The people the world has forgotten
The Uyghurs of North-west China
Something catastrophic has been going on in North-west China. But very few people know anything about it. It’s certainly not reaching mainstream news, college campuses or blowing up TikTok. The Chinese government has waged a genocidal campaign against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang which includes identity-based persecution, mass detention, surveillance, enforced sterilisations, forced labor, and forced assimilation. Human rights groups believe China has detained more than one million, possibly two million Uyghurs against their will over the past few years in a large network of what the state calls "re-education camps", and sentenced hundreds of thousands to prison terms.
Of course perpetrators of atrocious crimes will go to great lengths to hide the nature and extent of their crimes, which is certainly the case here. The Chinese government has an almost total restriction on the access to Xinjiang, making it extremely difficult to access independently verified evidence of crimes against the Uyghurs. But this is what we do know.
The Uyghurs are an ethnically Turkic people who are by tradition Muslim, they have their own distinct culture and language with strong cultural ties to scholarship, poetry, music, singing, dancing, hospitality and warm family life. After a period of independence in the 1940s as East Turkestan, the Uyghur republic’s leadership agreed to form a confederation with the new Chinese communist state. Although the region is now known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in fact, it is nothing of the sort. The Chinese totalitarian regime have stripped the Uyghur people of their rights, their language, their traditions, their religion and their freedom.
Since 2017, Chinese authorities have waged the "People's War on Terror", which they claim is aimed at stamping out Islamic extremism. However the cultural erasure forced upon them includes a complete bar on freely practicing their religion, speaking their language, and expressing other fundamental elements of their identity. Restrictions apply to many aspects of life, including dress, language, diet, and education. Even simple acts such as praying or going to a mosque may be the basis for arrest or detention. At least 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities are estimated to have been detained without judicial process in detention camps masked as ‘vocational training centres’. Detainees have reported being forced to renounce their religion, make statements swearing allegiance to the Communist Party, inadequate food, torture and sexual violence. Additionally mosques, ancient shrines and Muslim graveyards have been bulldozed.
Under constant surveillance by the Chinese government, who use advanced digital surveillance, the Uyghurs face racial profiling software which tracks their every move. People deemed suspicious by the IJOP system are subjected to police interrogation without basic procedural protections.
Probably the most troubling of all is the control the Chinese government are asserting over the reproductive rights of the Uyghur women. Leaked government documents show that violations of birth limits are the most common reason Uyghur women are placed in a detention camps, where they are then often sterilised without their consent. There have been reports of the mass rape of women inside and outside these camps and CCP removal of Uyghur children, who are then placed in foster homes with no access to their biological family.
Forced labour and forced marriages outside of their culture are other abuses that the Uyghurs are facing. Interestingly U.N. Special Rapporteur Alena Douhan (Belarus) recently made a 12 day special visit to China to determine the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights—and recommended lifting sanctions in China, without however any mention that China is holding a million Uyghurs in camps, persecuted because of their religion and ethnicity, or any mention of the labor camps or the forced sterilisation of Uyghur women.
Could it be perhaps, as Hillel Neuer of U.N. Watch uncovered, due to Douhans office receiving a $200,000 gift from China? Douhans U.N report is another clear example that the United Nations has lost its way in protecting the human rights and the fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion. Regardless of the reason that Douhan and the majority of the U.N. were willing the ignore the abuses in Xinjiang, the fate of the Uyghurs is likely to continue to be largely ignored without the international community rising up and pressuring China to investigate and take account for the human rights violations that have occurred. We need to stand up in the name of humanity and insist on the release of all Uyghurs and their children who have been arbitrarily deprived of their right to freedom and basic rights.
Some excellent points here. And I have talked extensively about out the issues of Islam. But I think it’s important to point out human rights abuses wherever they are.
The UN turns a blind eye to China which sits as a permanent member on the Security Council. Instead, it incessantly picks on Israel, which is the one Jewish nation among nations, over 50 of which have Muslim majorities, but do the Muslim states advocate vociferously for the Uyghurs? We all know the answer. The world is full of hypocrisy and it causes so much unnecessary suffering.