Society and one of the authors of the report, told VOA via email.
The majority of targeted Uyghurs are located in Muslim-majority countries including Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which have been called the largest offenders of transnational repression of the Uyghurs, according to Jardine. He said that some of these countries have no legal protections for vulnerable minorities and the rule of law tends to be weak or susceptible to political interference.
“This has made the Middle East fertile ground for China’s campaign of global intimidation,” Jardine added.
According to the report, the first such case happened in Pakistan in 1997, when the Pakistan government deported 14 Uyghurs to Beijing who were accused of being separatists. All of them were executed upon arrival in China, VOA reported.
Between 1997 and December 2016, China was involved in the detention or deportation back to China of more than 851 Uyghurs across 23 countries. Since 2017, Beijing’s actions have expanded dramatically, resulting in at least 695 Uyghurs detained or deported to China from 15 separate countries, the report said.
Additionally, upon Beijing’s request in 2017, Egyptian police detained scores of Chinese students of the Uyghur ethnic minority. Some had to flee to Turkey, others were sent back to Beijing.
The report indicated that often, these major offenders are economically dependent on China. They tend to use Uyghurs living overseas as bargaining chips when negotiating with Beijing.
China blames faith of Uyghur Muslims for concentration camps in Xinjiang. (source:uyghurcongress.org)
“The main motivations tend to be opportunism. The major offenders in the report tend to have very strong economic or security ties with China, cracking down on Uyghur minorities in exchange for investments, concessions or military hardware,” Jardine told VOA.
Close to two million Uyghurs are currently held in internment camps in Xinjiang. Rights organisations and former detainees refer to them as concentration camps, while Chinese officials maintain them as “vocational education centres established in accordance with the law in the face of frequent violence and terrorism in the past.”
China has been globally rebuked for cracking down on Uyghur Muslims by sending them to mass detention camps to undergo some form of forcible “re-education or indoctrination”.
Over the past four months, the Canadian, Dutch, British, Lithuanian, and Czech parliaments adopted motions recognising the Uyghur crisis as genocide. (ANI)
China has always done its best to keep expatriates and students entrapped in its censorship policies even when they are living abroad….reports Asian Lite News
China has released thousands of clips, where people are seen claiming, “We are very free”, as part of a state campaign to cover up for the cultural genocide against Uyghurs being carried out by President Xi Jinping’s regime.
Washington Post in an editorial piece highlighted that officials in China have swayed civilian opinion through a digital version of brute force, which includes vast and rapid content production, followed by vast and rapid promotion on domestic channels. Now the regime has ramped up those efforts to post the clips on YouTube, amplify them on Twitter through a network of connected accounts, and spread them further with the help of Chinese officials, state-run media and other nationalist figures.
China has always done its best to keep expatriates and students entrapped in its censorship policies even when they are living abroad through controlled social media services like WeChat. The strategy aims to keep the blindfold even on those who find their way to sites with a freer hand toward expression.
Recently, family members of 74-year-old Rebiya Kadeer, an Uyghur activist living in exile in the United States, had appeared in several of the clips, where her granddaughters, whom she hasn’t seen since they were babies, told her, “I hope you won’t be fooled again by those bad people overseas.”
The recently unearthed operation reveals China’s continued intention to exploit the openness of the United States, its allies and the technology companies their citizens rely on to spread false and regime-friendly political narratives, according to Washington Post.
Since its revolutionary days, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has viewed military and propaganda — or “the barrel of the gun and the shaft of the pen” as described by former Chairman Mao Zedong — as the two most important tools for its ascent to and hold on power, said Nectar Gan, writing for CNN.
Newspapers, literature, television, film, music, theatre and even pop culture is a conduit through which the party propagandise its ideas and policies, and shape public opinion in the direction it desires.
Propaganda has been used widely by China as a weapon in terms of the COVID-19 outbreak and mass deception.
In May, the CCP released a white paper on Tibet that was considered yet another attempt by the Communist Party of China to whitewash the ground reality through propaganda.
China has been rebuked globally for a crackdown on Uyghur Muslims by sending them to mass detention camps, interfering in their religious activities and sending members of the community to undergo some form of forcible re-education or indoctrination.
Earlier this month, Canada delivered a joint statement on behalf of 44 countries at the UN Humans Rights Council expressing grave concerns over the “Uyghur genocide” in China’s Xinjiang province.
“We urge China to allow immediate, meaningful and unfettered access to Xinjiang for independent observers,” Canada’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva Leslie Norton said at the UNHRC meeting on behalf of 40 countries.
The statement was backed by major countries Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Australia, Britain, Spain and the United States, among others. (ANI)
The nine-member Uyghur Tribunal chaired by prominent British lawyer Geoffrey Nice conducted the first set of hearings at the headquarters of the Church of England. Over 30 victims, witnesses and experts revealed their plight at the session. A second round of hearings will be held on Sept. 10-13. The panel report will be released in December … reports Asian Lite News
China and its communist leadership are in the dock as Uyghur Tribunal collected testimony from victims, witnesses from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) on enforced disappearances, detentions, and executions. More than 30 witnesses and experts testified during the four-day session in London.
