China - Continuing human rights violations in Xinjiang Uighar communities

[Shiloh]

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-62744522

Uyghurs: China may have committed crimes against humanity in Xinjiang - UN
By Matt Murphy & Flora Drury
BBC News
Published
23 minutes ago


The UN has accused China of "serious human rights violations" in a long-awaited report into allegations of abuse in Xinjiang province.

China had urged the UN not to release the report - with Beijing calling it a "farce" arranged by Western powers.

The report assesses claims of abuse against Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities, which China denies.

But investigators said they found "credible evidence" of torture possibly amounting to "crimes against humanity".

Human rights groups have been sounding the alarm over what is happening in the north-western province for years, alleging that more than one million Uyghurs had been detained against their will in a large network of what the state calls "re-education camps"...

[Shiloh]

Source: https://nypost.com/2022/06/04/the-uy...r-prison-camp/



The Uyghurs in China now live in a giant, open air prison camp
By Steven W. Mosher
June 4, 2022 2:00pm Updated

There’s a cultural genocide taking place in China right now against the nation’s Uyghur minority. Aggressively monitored by Chinese authorities and faced with the constant threat of arrest or torture, this Turkish-speaking people in China’s Far West now exist in the world’s first, real-life, digital dictatorship.

It is no exaggeration to say the entire province of Xinjiang, an area only slightly smaller than Alaska, has been turned into a giant, open-air prison camp by the Chinese Communist Party. As author Nury Turkel explains in his new book, “No Escape: The True Story of China’s Genocide of the Uyghurs,” every neighborhood in Uyghur cities large and small now has its own hastily erected “convenience police station” manned by “low-level assistant police officers, who are more brute muscle than actual law enforcement officers.” The neighborhoods themselves are surrounded by manned check points, where those who want to leave are forced to squint into a camera for a retinal scan before departure.

Each neighborhood is further broken down into small “grids” of 15 to 20 families, each with an assigned a “grid monitor.” As the author writes, each monitor is tasked with snooping on their neighbors, reporting any suspicious or forbidden activities — such as Islamic practices like refusing to eat pork or fasting during Ramadan — to the authorities.

Then there are the Monday-morning flag-raising ceremonies, at which attendance is obligatory. As the red flag of communist China is raised, writes Turkel, who’s ethnic Uyghur, Party officials “lead chanted slogans about the greatness of the party and its secretary-general, Xi Jinping, and the need for Uyghurs to abandon their faith in anyone but him.”....

[sharon sanders]

bump this

[Shiloh]

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/...s-uighur-camps

Xinjiang leak reveals extent of Chinese abuses in Uighur camps
A leak of thousands of photographs reveals more details about the internment of Uighurs, but China calls it ‘lies’.
Published On 24 May 202224 May 2022

A leak of thousands of photos and official documents from China’s Xinjiang province has shed new light on the extent of abuses, including mass internment, targeting the Uighur and other Muslim minorities, according to media reports.

The files, obtained by academic Adrian Zenz, were published as UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet begins a long-awaited and controversial trip to Xinjiang. Rights groups have accused Beijing of crimes against humanity for its treatment of the majority-Muslim Uighurs.

Activists have said Chinese authorities have detained more than one million Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in a network of detention centres and prisons in the region, which Beijing has defended as vocational education and training centres.

But the trove of police photographs and internal documents – sent to Zenz by an anonymous source who hacked into official databases in Xinjiang – add to evidence that the mass interments were far from voluntary, with leaked documents showing top leaders in Beijing including President Xi Jinping calling for a forceful crackdown.

The files include a 2017 internal speech by Chen Quanguo, a former Communist Party secretary in Xinjiang, in which he allegedly ordered guards to shoot to kill anyone who tries to escape, and called for officials in the region to “exercise firm control over religious believers”.

In a 2018 internal speech, public security minister Zhao Kezhi mentioned direct orders from Xi to increase the capacity of detention facilities.

