#  >  > Living And Legal Affairs In Thailand >  >  > Thailand and Asia News >  >  China's Mass Detention of Xinjiang's Ethnic Minorities Shows No Sign of Let-up

## misskit

Chinese authorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang are continuing their wave of arrests of ethnic minority Kazakhs and Uyghurs, sources in the regional told RFA on Wednesday.

A Kazakh source close to the police department in Xinjiang's regional capital, Urumqi, said police are now being issued with quotas for the detention of the mostly Muslim Uyghurs and ethnic Kazakhs.

Police are targeting anyone who expresses a critical opinion of the ruling Chinese Communist Party on social media, as well as those with overseas links, such as family who live or study abroad, sources said.

Many of those detained are being sent to re-education centers across the region, while some face criminal prosecution, they said.

"They have to detain 3,000 Kazakhs or Uyghurs per week," the Kazakh source close to the Urumqi police department said.

A second Kazakh source gave the example of Urumqi sole trader Adilbek Hasmubai, who was reported to police after he sent his computer to a repair shop and the shop assistant viewed photos and images of a Kazakhstan lawmaker stored on the hard drive, and reported him to police.

Adilbek, 32, was taken away by police in Urumqi, and several of his friends and associates were later also detained, after his computer was found to contain images of them posing in photographs with Kazakhstan Mazhilis member Bekbolat Tleukhan, who has spoken out about China's treatment of Kazakhs.

More than 20 people were detained in connection with the case in Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture and Tacheng city, including Aigul Musakhan, 28, Tumarbek Sadek, 32, and Tohtar Bisanbey, 32.

An employee who answered the phone at the Tianshan district police department in Urumqi on Wednesday hung up immediately when contacted by RFA.

The source said the number of detainees implicated in the Adilbek case alone would likely continue to expand.

More cells being built

A Kazakh source living in the north of Xinjiang said the recent waves of detentions has outstripped existing capacity, prompting the authorities to build more detention facilities, including those with cells just one meter high.

"[new construction] has already started happening in the jails near where I live," the Kazakh source said. "I heard that there are two reasons for this: one is that the [existing jails] are packed with people, and the other is that they are making a distinction between political prisoners and ordinary criminals."

"The ceilings are just one meter high, so a person can't stand upright: they have to squat down."

A second source in the same area said authorities are continuing to confiscate the passports of Kazakhs in the region, in a policy that has long been used to restrict Uyghurs' freedom of movement.

"They don't want them going to visit relatives in Kazakhstan," the source said. "They are planning to tell the United Nations Human Rights Council about this situation, to try to get their support."

He said relatives who are citizens of Kazakhstan are also finding it hard to get Chinese visas to visit relatives in Xinjiang.

Targeted for ties abroad

Chinese authorities began detaining ethnic minority Kazakhs several months ago, sending them to police-run detention centers or re-education camps across the region.

Those being targeted often have overseas links, including a history of overseas study or family and friends across the border in Kazakhstan.

Chinese authorities are also believed to be holding a number of ethnic minority Kazakhs for wearing "Islamic" clothing and praying, a practice forbidden by the ruling Chinese Communist Party on university campuses across the country.

Dozens of Kazakhs have also faced detention, intimidation, and the confiscation of their passports and other documents because they have family members living or studying overseas.

Ethnic minority Kazakh Muslims were among some 200 ethnic minority holders of Chinese passports targeted in August by Egypt's secret police in an operation activists said was requested by Beijing.

Official figures show that there are around 1.5 million Kazakhs in China, mostly concentrated in and around the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture.

China has previously welcomed Kazakhs who wished to relocate from Kazakhstan, but many Kazakhs with Chinese nationality are now heading back in the other direction, with their numbers peaking at nearly 38,000 in 2006.

China's Mass Detention of Xinjiang's Ethnic Minorities Shows No Sign of Let-up

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## Latindancer

> "They have to detain 3,000 Kazakhs or Uyghurs per week," the Kazakh source close to the Urumqi police department said.


