{"id":1745,"date":"2020-06-26T23:53:25","date_gmt":"2020-06-26T14:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/?p=1745"},"modified":"2020-06-26T23:53:25","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T14:53:25","slug":"americas-new-uighur-law-is-a-world-first-what-took-so-long","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yuzb.net\/en\/2020\/06\/26\/americas-new-uighur-law-is-a-world-first-what-took-so-long\/","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s New Uighur Law Is a World First. What Took So Long?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/world\/uighur-bill\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The legislation targets China\u2019s human rights abuses, which Trump allegedly encouraged President Xi to continue.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Andrew McCormick<\/a>Twitter<\/a>
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JUNE 17, 2020<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

O<\/strong>n Wednesday, June 17, Donald Trump signed into law<\/a> the Uighur Human Rights Policy Act, which seeks to punish China for \u201cgross human rights abuses\u201d against Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the country\u2019s western Xinjiang province. It is the first piece of legislation<\/a> in the world targeting a sprawling, years-long detention campaign in China that experts say constitutes the largest internment of ethno-religious minorities since the Holocaust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bill has been an awfully long time coming. And the signing comes on the same afternoon that The Wall Street Journal<\/em> published an excerpt<\/a> of John Bolton\u2019s controversial new book in which the former national security adviser describes Trump telling Chinese president Xi Jinping last year \u201cthat Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Congress, which passed the bill with veto-proof majorities in both chambers, feels differently. \u201cToday, in this House of Representatives, in a very strong, bipartisan way, we are sending a message to the persecuted that they are not forgotten,\u201d Nancy Pelosi said<\/a> on the House floor on May 27. The bill passed the same day that national deaths from the novel coronavirus topped 100,000 and as Americans reeled from the Memorial Day killing of George Floyd. In a season of historic mourning and unrest in this country, troubles on the opposite side of the world might seem temporarily beside the point. But the Uighur Human Rights Policy Act warrants recognition.  TOP ARTICLES1\/5READ MORE\u2018I Got Nicer Everything,\u2019 Says Man Who Ruins AllHe Touches<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conflict has simmered for decades<\/a> in Xinjiang between native Uighurs and the ruling Communist Party, but the current crackdown began in earnest in the spring of 2017. Initially, there was little clarity about the unfolding rights abuses; early reporting documented an extensive high-tech surveillance state<\/a>, in which all manner of daily minutiae might be cause for arrest\u2014growing a beard, contacting friends abroad, and posting religious content online, for example\u2014with the dubious aim of curbing violent extremism. By the end of 2017, authorities were throwing Uighurs in reeducation camps by the thousands, with no pretense whatsoever of due process. A year passed, and that number had exploded to more than 1 million\u2014possibly as high as 3 million<\/a>, according to one Defense Department estimate, which is the population of Arkansas and roughly a quarter of all Uighurs in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the camps, journalists and researchers have documented torture<\/a>, sexual assault<\/a>, forced abortions<\/a>, and death<\/a>. Some evidence suggests organ harvesting<\/a>, which China denies. Outside the camps, meanwhile, mosques have been bulldozed<\/a>. Ethnic Han Chinese minders have moved in<\/a> with Uighur families at the behest of the government, under a \u201cPair Up and Become Family\u201d program that often finds Han men sleeping in the beds<\/a> of Uighur women whose husbands are detained. And children\u2014when they are not left to die<\/a> unattended because their parents have been detained\u2014are corralled into government-run orphanages, where they are educated<\/a> in the Han Chinese tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVID-19<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"The<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

HOW THE COVID-19 LOCKDOWN IS RESHAPING UIGHUR ACTIVISM<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrew McCormick<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The United Nations defines genocide as any \u201cacts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,\u201d including killing members of the group, causing them \u201cserious bodily or mental harm,\u201d imposing conditions on life that would otherwise contribute to the group\u2019s demise, and limiting births among the group or transferring the custody of children away from the group. \u201cAll of these actions are being taken against the Uighurs,\u201d Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy, told me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n