A visiting Uighur-American advocate yesterday called on Taiwan to “study” the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) atrocities targeting Uighurs in Xinjiang, saying a similar fate could befall Taiwanese.
US Commission on International Religious Freedom Chair Nury Turkel made the remarks during his keynote address at the two-day Regional Religious Freedom Forum in Taipei that opened yesterday.
As the CCP continues to pose a threat to democracies, people must understand what has happened to Uighurs, Turkel said.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
He cited US government estimates that about 2 million to 3 million Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims in China have been placed in “re-education” or “concentration” camps.
China has said that mass “vocational education and training” are necessary in the region to counter terrorism and alleviate poverty.
“You must know that if you fail to protect Taiwan, a similar fate awaits the Taiwanese people,” Turkel said.
He cited a remark Chinese Ambassador to France Lu Shaye (盧沙野) made during a TV interview in Paris that Beijing would “re-educate” Taiwanese after the nation’s “reunification” with China.
This is a “crystal-clear example” showing that China is planning to do to Taiwanese what it has been doing to Uighurs, he said.
“Let me tell you what re-education really means for the CCP... These classes, where history is rewritten to dictate a reality that never existed, [forces people to renounce] any religious belief or political dissent and then replaces these ideas with [Chinese President] Xi Jinping (習近平) thought, forcing you to recognize that everything you have in life is due to the party,” Turkel said.
“Taiwan must study the Uighur genocide. You must learn from these horrors and atrocities carried out in broad daylight. You must not wait and see, and hope ... that you will be spared from the same fate,” he said.
Turkel also accused the international community of operating under a “naive belief” for decades that the CCP would reform.
“The West has carried out business as usual, empowering the CCP to become more assertive and more belligerent to commit human rights abuses with impunity,” he said.
For instance, China continues to profit from forced labor in Xinjiang, he said.
US President Joe Biden in December last year signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act to prevent goods produced in Xinjiang from entering US markets.
Turkel said Taiwan and other liberal democracies should learn from the US example to play a bigger role “to clean up the global supply chain that has been tainted by slave-made consumer products.”
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and American Institute in Taiwan Director Sandra Oudkirk also attended the forum’s opening ceremony.
US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Rashad Hussain made remarks through a prerecorded video, in which he praised Taiwan as one of the US’ “strongest partners on religious freedom and stands tall as a regional and global model approach promoting freedom of religion or belief for all as a key part.”
“Taiwan is home to followers of numerous religions and beliefs, who peacefully practice their faith in whatever way their conscience leads,” he said.
However, the other side of the Taiwan Strait serves as a sharp contrast in terms of religious freedom, he said.
“The People’s Republic of China [has] pervasive and pernicious transnational repression, including members of ethnic and religious minority groups, [which] presents a real and growing threat to the values people hold dear and to the integrity of the rules-based international order,” he said.
“In short, every time the PRC reaches across borders and [commits] an act of repression, it seeks to demonstrate that no one is safe from [its] clutches. We must all recognize this critical threat and combat it with the attention, seriousness and resources it deserves,” he added.
Turkel was born in a re-education camp at the height of China’s Cultural Revolution and spent the first several months of his life in detention with his mother.
He traveled to the US in 1995 as a student and was later granted asylum by the US government. In September 2020, Turkel was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.
This is the second time the forum is being held in Taipei following its first iteration in 2019.
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