On Oct. 6, the UN Committee on Human Rights released a statement on the concentration camps in China’s Xinjiang region in which at least 1 million Uighurs and other ethnic minorities are incarcerated. On the same day, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) was telling delegates at a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) meeting that “happiness among the people in Xinjiang is on the rise.”
It was a stark reminder of the CCP’s longstanding practice of trampling on human rights and deceiving the world.
In October last year, the Taiwan East Turkestan Association and the Taiwan Friends of Tibet held an event titled “A prison without walls: Uighurs today” to raise awareness among Taiwanese of the increasingly severe oppression that is being inflicted upon Uighurs in Xinjiang.
The CCP’s modus operandi in the region includes violent suppression of freedoms through forced “re-education” and the monitoring of every aspect of residents’ lives.
The international community is increasingly paying attention to these acts. The greatest pushback so far has come from Washington. In July, the US government announced visa bans and an asset freeze on three Chinese officials: Xinjiang CCP Secretary Chen Quanguo (陳全國), widely viewed as the architect of Beijing’s concentration camp policy; Xinjiang CCP Deputy Secretary Zhu Hailun (朱海侖); and Xinjiang Public Security Bureau Director Wang Mingshan (王明山). The three are, to date, the highest-level Chinese officials subjected to US sanctions.
Since then, the US has placed additional sanctions on several dozen Chinese companies and organizations that are connected to human rights violations against Uighurs and further expanded sanctions against CCP officials in Xinjiang.
Unfortunately, since the sanctions were put in place, rather than improving, the situation in Xinjiang has gone from bad to worse. In addition to the notorious “re-education camps,” investigations by international media have also revealed birth control measures.
Birthrates in the regions of Hotan and Kashgar, mostly inhabited by Uighurs, fell by more than 60 percent between 2015 and 2018, Chinese government statistics show.
Beijing has spent vast sums to ensure that Xinjiang’s population — which not long ago grew faster than any of China’s provincial-level administrative regions — is now growing the slowest, and this has been achieved within the space of just a few years.
There is now a consensus within the international community that Uighurs are the victims of a genocide committed by CCP authorities.
Although the international community is paying attention to human rights violations in Xinjiang, and a number of actions have been taken, due to the rapid acceleration of Beijing’s oppression campaign, and the destruction of the Uighurs’ religion and culture, time is running out and there is not a moment to lose.
Last month, more than 160 human rights groups wrote a joint letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), calling on it to reverse its decision to award China the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics in light of the human rights abuses.
We call on all those who are concerned about the religious freedom and human rights of all ethnic groups within China’s borders to continue to pressure the IOC to cancel the 2022 Games in Beijing. If the IOC does not do so, there will inevitably be a mass boycott of the Games and the IOC will join the WHO as the second global organization to be covered in shame.
Ho Chao-tung is the director of the Taiwan East Turkestan Association.
Translated by Edward Jones
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Last week, Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) unveiled the location of Nvidia’s new Taipei headquarters and announced plans to build the world’s first large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputer in Taiwan. In Taipei, Huang’s announcement was welcomed as a milestone for Taiwan’s tech industry. However, beneath the excitement lies a significant question: Can Taiwan’s electricity infrastructure, especially its renewable energy supply, keep up with growing demand from AI chipmaking? Despite its leadership in digital hardware, Taiwan lags behind in renewable energy adoption. Moreover, the electricity grid is already experiencing supply shortages. As Taiwan’s role in AI manufacturing expands, it is critical that