Could this figure really be true ? That's a hell of a lot of resentment to be stirring up....

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## HuangLao

Been an increasing power keg region for a few decades vacant of mainstream attention. 

Something's gonna blow before long.

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## harrybarracuda

How far will China go to stop a muslim state within its borders?

Probably as far as Myanmar....

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## OhOh

RFA, now there's an informative site. :rofl:

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## misskit

*Prominent Uyghur Musician Arrested Amid Ideological Purge in Xinjiang*Popular Uyghur singer and musician Abdurehim Heyit has been arrested without official explanation by authorities in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region, sources say.

News of Heyit’s arrest earlier this year was delayed in reaching outside contacts due to communications clampdowns imposed in the politically sensitive region as Chinese authorities continue to crack down on expressions of Uyghur cultural and national identity.

Speaking to RFA’s Uyghur Service, Uyghur performing artists living overseas expressed shock and sadness at the news, calling Abdurehim an important contributor to Uyghur culture.

“I learned that he had been arrested in March, and his colleagues later confirmed the news,” U.S.-based Uyghur poet Tahir Hamut told RFA.  “We were very sad, but we couldn’t ask about his situation.”

“Under current [Chinese] policies, it is impossible to determine whether he is now in prison or in a political re-education camp or whether he has been forcibly disappeared.”

“No one dares to ask,” he said.

Tahir said friends told him that Abdurehim had been arrested because of his performance of a song called Atilar, or “Forefathers.” The song had previously been cleared by government censors, though, he said.

“Whether it is Uyghur intellectuals, artists, writers, or poets: nobody is being spared from the current purge.”

'A powerful role'

Also speaking to RFA, London-based Uyghur artist and singer Rahima Mahmut called Abdurehim “one of the best Uyghur singers and musicians,” adding she was horrified by the news of his arrest.

“Abdurehim Heyit was a state artist, and all of his songs were approved by the Chinese government,” she said. “None of his songs were banned before.”

Uyghur artists and writers have traditionally played a powerful role in “awakening the Uyghur people in the past,” she said.

“This is what scares the Chinese government.”

“But China is pursuing a dead-end policy, which will only intensify tensions and sharpen divisions [in Xinjiang],” she added.

“This is not in China’s interest."



Rachel Harris, British musician who studies and plays Uyghur music, said she first met Abdurehim Heyit in 1997 and was "in awe" of his musicianship.

"This news came in the context of reports of many people being detained without charge and I was disturbed about the broader situation," she told RFA.

"But with Abdurehim Heyit, as a music specialist, ... I thought that really his is a case that I should speak out about."

"Like most people, I am hoping that this very extreme campaign cannot last forever," said Harris.
Since Xinjiang party chief Chen Quanguo was appointed to his post in August last year, he has initiated several harsh policies targeting Uyghur intellectuals, writers, historians, artists and musicians.

China regularly conducts “strike hard” campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.

While China blames some Uyghurs for "terrorist" attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.

Prominent Uyghur Musician Arrested Amid Ideological Purge in Xinjiang

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## misskit

> RFA, now there's an informative site.



Which news outlet could I get accurate news about the Uyghur crackdown in China? 

Or are you implying there is no Chinese harrassment of Uygurs?

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## bsnub

> Or are you implying there is no Chinese harrassment of Uygurs?


Of course he doesn't think so. It's OhDoh he thinks that the Chinese government are angels who fart fairy dust being subjected to propaganda by the evil Americans.

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## OhOh

RFA is an ameristani propaganda tool, yes?

I'm sure there are some local reports if you ever tire of RFA.

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## misskit

> I'm sure there are some local reports if you ever tire of RFA.



Come on. Tell me where to find local reports _besides RFA._ Who else is sticking out their neck to go against China?

You'd like for me to post up stories from the China Daily, where the propaganda says everything is roses with the Uygurs?

