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.
Chinese authorities built a wall around Jiaman mosque at Qira in Xinjiang province. They broke all its four minarets and the central dome and installed Chinese national flag, thus removing all impressions that it was a mosque. Beijing faces accusation of destroying mosques and Islamic culture in Xinjiang… a special report by Kaliph Anaz
There have been allegations against China of demolishing mosques in Xinjiang province as a part of suppression of religious rights of minority Uyghur Muslims. One such is Jiaman mosque that was located in Xinjiang’s city of Qira. Chinese authorities built a wall around the mosque, broke all its four minarets and the central dome and installed Chinese national flag, thus removing all impressions that it was a mosque. There are hundreds of such cases. While the government denied the charges of forcibly tearing down mosques, satellite images taken a few years ago showed Muslim religious sites disappearing fast.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping
Since 2017, Communist Party-led Beijing government demolished or damaged about 16,000 mosques in Xinjiang, which account for 65 percent of the total number, revealed a report by Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). The institute used satellite imagery to study destruction of mosques visited by minority Uyghur Muslim population. It found estimated 8,500 mosques were demolished outright. Moreover, 30 percent of Islamic sacred sites such as shrines, cemeteries and pilgrimage routes too were torn down while 28 percent of them were damaged or altered.
ASPI located 533 mosques and carried out analysis using satellite imagery. Of those mosques, 170 were destroyed (31.9 percent), 175 were damaged (32.8 percent) and 188 remained undamaged (35.3 percent). “The Chinese Government’s destruction of cultural heritage aims to erase, replace and rewrite what it means to be Uyghur and to live in the XUAR (Xinjiang). The state is intentionally recasting its Turkic and Muslim minorities in the image of the Han centre for the purposes of control, domination and profit,” the ASPI said in its report. It questioned silence maintained by global bodies– such as UNESCO which are assigned with preservation of heritage structures — for being silent on cultural and religious destruction in Xinjiang. China however rejected the claims in the ASPI report and justified its acts as “restructuring mosques for safety of Muslims”.
Domination or interference in affairs of ethnic minority cultures and communities has surged since Xi Jinping took over reigns of China in 2013. On the similar lines of education camps in Xinjiang, Beijing government started a mass labour programme in Tibet region, which saw authorities forcing Tibetans to handover their lands to the government. Also, attempts were made to replace Mongolian language with Mandarin in Inner Mongolia to assimilate ethnic minorities into Chinese Han culture. A Muslim man named Huang Shike was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison for creating a group on social media app WeChat to hold discussion about Islam. According to Chinese judicial document, the group “disturbed normal religious activity” and violated laws regarding use of internet to discuss religion.
Now, China is again accused of targeting imams or Muslim religious leaders in Xinjiang. As many as 630 imams and other Islamic leaders in the province were detained since 2014 in the crackdowns to assimilate Uyghur culture with the China’s national ideology. These leaders were found to be charged with propagating extremism””, “inciting separatism”, “gathering crowd to disturb social order” among others. And 304 of them were sent to prison, finds the Uyghur Human Rights Project.
Uyghur
Mosques in Xinjiang have been fitted with surveillance cameras as Beijing government goes into hyperpolicing to keep a watch and target people perceived as threats. Investigations by rights group showed Chinese authorities have set a goal of reducing footfall in the mosques, and decreasing attendance is seen as success. Darren Byler, a researcher at the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Colorado, said “The system is set up in a way that’s producing hyperpolicing where any strange or any kind of aberrant behavior is reported.” And ethnic minorities like Uyghurs and Kazaks are very susceptible to this kind of hyperpolicing as they monitored on a micro level- – both by human policing and by the application of the technology, Byler added.
Bill Drexel, who researched Chinese state surveillance, said China has installed surveillance tech in Xinjiang especially in Kashgar city to support more comprehensive urban surveillance, vast economic exploitation, and bring changes in Uyghur culture which pleases Beijing. “The power of surveillance technology to work against minorities is considerable. Total surveillance-control of a minority has already been achieved, with sobering efficacy,” Drexel added.
The Pakistan foreign minister made it clear that he could not speak against a powerful totalitarian country like China even if it was in the thick of carrying out a ‘genocide’ of Muslim brethren, reports Rahul Kumar
The Israel-Palestine conflict has opened up a can of worms revealing that when it comes to Pakistan and Turkey, their support for Muslim causes is selective, opportunistic and in the end based on cynical geopolitical calculations. Both countries are trying to champion Palestinian rights an effort which was visible in plain sight during the latest round of fighting between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas, which is confined to Gaza.
But given their embrace of China, the leadership of the two countries remains petrified, unable to displease Beijing, despite the violation of human rights on an industrial scale of the Uyghur Muslim community in Xinjiang. Some countries have labelled the mass incarceration of the Uyghurs by China as genocide.