SIR GEOFFREY NICE QC, Chair of the Tribunal
The victims testified about enforced disappearances, the compulsory sterilization of women and forced contraception, organ harvesting, and torture by Chinese authorities at the tribunal. The panel is investigating whether China’s treatment of its ethnic Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims constitutes genocide.
The nine-member tribunal chaired by prominent British lawyer Geoffrey Nice conducted the first set of hearings known as the “Uyghur Tribunal” at the headquarters of the Church of England. A second round of hearings will be held on Sept. 10-13. The panel report will be released in December.
Wang Leizhang, a Chinese police officer who served in the XUAR in 2018, told the panel that he came to realise that he was serving the interests not of the people but of Beijing in the XUAR, the Radio Free Asia reported. In his written testimony, Wang said his job duties focused on maintaining social order and national security by investigating anti-separatist movements in the XUAR, where he learned from other police officers about the existence of a committee organized by local authorities that decided who would be sent to the “re-education camps.” The committee also was responsible for the surveillance and monitoring of citizens as well as arrests and detentions of individuals.
“Gradually though my experience, I realized seeing through how the system worked that I wasn’t serving the people,” he said through a translator via videoconference on Monday as he wore his former policeman’s uniform. “I was actually serving the emperor and protecting their power.”
“Therefore, I can say that I’m a patriot to my people, not to the regime — the fascist regime — and how they were ruling the country in a most cruel way,” he added.
Wang left China in 2020 and was granted asylum in Germany, where he now lives.
China has held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a network of detention camps since 2017. Beijing has said that the camps are vocational training centers or re-education centers and has denied widespread and documented allegations that it has subjected Muslims living in the XUAR to severe rights abuses.
The Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim group estimated at more than 12 million people in the XUAR. Smaller numbers of Kazakhs and Kyrgyz, fellow Turkic speaking people, have also been incarcerated in the camp system.
Rushan Abbas of Campaign for Uighyurs says this genocide is happening because Uyghurs are a threat to the Chinese regime.
“The CCP demands to establish itself as the only authority in the lives of the people, so that the CCP can rob and expand their brutal colonialism across the world,” she added. “The oppression and genocidal policies used against the Uyghurs will only expand. Look at Tibet. Look at Southern Mongolia. Look at Hong Kong, at Chinese Christians and dissidents. Look at how the Belt and Road Initiative is being used to manipulate the countries of the world as the CCP fights to control the narrative globally with their blood money.
“The independent Uyghur Tribunal gives Uyghurs an opportunity to testify about the Chinese regime’s genocidal policies in order to gain their rightful day at court. Uyghurs voices must be heard. We encourage everyone to follow the proceedings, to listen to the witnesses, and to take action. The future of the entire world is at stake, and we are here today to testify not only for ourselves, but for you, and for the future of humanity!”
Nurisman Abdureshid, a 33-year-old Uyghur who has lived in Turkey since 2015 when she went there to study, told the panel that she had normal contact with her family until June 2017, and later found out that her family members had been disappeared or detained.
Rushan Abbas, Campaign for Uyghyurs
Authorities handed down long prison sentences to her mother, father, and young brother for “preparatory terrorist offences” and her mother underwent forced sterilization, she said.
Nurisman went on to say that authorities forced all Uyghur women in her village in Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) to undergo pregnancy tests and intrauterine device (IUD) checks, and that her sister-in-law aborted twins out of fear of repercussion from authorities for violating the birth policy.
Mehmut Tevekkül, a 51-year-old Uyghur from the XUAR who fled illegally to Turkey where he now lives, recounted how he had been detained twice in 2009 and 2010 because close relatives had been “detained in 1996 for being religious.”
“I was put on the tiger chair and they whipped my feet with iron wire,” he said in written testimony, describing how he was tortured while in detention. “There [was] a bolt directly above the tiger chair, and the heat from that bolt [was] unbearable” Tiger chairs are metal chairs that immobilize suspects during interrogations.
Mehmut told how a Chinese official had confiscated farmland from 70-80 Uyghur families in his town in Kargilik (Yecheng) county in Kashgar prefecture for not following orders, and had given the land to Chinese migrants.
The official, Zhu Hailun, “murdered so many people in our county, he took around 50 to 60, and in some villages 70 Uyghurs,” he said. “Very few were released. A large number of them were returned dead.”
In September 2008, a neighbor and his uncle’s eldest son were taken away in a group of 11 Uyghurs, and both later turned up dead, Mehmut said.
Ethan Gutmann of the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China, discussed findings from his December 2020 report alleging that China has forced organ harvesting in the XUAR from political and religious prisoners beginning with the Uyghurs in the 1990s and satellite images of crematoriums built close to “re-education camps” where bodies could be burned after operations to remove organs.
Uyghur
He testified that about 20 witnesses all from different camps in the XUAR told him that Uyghurs from whom organs were harvested were all approximately 28 years old, and that the financial return on a body with usable organs totaled U.S. $500,000-750,000.