After initially denying their existence, Beijing has claimed the facilities are vocational training schools, attended voluntarily and aimed at stamping out what it calls “religious extremism”....

[Shiloh]

Source: https://www.axios.com/marriott-uyghu...59e81be12.html

16 hours ago - World
Exclusive: Marriott refused to host Uyghur conference, citing "political neutrality"
Axios
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, Dave Lawler

The Marriott hotel in Prague declined to host a conference of activists and leaders from China's Uyghur diaspora this month, citing "political neutrality," an email shared with Axios shows.

Why it matters: The Chinese government has condemned the World Uyghur Congress, which has attempted to rally global attention to the genocide in Xinjiang, China. The decision to reject the conference reflects China's growing ability to extend authoritarian control beyond its borders by making clear to corporations that crossing the party's red lines will be bad for business.

The World Uyghur Congress consists mainly of Uyghurs living in exile and advocates for the rights of those who remain in the Xinjiang region in western China, where upwards of one million people have been held in internment camps.
About 200 delegates from 25 countries gathered in Prague from Nov. 12-14 to elect the organization's new leadership and hold discussions with politicians, academics and civil society representatives from around the world. The Prague Marriott Hotel declined to host the conference.
Melissa Froehlich Flood, Marriott's senior vice president for global corporate communications, told Axios the hotel would be "contacting the group to apologize, as the hotel's response was not consistent with our policies."

How it happened: Working with local partners in Prague, organizers for the conference reached out to several hotels for quotes, Zumretay Arkin, the Munich-based program and advocacy manager for the World Uyghur Congress tells Axios. The group then sent a representative to visit the Marriott....

[Shiloh]

Source: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/24/10470...s-sinicization

China is removing domes from mosques as part of a push to make them more 'Chinese'
October 24, 20217:02 AM
Emily Feng

XINING, China — The Dongguan Mosque has adopted some very different looks in its nearly 700 years in China's northwestern city of Xining. Built in the style of a Chinese imperial palace, with tiled roofs and no domes, and adorned with Buddhist symbols, the mosque was nearly destroyed by neglect during political tumult in the early 20th century. In the 1990s, authorities replaced the original ceramic tiles on the roof and minarets with green domes.

This year, provincial authorities lopped off those domes.

"The government says they want us to 'sinify' our mosques, so they look more like Beijing's Tiananmen Square," says Ali, a Muslim farmer selling pomegranates outside the mosque. He requested that NPR use only his first name because residents have been ordered not to speak about the dome removals. "I think the mosque looks good either way, but what say do we have anyways?"

China is removing the domes and minarets from thousands of mosques across the country. Authorities say the domes are evidence of foreign religious influence and are taking down overtly Islamic architecture as part of a push to sinicize historically Muslim ethnic groups — to make them more traditionally Chinese...

[Shiloh]

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/3719374...uslims-report/

HIDDEN HORRORS China carrying out Nazi-style experiments on Muslims with organs cut out & mystery injections, chilling report claims
Patrick Knox
12:02 ET, Sep 23 2021Updated: 14:52 ET, Sep 23 2021

CHINA is carrying out barbaric medical experiments on Uighur Muslims in a chilling echo of cruel research by Nazi doctors, campaigners have claimed.

Inmates in the Communist regime’s network of "re-education camps" are allegedly being given mysterious pills, injections and even having organs removed while still alive.

Nazi doctors conducted inhumane experiments on Jews and other persecuted minorities in concentration camps which shocked the world when it was exposed at the end of World War 2.

But it is alleged a similar sinister practice is going on today on Uighurs and other political prisoners who are rounded up and bussed to camps in China.

According to Western estimates, between one million and two million people northwestern province of Xinjiang have been incarcerated at these facilities during Beijing's campaign of oppression.

An Amnesty International report reveals claims from former prisoners that they have been subjected to medical experiments without consent are being carried out - just like under the Nazis.

Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK's CEO, told The Sun Online: "The treatment to which the Uighur people are being subjected in Xinjiang camps is nothing short of horrifying.

"We know there’s widespread belief among detainees that forced sterilisation is being practised on them, and we have concerns about other forms of medical experimentation without consent too...

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Source: https://english.alaraby.co.uk/featur...ural-landscape

The invisible demolition: China's reshaping of the cultural landscape in Uighur heartlands
Ruth Ingram
23 September, 2021
Through its systematic attempt to silence and eliminate Uighur cultural identity in the Xinjiang province, China has been embarking upon projects that criminalise Uighur activities in order to cleanse the Muslim minority of its particularism.


The Chinese government's relentless advance on the Uighur heartland is set to engulf not only its language but radically reshape every cultural and social marker of its indigenous people.

In four short years since Xi Jinping tightened his grip on the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, (XUAR) hundreds of academics, poets and musicians have been interned or simply disappeared, the Uighur language has been sidelined, and the cultural and religious landscape systematically re-written, dismantled or repurposed.

A landmark forum of international academics, activists and politicians gathered recently at the UK's Newcastle University, home of recently CCP-sanctioned Xinjiang academic Professor Jo Smith Finlay, to highlight the abuses meted out on the Uighurs and to assess evidence of genocide on the Turkic peoples of North-West China.

Suspicions that the Chinese government is intent on cutting a swathe through Uighur cultural heritage were raised by prominent experts in the field; ASPI (Australian Social Policy Institute) researcher Nathan Ruser, Uighur Manchester academic Ablimit Baki Eltrish and Jo Smith Finlay from Newcastle, whose findings are consistent with orders from the top to break the roots and lineage of Uighurs in Xinjiang.

Using satellite imagery, Ruser's team estimates that despite CCP denials, approximately 16,000 mosques in Xinjiang (65 percent of the total) have been destroyed or damaged since 2017.

Under the new Xinjiang provincial governor Chen Quanguo, who took office in 2016 after his tour in Tibet, they calculate an estimated 8,500 have been demolished outright, leaving vacant plots, and a further 30 percent of important Islamic sacred sites (shrines, cemeteries and pilgrimage routes, including many protected under Chinese law) have been razed. An additional 28 percent have also been damaged or altered in some way...

[Shiloh]

Source: https://apnews.com/article/china-dub...ebd5f1d3bb3330

Detainee says China has secret jail in Dubai, holds Uyghurs
By The Associated Presstoday

A young Chinese woman says she was held for eight days at a Chinese-run secret detention facility in Dubai along with at least two Uyghurs, in what may be the first evidence that China is operating a so-called “black site” beyond its borders.

The woman, 26-year-old Wu Huan, was on the run to avoid extradition back to China because her fiancé was considered a Chinese dissident. Wu told The Associated Press she was abducted from a hotel in Dubai and detained by Chinese officials at a villa converted into a jail, where she saw or heard two other prisoners, both Uyghurs.

She was questioned and threatened in Chinese and forced to sign legal documents incriminating her fiancé for harassing her, she said. She was finally released on June 8 and is now seeking asylum in the Netherlands.

While “black sites” are common in China, Wu’s account is the only testimony known to experts that Beijing has set one up in another country. Such a site would reflect how China is increasingly using its international clout to detain or bring back citizens it wants from overseas, whether they are dissidents, corruption suspects or ethnic minorities like the Uyghurs.

The AP was unable to confirm or disprove Wu’s account independently, and she could not pinpoint the exact location of the black site. However, reporters have seen and heard corroborating evidence including stamps in her passport, a phone recording of a Chinese official asking her questions and text messages that she sent from jail to a pastor helping the couple...

[Shiloh]

Source: https://threader.app/thread/1407724988971560962

Thread by Paul Mozur June 23, 2021

How do you deny genocide accusations today? An online influence campaign of course.Our breakdown of the anatomy Chinese propaganda campaigns, which now flow fast and at large scale from China to the global internet. This is likely just the beginning. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...ropaganda.html
In recent months thousands of testimonials from inside Xinjiang purporting to show Uyghurs living happily were blasted across the global internet...

