Read more In Washington DC, where he is based, there is momentum for legislation enforcing targeted sanctions at senior Chinese officials. Most people in the west have not heard of Uighurs or Xinjiang – a very remote part of China – and awareness of their plight has not been championed by a figure well-known in the west, as the Tibetan situation was by the Dalai Lama. He spent 18 months battling the home affairs department, which initially refused to recognise his son’s Australian citizenship. There are also concerns for the children of the detained Uighurs, who often seem to be removed from their communities and placed in orphanages or boarding schools where they are enrolled in programmes promoting Chinese assimilation. Learn how your comment data is processed. Tourism’s capacity to create jobs and stimulate economic development has been especially important for rural areas, where most of the. It was only this year that a thorough investigative report not only confirmed the existence of these practices but indicated that the forced birth control is much more widespread than previously thought. While Abdusalam is grateful for the support the government is showing his family now, he says on his recent trip to Canberra he struggled with a question the entire Uighur community is grappling with. 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The Chinese government refers to the camps as “Re-education Centres” and has released glossy videos claiming the Uighurs are happy there. “[The MPs] said: ‘Don’t think we forget about you, we will keep working’,” says Abdusalam, who has been trying to get a meeting with the foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, and the immigration minister, David Coleman, for months. “My older brother, younger brothers and two younger sisters, five siblings were all taken by the Chinese government,” says Nurmuhammad Majid. Stories of thousands of men, women, and children forcibly transferred to internment camps to undergo ‘reeducation’ and ‘vocational training’ surfaced. China has restricted access to foreign journalists, other than those taken on bizarre propaganda tours, so reporters have largely been left to rely on accounts of escapees and the diaspora as well as satellite imagery to try to piece together what is going on there. Tell the World: The Silent Plight of China’s Uighurs How mass detention camps and heavy surveillance in Xinjiang are affecting Uighurs not just in China but also abroad. Others, like Sadam Abdusalamu and Almas Nazamidin, have been separated from their wives and children, unable to return to their families or to bring them to safety in Australia. “No one wants to talk, with good reason,” says Leibold. 2. Theme Customization EXPLAINER—Five Things to Know About the Bingtuan, UHRP BRIEFING—Uyghurs to China: "Return our relatives’ passports", UHRP REPORT: “The Happiest Muslims in the World”: Disinformation, Propaganda, and the Uyghur Crisis, BRIEFING: Testimony of Dr. Elise Anderson Before the House of Commons of Canada, Subcommittee on International Human Rights, UHRP REPORT—Kashgar Coerced: Forced Reconstruction, Exploitation, and Surveillance in the Cradle of Uyghur Culture, UHRP EXPLAINER: Uyghur activists ask world to #HearUyghurs. 1. The Chinese Communist party is reverting to type, and reviving the totalitarian fear of the Mao era. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. As noted by international outlets, the prisoners shaved heads and blindfold shared and eerie resemblance to the Nazi death camps. Anarchist forum. Anarchism. ", Bibliography of select news reports & academic works, The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) or Bingtuan: 4. In a survey of China’s growing power, the Economist noted it was making the world safe for autocracy. It is high time for the world to take concrete measures in response to Beijing’s Uighur policies. By Minho Lee* In the long history of … The campaign highlights the trauma experienced by the worldwide Uyghur diaspora. Even before then, there were regular reports that Uighurs were subject to extraordinary surveillance, required to give blood, DNA and biometric face scans, forced to hand over their passports, denied permission to leave Xinjiang and detained in huge numbers. China has also walked a “very deliberate and very careful” line in committing serious human rights abuses without perpetrating the sort of physical violence that might attract widespread global condemnation, says Elaine Pearson, the Australia director of Human Rights Watch. Get Eurasia Review’s insightful news, analysis and opinion delivered directly to your email. “The most sort of shocking or problematic aspect of this whole scheme in Xinjiang is that it’s planned in such detail and enforced with such urgency,” Zenz says. Then please consider donating today to ensure that Eurasia Review can continue to be able to provide similar content. He hopes his wife and son might soon be able to come to Australia – ideally in time for his son’s second birthday on 31 August – meaning he could meet his son for the first time. Forced sterilization and abortions have been reported as common practices. Nations that claim to be defenders of the faith offer no protest to the concentration camps. User account menu. However, as many of these journalists have experienced first hand, these tours offer only a mirage and hide a much darker truth. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Drone video footage shows blindfolded and shackled Uyghur men in China’s far west in 2019. Tell the World: The Silent Plight of China’s Uighurs. They all say they have a family member detained, imprisoned or trapped in what the Chinese call the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in northwest China. Many of the inmates were imprisoned for ‘cultural crimes’ including wearing the hijab, praying in public, and reading the Qur’an. While many nations have spoken out, few have taken decisive action. Researchers have now identified nearly 100 suspected facilities like these across Xinjiang. Most members of the Australian Uighur community are missing someone. China has finally been forced to admit the detention centres exist, but still insists they are “vocational training centres”. Regardless of the label Chinese authorities slap on to these camps, their true nature cannot be kept hidden. Authoritarian politics and authoritarian religion are just two sides of the same debased coin. One of the most striking facts noted by researchers: while sterilizations have plummeted in China as a whole, they have surged in Uighur populated areas. Xinjiang: The story China wants the world to forget. The United Nations and other global experts estimate that close to 2 million Uighurs may be interred in these secret government run facilities. Tell the World: The Silent Plight of China's Uighurs. Serves as a Colonizing Force It has waged a campaign to label all Uighur people as terrorists and use religious extremism as a pretext for persecuting millions. Many have remained silent, out of fear for those still there. The Truth about 5G: What is driving the global anti-5G movement? All rights reserved. The world needs to pressure China over the plight of the Uighurs | Peter Irwin . Indeed, the program of Uighur suppression is the largest effort of ethnic persecution and internment since the Holocaust. But now, in a state of desperation, they are starting to come forward and make their stories known. We see it, yet we don’t register it. But the main reasons why Muslims suffer in silence is that the Muslim-majority countries that raged against Rushdie, Jyllands-Posten and Charlie Hebdo have decided to stay silent. Inmates are forbidden from any form of authentic Uighur expression, including speaking their own language. Editor’s note: The Australian producers of ‘Tell the World’ invited the Chinese ambassador to Australia to be interviewed for this programme, but he declined. “Muslims unfortunately have very little sympathy globally at the moment. China has exacted severe retribution against those who have spoken out, including Abdusalam’s wife who, since the Four Corners broadcast, has been taken in by police almost every day and questioned for three or four hours. Countries that could not tolerate Rushdie's magical realist novel can live with the mass sterilisation of Muslim women, Communists are forcing women to be sterilised, to block a western motion at the United Nations, China sterilising ethnic minority women in Xinjiang, report says. “The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas – uncertainty, progress, change – into crimes,” said Salman Rushdie when he was in fear of his life in 1990. These confessions confirm that forced birth control policies have produced a staggering 80 percent decrease in population growth. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. “It’s basically clear that a huge percentage of the middle-age range, especially Uighurs aged between 18 and 45 years, a very large percentage of them are in some form of internment or prison,” says Adrian Zenz who has researched aspects of China’s operation against its ethnic minorities. Profits from Uyghur Forced Labor Some Australian Uighurs like Hayrullah Mai – who was detained for three weeks in 2017 – have been held while visiting relatives in Xinjiang. “It’s a blasphemy,” a party mouthpiece said. But it was only two weeks ago that a statement was issued by 22 countries condemning China’s treatment of Uighur and other minorities. Many have remained silent, out of fear for those still there. You were “punching down” at largely poor and largely Muslim communities. They all say they have a family member detained, imprisoned or trapped in what the Chinese call the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in northwest China. Close. He was talking about conservative Islam. 12 days ago. The free world should not and cannot let the brutal repression of a minority based on issues of religion and culture continue unaddressed. Australian Uighur Sadam Abdusalam holds up a photo of his wife Nadila Wumaier and their baby son Lutifeier, whom he has never met.