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## OhOh

Try google/duckduckgo.... 5 or 6 pages at least of pages to select.

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## misskit

*snigger* The first news outlet listed on Duckduckgo.

*Uyghur - Radio Free Asia*A selection of news from and about Uyghur people living in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Most of these articles were aired in Uyghur and can be found, in Uyghur

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## Latindancer

^  :smiley laughing:   :bananaman:

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## OhOh

> How far will China go to stop a muslim state within its borders?
> 
> Probably as far as Myanmar....


The Indian Ocean is their lake 'arry.




> *snigger* The first news outlet listed on Duckduckgo.


Try looking at the other 500 or so, you may find a different viewpoint.




> ^


Well that was a waste of electricity.

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## HuangLao

> The Indian Ocean is their lake 'arry.


As it always has been, for those who understand another perspective of world history.

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## misskit

*Families of Uyghur Police Officers Among Those Detained in Xinjiang’s Kashgar*Family members of ethnic Uyghur security personnel in northwest China’s Xinjiang region, who authorities had previously considered “off limits,” are among those now being detained as part of “stability” measures the officers have been tasked with enforcing, according to sources.

Since April, thousands of Uyghurs accused of harboring “extremist” and “politically incorrect” views have been detained in political re-education camps and prisons throughout Xinjiang, where members of the ethnic group complain of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.

While authorities have generally avoided harassing the families of Uyghur security personnel and public servants during past crackdowns in Xinjiang, new reports suggest that even Uyghurs who serve the state risk arrest amid a string of harsh policies attacking the legitimate rights and freedoms of Uyghurs enacted since Communist Party secretary Chen Quanguo was appointed to run the region in August last year.

Sources in Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) prefecture’s Yengisar (Yingjisha) county recently told RFA’s Uyghur Service that Uyghur police officers and their family members are now being targeted as part of the very “stability” measures the officers are responsible for upholding.

In September, a Chinese court in Kashgar city jailed Horigul Nasir, 21, for 10 years over claims by a friend that she had promoted the wearing of headscarves, a form of Islamic dress increasingly restricted by Chinese authorities, her brother Yusupjan Nasir told RFA at the time.

Since his sister’s sentencing, Yusupjan Nasir has been removed from his position as an assistant officer at Yengisar county’s Saghan township police station, officers from various village branches confirmed to RFA recently.

Local sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he had been demoted to the position of security guard at the township’s Family Planning Department.

An officer from Saghan township’s No. 3 village police station told RFA that nearly half of the nine regular duty officers working there have family members who were detained.

“There are four police officers whose relatives are in detention, including one whose siblings are being held … Sadirjan Ahet,” said the officer, who also asked to remain unnamed.

Officer fired

An officer at the Saghan township police station told RFA that at least one other policeman from the township, who had been promoted and served for the last five years as an assistant officer patrolling China’s border, was fired after his relatives were arrested for “extremism.”

“Tursunjan Emet, a border police officer, was removed from his post—his father and two of his elder brothers were arrested,” the officer said.

“Those whose family members have been convicted and sent to prison are removed from their jobs.” 

Kashgar prefecture is located along China’s borders with Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, but it was unclear where Emet had been posted on patrol.

The officer could not confirm whether Emet’s colleagues had arrested his father and brother, saying only that “those police responsible for their area would have gone and detained them.”

Ten-year sentence

A security guard named Borhan recently told RFA that his eldest brother, Abduwasip Omer, had been jailed in Saghan township for “helping a woman to purchase a mobile phone” that was later used for an unspecified “illegal purpose.”

“Later, I learned he received a prison sentence, but because I have been working 24-hour shifts, I’ve been unable to speak to my family regarding his case,” said Borhan, who is from nearby Topuluq township.

“I hoped that I could find out more … but I was unable to return home.”

Borhan said that his brother “and several others” in Saghan had been given 10-year prison sentences by local authorities without trials, and sent for re-education before local cadres went to their homes and informed their families. 