[Shiloh]

Source: https://www.propublica.org/article/h...rs-in-xinjiang


How China Spreads Its Propaganda Version of Life for Uyghurs
by Jeff Kao, ProPublica, and Raymond Zhong, Paul Mozur and Aaron Krolik, The New York Times
June 23, 5 a.m. EDT

Thousands of videos of Uyghurs denying abuses against their community are showing up on Twitter and YouTube. They’re part of an elaborate influence campaign by Chinese officials to counter reports of human rights violations in Xinjiang.

Recently, the owner of a small store in western China came across some remarks by Mike Pompeo, the former U.S. secretary of state. What he heard made him angry.

A worker in a textile company had the same reaction. So did a retiree in her 80s. And a taxi driver.

Pompeo had routinely accused China of committing human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region, and these four people made videos to express their outrage. They did so in oddly similar ways.

“Pompeo said that we Uyghurs are locked up and have no freedom,” the store owner said.

“There’s nothing like that at all in our Xinjiang,” said the taxi driver.

“We are very free,” the retiree said.

“We are very free now,” the store owner said.

“We are very, very free here,” the taxi driver said.

“Our lives are very happy and very free now,” the textile company worker said.

These and thousands of other videos are meant to look like unfiltered glimpses of life in Xinjiang, the western Chinese region where the Communist Party has carried out repressive policies against Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities.
Get Our Top Investigations

Most of the clips carry no logos or other signs that they are official propaganda.

But taken together, the videos begin to reveal clues of broader coordination — such as the English subtitles in clips posted to YouTube and other Western platforms...

[Shiloh]

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/08/middl...ntl/index.html

Uyghurs are being deported from Muslim countries, raising concerns about China's growing reach
By Jomana Karadsheh and Gul Tuysuz, CNN
Updated 1:01 AM ET, Tue June 8, 2021

Istanbul, Turkey (CNN)Amannisa Abdullah and her husband, Ahmad Talip, were on their way to shop for baby clothes in Dubai, when the message that changed both their lives came through. Ahmad read it and announced an abrupt change of plan: He had to report to a police station immediately.
Ahmad dropped Amannisa off at a friend's house that day in February 2018, promising to pick her up later. He never came back.
In their Dubai apartment, a sleepless Amannisa prayed and cried through the night, watching the hours pass as her repeated calls to Ahmad went unanswered.
The next morning, the heavily pregnant 29-year-old shuffled out of the door, hugging her 5-year-old son close. They hailed a taxi to the police station where she tried to explain her predicament to a police officer.
As she spoke, her little boy tugged at her hand. Quietly, he pointed towards a jail cell where Ahmad was sitting.
For 13 days, Amannisa shuttled back and forth between her home and the jail, pleading with law enforcement officials to release Ahmad.
With each visit, her husband looked more dejected. He told her he was convinced that the long reach of China had reached his Uyghur family in the United Arab Emirates.
"It's not safe here. You must take our boy and [go] to Turkey," he told Amannisa in their last conversation. "If our new baby is a girl, please name her Amina. If he's a boy, name him Abdullah."
A week later, Ahmad was sent to the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi. Five days later, Amannisa said, Abu Dhabi authorities told her that he had been extradited to China.
Their daughter, Amina, was born a month later in Turkey. She has never met her father...

[Shiloh]

Source: https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/04/19/...anity-xinjiang

April 19, 2021 4:50PM EDT
| News Release
China: Crimes Against Humanity in Xinjiang
Mass Detention, Torture, Cultural Persecution of Uyghurs, Other Turkic Muslims


(New York) ? The Chinese government is committing crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the northwest region of Xinjiang, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The Chinese leadership is responsible for widespread and systematic policies of mass detention, torture, and cultural persecution, among other offenses. Coordinated international action is needed to sanction those responsible, advance accountability, and press the Chinese government to reverse course.

