{"id":1645,"date":"2020-05-03T02:07:39","date_gmt":"2020-05-02T17:07:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/?p=1645"},"modified":"2020-05-03T02:07:39","modified_gmt":"2020-05-02T17:07:39","slug":"three-years-of-mass-internment-in-xinjiang-lead-to-diplomatic-woes-for-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/2020\/05\/03\/three-years-of-mass-internment-in-xinjiang-lead-to-diplomatic-woes-for-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Years of Mass Internment in Xinjiang Lead to Diplomatic Woes For China"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

2020-04-30<\/strong>
https:\/\/www.rfa.org\/english\/news\/uyghur\/woes-04302020160528.html?fbclid=IwAR1W98NwtqtFaN-zamqjx1RbTo9MSitFP0llP-XH1pRA7ngUqo1AfXqDbqE<\/a>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three years after its launch, a campaign of mass incarceration of Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) has become a diplomatic headache for China, particularly in its relations with the West, but observers say a more coordinated global approach is needed to hold Beijing to account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since April 2017, authorities in the XUAR are believed to have held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities accused of harboring \u201cstrong religious views\u201d and \u201cpolitically incorrect\u201d in some 1,300 internment camps throughout the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Beijing initially denied the existence of the camps, China last year changed tack and began describing the facilities as \u201cboarding schools\u201d that provide vocational training for Uyghurs, discourage radicalization, and help protect the country from terrorism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But reporting by RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service and other media outlets indicate that those in the camps are detained against their will and subjected to political indoctrination, routinely face rough treatment at the hands of their overseers and endure poor diets and unhygienic conditions in the often-overcrowded facilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amid testimonies from camp survivors and leaks of official documents, Washington has taken the lead on publicly condemning Beijing over its policies in the XUAR, which also include a high-tech surveillance and police state under Communist Party Chairman Chen Quanguo that monitors the region\u2019s minorities and subjects them to systematic persecution and discrimination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among those who have called for Beijing to shut down its camp system and end other rights violations in the region are U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, and several high-ranking lawmakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate both approved versions of the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act in late 2019, which would allow for sanctions against officials, such as Chen, deemed responsible for rights violations in the XUAR under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. The legislation would also target entities involved in the construction and operation of the camps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two versions of the act must be reconciled before it can be passed through Congress and sent to U.S. President Donald Trump to be signed into law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shifting policy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amid pressure from the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, the European Union and the United Nations, experts believe that China has begun sentencing those held in internment camps to prison as part of a bid to legitimize their continued detention, or relocating them to factories both inside and outside of the XUAR as forced labor, under the guise of providing them jobs connected to their so-called vocational training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a recent statement provided to RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service, a spokesperson from the U.S. State Department reiterated a call for China to \u201cimmediately release all those arbitrarily detained Uighurs and Muslim minority groups, and to end its draconian policies that for three years have terrorized these minority communities in Xinjiang.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Chinese government must live up to its own laws as well as its international obligations and commitments related to human rights and fundamental freedoms,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey called the last three years \u201cgrim\u201d for Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China and urged Congress to pass the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, which he introduced in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also called on Congress to pass the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which he introduced last month, and which would prohibit imports from the XUAR to the U.S. unless proof can be shown that they are not linked to forced labor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In early March, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said that tens of thousands of detainees in the XUAR have been transferred to factories throughout China, where they are forced to produce goods for at least 83 global retailers, including Apple, BMW, The Gap, Nike, Samsung, Sony, and Volkswagen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe also need to make sure that no Chinese businesses profit from their crimes,\u201d Smith told RFA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is wide bipartisan support in Congress [for the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act] and I will continue to work until the assault on Uyghur religion, culture and language is finally over.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Call for greater pressure<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dolkun Isa, president of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) exile group, welcomed the attention China\u2019s rights violations in the XUAR had received over the past three years, saying it had \u201cbecome an international issue of global concern, raised at all relevant international bodies, including the United Nations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And while he said that China \u201ccan no longer hide the existence of this mass detention\u201d due to growing global awareness, he called on the international community to do more to address the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have not yet seen any concrete actions on the part of U.N., such as sending a fact-finding mission into East Turkestan to assess the real situation,\u201d he said, using Uyghurs\u2019 preferred name for their homeland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo some extent, this is troubling because we can see the nefarious influence of China working at the U.N. level.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this month, China was appointed to a seat on the Consultative Group of the U.N. Human Rights Council, despite objections from rights groups, while Beijing has threatened countries at the U.N. that might seek to draw attention to its persecution of Muslims in the XUAR. In October last year, more than 60 countries praised China\u2019s \u201chuman rights progress\u201d in the region during the U.N. General Assembly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adrian Zenz, a senior fellow in China Studies at the Washington-based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and one of the world\u2019s foremost experts on mass incarcerations in the XUAR, called the U.N. \u201cinherently a mechanism of compromise\u201d on the Uyghur and other issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is a forum for every nation in existence, and many of those have been coopted by China,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Uyghur human rights crisis has exposed the U.N. human rights mechanism as impotent. Its work to eliminate racial discrimination is a hollow fa\u00e7ade.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, he said, beyond sending letters to U.N. entities, the EU and its member states \u201chave not taken any significant steps in regard to the Xinjiang crisis,\u201d while the response from Muslim majority nations and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) \u201chas been even worse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fallout from the coronavirus is also likely to keep the individual nations in these blocs focused on stopping the spread of the pandemic and economic recovery, rather than the situation in the XUAR, Zenz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Total social control\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But three years on from the launch of the internment camps, \u201cXinjiang\u2019s strategy is clearly shifting from a short-term strategy of mass internment to a long-term strategy of total social control\u201d through imprisonment and forced labor, Zenz said, calling Beijing\u2019s approach to the region a \u201csystematic cultural genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intellectuals and cultural figureheads have been thrown into prison, while those who are not or no longer interned are \u201csubjected to the state\u2019s unfettered social re-engineering project,\u201d with children sent to full-time boarding schools where they must study in Chinese, women sent to \u201csatellite factories\u201d making garments, and men regularly sent to industrial parks far from home or in other parts of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWherever Uyghurs are, they live under the constant surveillance of the state and in perpetual fear of being detained,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPopulation growth rates have plummeted. Many suffer from post-traumatic stress disorders and anxieties that they cannot process. Intergenerational separation, labor exploitation and cultural annihilation are becoming the new normal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Zenz said that despite the apparent hopelessness of the situation, \u201cthis is not a time to give up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBeijing has maneuvered ethnic relations in Xinjiang into a corner,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe consequences of everything that has been done are unfolding as we speak. Every single act of humiliation and abuse continues to affect both perpetrator and victim in some way, with debilitating results,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet us not grow weary in uncovering or speaking truth, because truth has a way of overcoming falsehood, just as love has a way of overcoming hate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reported by Alim Seytoff for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Translated by Alim Seytoff. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2020-04-30https:\/\/www.rfa.org\/english\/news\/uyghur\/woes-04302020160528.html?fbclid=IwAR1W98NwtqtFaN-zamqjx1RbTo9MSitFP0llP-XH1pRA7ngUqo1AfXqDbqE Three years after its launch, a campaign of mass incarceration of Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) has become a diplomatic headache … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,4,5],"class_list":["post-1645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-ethnic-cleansing-crime-against-humanity-genocide","tag-human-rights","tag-mass-detention"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1647,"href":"https:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1645\/revisions\/1647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}