Most of the verdicts had been filled out by officials in charge of the township Political Law Committee and distributed by district secretaries to families, he added.

According to Borhan, his brother’s prison term came just two years after he was released from another 10-year term. His sister had been arrested for asking about Omer’s whereabouts and held in a re-education camp ever since, he added.

‘Strike hard’ campaigns

China regularly conducts “strike hard” campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.

While China blames some Uyghurs for "terrorist" attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.

Families of Uyghur Police Officers Among Those Detained in Xinjiang?s Kashgar

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## misskit

*China Holds 9 Uyghurs, 2 Others Over 'Terrorist, Extremist' Videos*Chinese authorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang are holding 11 members of mostly Muslim ethnic minority groups on suspicion of promoting "terrorism, religious extremism and ethnic divisions" using online platforms.

Since August, police in the region have investigated 15 cases of "disseminating illegal information online," the Xinjiang Internet Information Office said at the weekend.

Nine of the "suspects" were Turkic-speaking, mostly Muslim Uyghurs, one a non-Uyghur Hui Muslim and one an ethnic Kazakh citizen of China, many of whom are also Muslims.

They are accused of "using text messages, pictures, audio and video to promote, store and disseminate terrorist, religious extremist, ethnically divisive content and fake news," the statement said.

Beijing blames some Uyghurs for a string of violent attacks and clashes in China in recent years, but critics say the government has exaggerated the threat from the ethnic group, and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for violence that has left hundreds dead since 2009.

China regularly conducts “strike hard” campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people.

The government has detained large numbers of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minorities simply for posting religious videos not approved by officials, Qurans, prayer mats and traditional clothing, all of which have been described as evidence of "extremism" by Chinese police in recent months.

Among the detainees were a 50-year-old resident of Aksu, a 32-year-old resident of Bozhou, a resident of Urumqi and a resident of Kashgar, all Uyghurs accused of possessing and disseminating "terrorist" videos, the Internet Information Office said.

'Terrorist videos' meaning unclear
Meanwhile, an ethnic Kazakh from Bozhou and a 22-year-old Hui Muslim stand accused of disseminating "religious extremist propaganda," it said.

An employee who answered the phone at the Xinjiang regional government's internet reporting hotline declined to give details about what was meant by "terrorist videos" in the statement.

"Illegal and substandard content includes the online dissemination of undesirable video and religious extremism, as well as rumor-mongering of a political nature, etc," the employee said.

Asked for further details, the employee said: "We just receive the tip-offs here, but it's up to the police to define whether or not the content is illegal or against regulations."

Thousands of Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities are being held in re-education camps across Xinjiang without contact with their families under a policy designed to counter "extremism," local officials have told RFA’s Uyghur Service.

The camps are now formally referred to as “Professional Education Schools,” after being called “Socialism Training Schools” and other names since their early 2017 inception as “Counter-extremism Training Schools,” the official said.

The camps are in operation throughout Xinjiang and contain detainees from the Uyghur, Kyrgyz and Kazakh communities – all Turkic-speaking, mostly Muslim minorities in China – under policies introduced by hardline Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, sources have said.

Officials have described the facilities as closed schools, because authorities keep internees detained day and night, subjecting them to political and ideological "re-education" for an indefinite period.
Ilshat Hassan, President of Uyghur American Association said the latest arrest showed that "China is further intensifying the suppression of the peaceful Uyghur people after the 19th Congress."
"Some Uyghurs had hopes of change after the CCP Congress but that was only wishful thinking. The reality is the situation is only getting worse,” he told RFA's Uyghur Service, referring to last month's five-yearly Communist Party congress.
Pressure on Kazakhs
The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on the Chinese government to free the thousands of people placed in Xinjiang camps
since April 2017 and close them down.

Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the exile World Uyghur Congress group, said the ruling Chinese Communist Party has already succeeded in controlling what its citizens see online, and is targeting ethnic minorities as part of a systematic program of oppression.