Adrian Zenz, an independent researcher with the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, testified Monday about China’s policy to reduce the natural population growth in southern XUAR.
His report indicates that Chinese policies could result in a large drop in births among Uyghurs of 2.6 million to 4.5 million by 2040, based on population projections by Chinese researchers.
The analysis by the German researcher, who has published a number of reports on forced labor and abortion in the XUAR, may meet the test for genocide by presenting empirical evidence that the Uyghurs are being destroyed as a people.
It is unlikely that the Chinese will eliminate all the Uyghurs through birth prevention policies, though, Zenz told the panel.
“The goal is to cut them drastically, substantially, especially in order to manage their identity and who they are for assimilation,” he said
The tribunal has no state backing or powers of sanction or enforcement. Any judgments issued are nonbinding on any government. Meanwhile, Beijing has denounced the tribunal and smeared its participants, saying it is being “funded by the World Uyghur Congress, an organization dedicated to separating Xinjiang from China.”
The WUC is an international organization based in Munich, Germany, that represents the collective interests of Uyghurs in the XUAR and abroad.
The U.S. State Department — as well as parliaments in Canada, the Netherlands, the UK, and Lithuania — have described China’s actions in the region as “genocide,” while the New York-based group Human Rights Watch says they constitute crimes against humanity. The Italian parliament voted unanimously last week to condemn Chinese atrocities against Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples.
The Uyghur Tribunal is expected to issue a final verdict in December on whether China is committing genocide or crimes against humanity in the XUAR. The Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, is considering allegations that the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) is perpetrating serious international crimes against the Uyghurs including torture, rape and other sexual violence, enslavement, forced separation of children from their parents, forced sterilisation, forcible transfer or deportation, apartheid and forced organ harvesting. If proved, these allegations could lead to the conclusion that these crimes constitute Crimes Against Humanity and/or Genocide.
SIR GEOFFREY NICE QC, Chair of the Tribunal; has been a barrister since 1971, and served as a part time judge in England between 1984 and 2018. Between 1998 and 2006 he led the prosecution of Slobodan Milošević, former President of Serbia, at the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He was Gresham College Professor of law from 2012-16 and was Chair of the China Tribunal.
NICK VETCH, Vice Chair of the Tribunal; is a London based businessman. He is engaged in a range of NGOs particularly in the field of Human Rights and was a member of the China Tribunal.
DAME PARVEEN KUMAR, Dame Parveen is Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Education, at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London. She worked as a consultant physician and gastroenterologist for the NHS for over 40 years. She founded and co-edited the textbook “Kumar and Clark’s Clinical Medicine”, which is used worldwide. Parveen was a founding Non-Executive Director of the National Institute of Clinical Excellence and Chairman of the Medicines Commission UK. Currently she is the non-executive director of St George’s University Hospital Trust, chairs the BMA Board of Science and is ambassador for the UK Heath Alliance for Climate Change.
AMBREENA MANJI, Ambreena is Professor of Land Law and Development at Cardiff University. Between 2010 and 2014 she was seconded to Nairobi as the Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa. She has served as the President of the African Studies Association UK. Her book, The Struggle for Land and Justice in Kenya, was published 2020.
TIM CLARK, Tim’s first career was as a mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance lawyer at a leading international law firm where he served his last seven years as senior partner. Since leaving the law he has held board or senior positions at a number of leading corporates, charities and think tanks.
RAMINDER KAUR, Raminder is Professor of Anthropology and Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex. She served on the Mayor’s Commission for Asian and African Heritage and is Chair of the World Council of Anthropological Associations Ethics Taskforce. She has been widely published. Her latest book, Kudankulam, tells the stories of the people who have lived in proximity to a nuclear power plant in India. She is also a Trustee for Museums, Libraries and Archives, London.
DAVID LINCH, David is Professor of Haematology at University College London. He has served as Head of Haematology and Director of Cancer Medicine and is currently the Director of the UCL and UCL Hospitals Biomedical Research Centre cancer programme. He was the Goulstonian Lecturer of the Royal College of Physicians and the recipient of the British Society of Haematology Gold Medal in 2006. He has been Chair of the NCRI Lymphoma Clinical Studies Group, President of the British Society of Haematology and President of the Lymphoma Association.
AUDREY OSLER, Audrey is Professor of Education at the University of South-Eastern Norway and Professor Emerita of Human Rights Education and Citizenship at the University of Leeds. She has held academic posts at the Universities of Leicester and Birmingham in addition to visiting professorships across the world. She has published extensively on social, ethical, political and policy matters in education and her work has been translated into many languages, including Japanese and Chinese. She has served as an expert to various international bodies including the Council of Europe, the European Commission, and UNESCO.
CATHERINE ROE, Catherine has over 25 years’ experience of creating, developing, leading and advising foundations and other not-for-profits in fields as diverse as education, child development, arts and culture, social cohesion, disability and refugees. Catherine began her career as a British diplomat, specialising in multilateral negotiation following a posting to Tanzania. She has a deep interest in the Middle East, modern trends in Islam and Muslims in Britain. She serves on the boards of a number of foundations and other not-for-profit organisations.
