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
In the past month, two important developments are poised to equip Taiwan with expanded capabilities to play foreign policy offense in an age where Taiwan’s diplomatic space is seriously constricted by a hegemonic Beijing. Taiwan Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) led a delegation of Taiwan and US companies to the Philippines to promote trilateral economic cooperation between the three countries. Additionally, in the past two weeks, Taiwan has placed chip export controls on South Africa in an escalating standoff over the placing of its diplomatic mission in Pretoria, causing the South Africans to pause and ask for consultations to resolve
An altercation involving a 73-year-old woman and a younger person broke out on a Taipei MRT train last week, with videos of the incident going viral online, sparking wide discussions about the controversial priority seats and social norms. In the video, the elderly woman, surnamed Tseng (曾), approached a passenger in a priority seat and demanded that she get up, and after she refused, she swung her bag, hitting her on the knees and calves several times. In return, the commuter asked a nearby passenger to hold her bag, stood up and kicked Tseng, causing her to fall backward and
In December 1937, Japanese troops captured Nanjing and unleashed one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century. Over six weeks, hundreds of thousands were slaughtered and women were raped on a scale that still defies comprehension. Across Asia, the Japanese occupation left deep scars. Singapore, Malaya, the Philippines and much of China endured terror, forced labor and massacres. My own grandfather was tortured by the Japanese in Singapore. His wife, traumatized beyond recovery, lived the rest of her life in silence and breakdown. These stories are real, not abstract history. Here is the irony: Mao Zedong (毛澤東) himself once told visiting
When I reminded my 83-year-old mother on Wednesday that it was the 76th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, she replied: “Yes, it was the day when my family was broken.” That answer captures the paradox of modern China. To most Chinese in mainland China, Oct. 1 is a day of pride — a celebration of national strength, prosperity and global stature. However, on a deeper level, it is also a reminder to many of the families shattered, the freedoms extinguished and the lives sacrificed on the road here. Seventy-six years ago, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東)
RSS