"This so-called charge of disseminating illegal content is all about the Chinese government's fear that Uyghurs will start expressing their anger and discontent online," Raxit said.

"This tightening of online monitoring in the region is, in reality, another way to prevent Uyghurs getting a hold of information outside the government's controlled monopoly," he said.

"I worry that this will lead to even more people being detained by the local authorities."

Meanwhile, the Xinjiang authorities are continuing to put pressure on ethnic Kazakhs with relatives across the border in Kazakhstan, local sources said.

Sources in Urumqi said an elderly Kazakh woman was recently forced to sign a document declaring "an end to the maternal relationship with my son" and to cancel her grown son's household registration document linked to his family home, to enable him to get a visa to come home and visit her after he obtained Kazakhstan citizenship.

New rules introduced since August have made it almost impossible for naturalized citizens of Kazakhstan who were once holders of Chinese passports to get a visa to come and visit relatives.

Visa applications require proof that the household registration, or "hukou", back in China has been canceled before a former Chinese citizen may return to the country, sources said.

"The police made a mother write this declaration of the ending of maternal relations with her son," an Urumqi-based Kazakh said. "Otherwise, they would have charged him with the crime of holding dual nationality, which would have meant he couldn't come back to China."

China Holds 9 Uyghurs, 2 Others Over 'Terrorist, Extremist' Videos

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## OhOh

> Nine of the "suspects" were Turkic-speaking,  mostly Muslim Uyghurs, one a non-Uyghur Hui Muslim and one an ethnic  Kazakh citizen of China, many of whom are also Muslims.


Seems a remarkably small number. China has a population of 1,411,000,000 of which 11,000,000 approx. are Uyghurs.

So 9 out of 1,411,000,000. 

Mountains and molehills seem to be in order.

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## misskit

*China Carries Out 'Mass Detentions' of Ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang*Chinese authorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang have detained hundreds of ethnic Kazakh business owners this month, freezing their bank accounts and assets pending "investigation," RFA has learned.

Police in Dorbiljin (in Chinese, Emin) county, Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture have swooped on an estimated 500 ethnic Kazakh traders and businesses in raids from Nov. 6-11, sources said.

Meanwhile, the authorities are also targeting anyone remitting funds to relatives across the border in Kazakhstan, they said.

A resident of Dorbiljin who asked to remain anonymous said the raids had begun in early November, targeting ethnic Kazakhs in particular.

"In Dorbiljin county in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture, there have been large numbers of arrests in November," the source said.

"They have detained 500 Kazakhs in the space of just a few days, the majority of them business people, some of them very wealthy, others sole traders," he said.

"What's more, they have sent them all off to Yining city," the resident said, in a reference to the prefectural capital.

The Kazakh source said that banks in Ili have also been ordered by the "strike hard" office of the prefectural government to freeze the accounts and assets of those detained.

Hard-line ethnic minority policies
Repeated calls to the Dorbiljin county government offices rang unanswered during office hours on Monday.

An operator who answered the phone at the regional information line said there was no number listed for the Yining Detention Center.

The report from Ili on sweeping detentions of ethnic minority Kazakhs comes after months reports that Chineseauthorities in Xinjiang are continuing to detain large numbers of Uyghurs in "political study centers" similar to prison camps.The campaign is thought to be the brain child of Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanquo, who took over the region in August 2016  and brought hard-line ethnic minority policies he had previously rolled out in Tibet. 

The crackdown on Uyghurs -- who, like Kazakhs, are Turkic-language speakers and mostly Muslims -- has seen large numbers of males taken away for re-education, leaving women and children to work the fields. Students who traveled to Egypt for Islamic studies have been rounded up by Egyptian authorities at China's behest, with some being taken back to China and most held incommunicado. 

As in the case with the Uyghurs, those Kazakhs being targeted often have overseas links, including a history ofoverseas study or family and friends across the border in Kazakhstan.