The 53-page report, ??Break Their Lineage, Break Their Roots?: China?s Crimes against Humanity Targeting Uyghurs and Other Turkic Muslims,? authored with assistance from Stanford Law School?s Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic, draws on newly available information from Chinese government documents, human rights groups, the media, and scholars to assess Chinese government actions in Xinjiang within the international legal framework. The report identified a range of abuses against Turkic Muslims that amount to offenses committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack directed against a population: mass arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearances, mass surveillance, cultural and religious erasure, separation of families, forced returns to China, forced labor, and sexual violence and violations of reproductive rights...

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Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/...-they-saw.html

This Manitoba couple lived in Xinjiang for 10 years. They can no longer stay silent about what they saw
By Joanna ChiuVancouver Bureau
Jeremy NuttallVancouver Bureau
Wed., April 21, 2021timer6 min. read
updateArticle was updated 2 hrs ago

VANCOUVER?The two Canadians were walking down a sidewalk in their neighbourhood in Turpan, a city in China?s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, when everyone seemed to freeze.

A Uyghur man had accidentally tripped over a police officer?s foot.

The man, who was in his 30s, grimaced and looked stricken about the misstep. The officer flew into a rage and grabbed the man around his neck with two hands, dragging him to one of the many police stations at every major intersection.

No one dared look.

All around the street, everyone averted their eyes, and some even plastered a smile on their faces.

?People were pretending not to see. Everyone acted calm, because nobody wanted to be noticed by police, too,? Andrea Dyck recalled of the 2017 incident.

Andrea and her husband Gary, who are both from small towns in Manitoba, had lived in Xinjiang for almost 10 years by that point. They were fluent in Uyghur and Mandarin, and their social group was made up of mostly Uyghur families and ?ordinary office workers.?

After stints with poverty alleviation NGOs in Central Asia, the couple had set up a social enterprise in Turpan that processed agricultural waste and sold compost to local farmers.

They are now speaking out about the horrors they witnessed, when around them, an estimated million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities were forcibly taken to internment camps for ?re-education.? ...

[sharon sanders]

bump this

[Emily]

https://www.ibtimes.com/bbc-reporter-leaves-china-says-too-risky-carry-3172520

BBC Reporter Leaves China, Says 'Too Risky To Carry On'
By AFP News
03/31/21 AT 12:59 PM

A senior BBC correspondent said Wednesday he had left China for Taiwan, after facing legal threats and pressure from authorities over his reporting on Xinjiang rights abuses and the coronavirus pandemic.

John Sudworth told BBC Radio 4 in an interview that he had relocated to Taiwan after nine years in Beijing as it was "too risky to carry on".

Threats from Chinese authorities had "intensified" in recent months, he added...

...
Press freedom groups say the space for foreign reporters to operate in China is increasingly tightly controlled, with journalists followed on the streets, suffering harassment online and refused visas.

"The BBC has faced a full-on propaganda attack not just aimed at the organisation itself but at me personally across multiple Communist Party-controlled platforms," said Sudworth, who will continue to work as China correspondent from Taiwan.

"We face threats of legal action, as well as massive surveillance now, obstruction and intimidation, whenever and wherever we try to film," he added, reporting that he and his family had been "followed by plainclothes police" as they left to fly out of China.

Sudworth's wife, Irish journalist Yvonne Murray, left the country with him "because of mounting pressure from the Chinese authorities", her employer RTE reported...

[sharon sanders]

Apparently China's rulers do not understand human rights. Rulers who think sticking a swab up the asses of 1,000 children and staff at a school because of one case of COVID-19 is ok, then well....there is no talking to them about human rights. And....none of those 1,000 were positive.

The fact is the China rulers can barely hold onto the control of their population. 1.4 billion people is a lot of mouths to feed.