Pakistan’s double standards on supporting Islamic causes were on public display when Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi flew all the way to Turkey on a two-day visit and then to New York to discuss the Palestine issue and the rights of the Muslims in Israel. On his Europe to US flight, he was accompanied by the foreign ministers of Turkey, Palestine and Sudan to lend a collective voice to the repression of the Muslims.
In New York, when asked by CNN as to why Pakistan was not raising the issue of ‘genocide’ of Uyghurs in China, the Pakistan foreign minister fumbled to answer the question. All that Qureshi could manage was: “… You know China is a very good friend of Pakistan. They have stood by us through thick and thin. And we have means of communication. We use our diplomatic channels. We do not discuss everything in public”.
To Qureshi’s discomfiture, the CNN journalist remained insistent and asked again: “… But you can’t just turn a blind eye to human rights abuses in one country. Are there discussions behind the scenes by your Prime Minister Khan?” A re-faced Qureshi could only say: “Ma’am, there’s always a way of doing things. And we are not oblivious of our responsibilities.” The Pakistan foreign minister made it clear that he could not speak against a powerful totalitarian country like China even if it was in the thick of carrying out a ‘genocide’ of Muslim brethren.
This hypocrisy is not limited to Pakistan alone. Turkey�the other aspirant to global Muslim leadership�sails in the same boat. What is worse is that both the nations have instead helped China in a crackdown upon the runaway Uyghurs. Over the last many years, the two Muslim countries have hounded and deported Uyghurs back to China. It is not difficult to guess what fate awaits the deported Uyghur men and women in China.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping
Just last month, Human Rights Watch in a 53-page report said that China has detained up to a million Muslim people in its western region as it carries on a campaign of repression against the minority. The report says: ” As many as a million people have been arbitrarily detained in 300 to 400 facilities, which include “political education” camps, pretrial detention centres, and prisons. Courts have handed down harsh prison sentences without due process, sentencing Turkic Muslims to years in prison merely for sending an Islamic religious recording to a family member or downloading e-books in Uyghur.”
Emboldened with the hypocritical attitude of the Islamic nations, China is exploring an extradition treaty with Turkey. Expectedly, this has sent a shiver among the Uyghur community that has escaped to Turkey.
Media reports suggest that Turkey has agreed to deport Uyghur Muslims in return for covid-19 vaccines. Dilxat Raxit, a spokesperson for the World Uyghur Congress, told AFP earlier this year: “This extradition treaty will cause worry among Uyghurs who have fled China and do not yet have Turkish citizenship.” Through Turkey has denied these allegations, it is under constant pressure from Beijing about deporting Uyghurs who managed to escape. Over the years it has been sending back the activists that China wants.
In another instance, Uyghur women activists made allegations of rape, torture and forced sterilisations against China on this International Women’s Day. They also alleged that Uyghur and Turkic women are forced to marry ethnic Han men. Such serious allegations against the mistreatment of the ethnic minority did not evoke condemnation from the Islamic world.
This curious sentiment of looking the other way over Uyghur rights is now being investigated by the international media. After a new report came out on the human rights violation of the Uyghur community, The Washington Post asked, ‘Why do some Muslim-majority countries support China’s crackdown on Muslims?’
Uyghurs�this is one Muslim issue on which both Pakistan and Turkey muffle their high-volume global voices even as they carry on a crusade for the rights of Muslims in other countries. It is important to take up these two countries because Pakistan shares a land link with Xinjiang�the homeland of the persecuted community in China while Turkey hosts the largest Uyghur community with which it shares a common ethnicity.
Like Turkey, Pakistan has been abetting China in its human rights abuses of the Uyghurs. It too sends the escaped Uyghurs back to the Communist regime. With a massive $62 billion project under China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Pakistan is one of the few all-weather friends of China. Even when asked on international platforms about the plight of the Uyghurs, the Pakistani government has ended up praising their treatment at the hands of China.
While Pakistan has been vociferous over raising issues like the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet in the French media and other perceived insults or violation of rights of the Muslim community in other countries, it has not shown the same courage against China on behalf of the Muslim Uyghurs.
It is not just hypocrisy at play.
The answer lies in both�the power of fear and the lure of money that keeps self-appointed leaders of the Muslim world like Pakistan and Turkey cosy up to China. Both have made the protection of Islam a convenient weapon, which they unleash or keep sheathed as they wish to. The liberal and democratic nations are however a convenient and soft target.
(This content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com)
In view of the upcoming Plenary session of the European Parliament, the CSOs in the letter expressed “grave concern” at the omission of a human rights clause…reports Asian Lite News
A coalition of 36 civil society organisations (CSOs) has launched a joint appeal to the European Institutions calling for the inclusion of enforceable human rights clauses in the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI).
In view of the upcoming Plenary session of the European Parliament, the CSOs in the letter expressed “grave concern” at the omission of a human rights clause from the discussion about the agreement and its final text, the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) said in a statement.