Chinese authorities are also believed to be holding a number of ethnic minority Kazakhs for wearing "Islamic" clothing and praying, a practice forbidden by the ruling Chinese Communist Party on university campuses across the country.

SIM card, money transfer
Meanwhile, Anargul Malik, a former Chinese national who acquired citizenship of Kazakhstan, told RFA that her sister, Margul Malik, is being held in a "closed political study center."

Malik said her sister, who lives in Xinjiang's regional capital Urumqi, was detained two months ago, with no word to the family, while she was still breastfeeding her two-year-old son.

"Her two-year-old son is getting thinner and ... his weight has dropped by two kilos," Malik, who is a doctor, said. "She was taken just two weeks after miscarrying her second child, and I am afraid that she might have a hemorrhage."

She traced her sister's troubles back to her visit to Xinjiang two months earlier, during which she borrowed her sister's ID card to buy a SIM card for her phone, prompting the police to question them both.

She said her sister's detention could also have been triggered by a transfer she made of 10,000 yuan to her sister's account in China.

"I sent her 10,000 yuan, and less than two hours later, the police came and took her away," Malik said. "We have had no news of her to this day."

"We don't even know if she's dead or alive. I have been three times [to China to enquire], but the police refuse to give me an answer," she said.

Official figures show that there are around 1.5 million Kazakhs in China, mostly concentrated in and around the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture.

China has previously welcomed Kazakhs who wished to relocate from Kazakhstan, but many Kazakhs with Chinese nationality are now heading back in the other direction, with their numbers peaking at nearly 38,000 in 2006.

China Carries Out 'Mass Detentions' of Ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang

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## misskit

*China Detains Family on Return From Kazakhstan as Mass Detentions Continue*Chinese authorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang have detained an ethnic Kazakh family after they returned from a visit to relatives in neighboring Kazakhstan, sources in the region said on Friday.


Nurhoja Teksi was detained alongside his wife and two elderly relatives last month after crossing the border into China following a lengthy stay in Almaty, a Kazakhstan-based source said.


The couple were in the process of taking the elderly relatives back to visit their hometown in Xinjiang’s Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture, she said.


“Nurhoja was en route to Mongolküre county in Ili prefecture, traveling on a truck along with his wife,” the source said. “They had said they would be back in a couple of days, and four of them went, and were all detained.”


She added: “Their two kids are still here in Almaty. The neighbors are looking after them.”


A second Kazakhstan source said Chinese authorities are now routinely detaining ethnic minority Kazakhs who attend mosque or who pray regularly.


The majority of them are handed prison sentences of 3-7 years, but the authorities seldom inform their families of their whereabouts or sentences, the source said.


The families are therefore unable to hire defense lawyers for their loved ones, he said.


He said many of the relatives of those detained are themselves living under the threat of reprisals from police, so they daren’t speak out about the detainees.


A third Kazakh source said he had recently been back to China to cancel his household registration, a mandatory requirement for naturalized Kazakhstan nationals to get visas to visit friends and family back in China.


He said many of his family members had refused to see him, and the police are currently patrolling the streets of all ethnic Kazakh areas.


He quoted his brother as saying: “Forgive me brother, but I can’t let you visit. I have two sons, both of whom have been detained, and I now have more than 50 of my friends and relatives in ‘study centers’.”



*Mass detentions of Uyghurs, Kazahks*


Sources estimate that Chinese authorities in Xinjiang have detained hundreds of ethnic Kazakhs this month, freezing their bank accounts and assets pending "investigation," for “extremist” behavior that includes normal Islamic practices.


Both Kazakhs and ethnic minority Uyghurs are being detained in “political study centers” in unprecedented numbers across the region, RFA has learned.


The crackdown on Uyghurs -- who, like Kazakhs, are Turkic-language speakers and mostly Muslims -- has seen large numbers of males taken away for re-education, leaving women and children to work the fields.