They state that the omission of rights clause “sends a signal that the European Union will push for closer cooperation [with China] regardless of the scale and severity of human rights abuses carried out by the Chinese Communist Party, even when Beijing is in direct and open violation of international treaties and continues to refuse to allow international monitoring of the human rights situation”.
The letter is addressed to the likes of President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen; President of the European Council, Charles Michel and members of the European Parliament.
A parent sharing their woes with BBC journalist John Sudworth (TV Grab)
“It is evident therefore the European Union has a Treaty obligation, as well as a moral duty, to stand by its founding principles of democracy, rules of law and the universality of human rights in its negotiations with the People’s Republic of China. This is an obligation not only to the people suffering oppression and gross human rights violations but also to uphold the international rules-based order,” the letter further said while alluding to growing evidence of forced labour in Tibet and Xinjiang.
They called upon the EU and its institutions to ensure China ratifies core Human Rights Conventions before entering into the Agreement, mainly the ICCPR, and core ILO Conventions.
“The agreement should also include a human rights clause. This should be introduced via a Trade and Sustainable Development Chapter that uses binding language and provides for effective enforcement mechanisms in case of violation, the creation of an EU Domestic Advisory Group and effective monitoring and complaint mechanisms on human rights that can been seized by the affected populations and NGOs defending human rights. This mechanism should contribute to ensure the agreement will be implemented in conformity with international human rights law,” they said. (ANI)
But the government has steered clear of declaring genocide over what it says are “industrial-scale” human rights abuses against the mainly Muslim Uyghur community in Xinjiang, reports Asian Lite News
Britain’s parliament called for the government to take action to end what lawmakers described as genocide in China’s Xinjiang region, stepping up pressure on ministers to go further in their criticism of Beijing.
But the government again steered clear of declaring genocide over what it says are “industrial-scale” human rights abuses against the mainly Muslim Uyghur community in Xinjiang. Ministers say any decision on declaring a genocide is up to the courts.
So far the government has imposed sanctions on some Chinese officials and introduced rules to try to prevent goods linked to the region entering the supply chain, but a majority of lawmakers want ministers to go further.
Beijing denies accusations of rights abuses in Xinjiang.
Lawmakers backed a motion brought by Conservative lawmaker Nusrat Ghani stating Uyghurs in Xinjiang were suffering crimes against humanity and genocide, and calling on government to use international law to bring it to an end.
The support for the motion is non-binding, meaning it is up to the government to decide what action, if any, to take next.
Britain’s minister for Asia, Nigel Adams, again set out to parliament the government’s position that any decision on describing the human rights abuses in Xinjiang as genocide would have to be taken by “competent” courts.
Some lawmakers fear Britain risks falling out of step with allies over China after the Biden administration endorsed a determination by its predecessor that China had committed genocide in Xinjiang.
Chinese President Xi Jinping
Meanwhile, the US government, is under pressure to urge like-minded countries to independently investigate and formally determine whether the abuses in Xinjiang meet the definitions of genocide and/or crimes against humanity under international law, and work together to take measures to hold China accountable.
The US Congress should support legislation to promote religious freedom in China, including the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, the The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has recommended.
Last year, the report said, religious freedom conditions in China had deteriorated.
The government intensified its “sinicisation of religion” policy, particularly targeting religions perceived to have foreign connections, such as Christianity, Islam and Tibetan Buddhism.
The authorities also continued their unprecedented use of advanced surveillance technologies to monitor and track religious minorities, and the Measures on Managing Religious Groups became effective in February, further constricting the space in which religious groups could operate.
Quake-affected people have a meal at a temporary settlement in Jinghe County, northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. (Xinhua/Li Jing/IANS)
In September 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute had identified 380 detention centres across the Uyghur region (otherwise known as Xinjiang), including new facilities built in 2019 and 2020.
This indicates that the Chinese government has continued to detain Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims despite claiming to have released all the detainees.
Since 2017, authorities have reportedly sent millions of Muslims to these camps for wearing long beards, refusing alcohol, or exhibiting other behaviours deemed signs of “religious extremism”.
Former detainees reported torture, rape, sterilisation and other abuses in custody. Experts raised concerns that the Chinese government’s ongoing actions in Xinjiang could amount to genocide under international law.
Demand for US to skip Winter Olympics
Meanwhile, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has asked the US government not to attend the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing if the Chinese government continues its crackdown on religious freedoms of minorities in China.
In its annual report, the USCIRF recommended the Joe Biden administration to redesignate China as a “country of particular concern”, or CPC, for engaging in systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom, as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA).
The Commission asked the US government to publicly express concerns about Beijing hosting the 2022 Winter Olympic Games and state that US government officials will not attend the games if the Chinese government’s crackdown on religious freedoms continues.
It has also recommended the US government to enforce to the fullest extent the existing US laws — such as the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act and Tibetan Policy and Support Act — and continue to impose targeted financial and visa sanctions on Chinese government agencies and officials responsible for severe violations of religious freedom.