Students who traveled to Egypt for Islamic studies have been rounded up by Egyptian authorities at China's behest, with some being taken back to China and most held incommunicado.


There are also moves afoot by authorities in the Altay region, near the Kazakhstan border, to “strengthen Han culture” in the border region, by insisting that minority groups learn to speak better Mandarin, according to a video shared with RFA by a local source.


“Elderly Kazakhs are now learning Mandarin, in their 70s and 80s,” an Altay-based Kazakh who asked to remain anonymous said on Friday.
“As you can see in the video, they keep trying to pronounce the word ‘dangran’, but they can’t say it,” he said. “The elderly never do speak it well, and now they are being made to speak Mandarin.”


He said Kazakh has now been eliminated from the curriculum in the region’s schools, where all classes are taught in Mandarin, a move that contravenes China’s own laws governing the administration of the country’s autonomous regions and sub-regions.


Official figures show that there are around 1.5 million Kazakhs in China, mostly concentrated in and around the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture.


China has previously welcomed Kazakhs who wished to relocate from Kazakhstan, but many Kazakhs with Chinese nationality are now heading back in the other direction, with their numbers peaking at nearly 38,000 in 2006.

China Detains Family on Return From Kazakhstan as Mass Detentions Continue

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## Latindancer

Mainland China is actually the world's biggest terrorist state.

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## misskit

*China Jails Ethnic Kazakh Man Over Quranic Recitation Audio*Chinese authorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang have handed down a 16-and-a-half-year jail term to an ethnic Kazakh man on ethnic hatred charges, RFA has learned.

Manat Hamit, 45, was handed the sentence in May by a court in Burultokay (in Chinese, Fuhai) county in Xinjiang's Altay prefecture, sources said.

His appeal was rejected by a higher court, which upheld the original verdict and sentence.

Manat's sister Nurisha Manat, who currently lives in neighboring Kazakhstan, said the family has tried to to help him, but that the authorities had refused to give them any information, or to accept a lawyer they hired to help prepare his appeal.

"We didn't receive [any formal notification], but we heard from somebody that he planned to appeal," she said. "But the sentence remained at 16 years, for two charges, I believe, one of which was to do with ethnic separatism."

"He received 16 years ... He was detained at the end of April, and the trial was in July," she said.

"I think he had a lawyer but I could never manage to get through on the lawyer's number from here."

She said anyone who knew Manat in his hometown had also been targeted by police, and daren't speak out about his detention and sentencing.

An unnamed source in Manat's hometown described him as a scholarly civil servant who was detained on April 25 after the authorities found audio files of Quranic recitations on his computer.

He was initially accused of "disseminating terrorism-related audiovisual material," and "incitement to racial hatred and to racial discrimination."

He was sentenced in May at a secret trial, with no access to family visits or a lawyer.

'Extremist acts'

The authorities had quickly located the audio files, which Manat had downloaded two years beforehand, and placed him under criminal detention.

The court indictment said: "Manat used religious extremist acts that amount to disseminating terrorist audiovisual content and incitement to ethnic hatred and discrimination."

A court typically hands down such heavy jail terms based on its view that a person's actions  have done "serious harm" to society.

Repeated calls to the Burultokay county court, the Altay Intermediate People's Court and to Manat's former employers, the Burultokay county government personnel department, rang unanswered during office hours on Wednesday.

Local news website Yaxinwang said Manat had won an official award for his government work in 2015.

A Kazakh source living in Altay said the authorities are still waging a crackdown on ethnic minority Kazakhs who have ties with friends and family in neighboring Kazakhstan, including those who return to China after visiting them.

"It's not just in Altay: it's across the whole of Xinjiang," the source said. "If you go to Urumqi, the people there are scared, too, with surveillance cameras watching them, the police can be there in the space of a minute."

"People are afraid to allow friends and relatives from overseas to stay in their homes, because the police won't allow it, and force them to go and stay in a hotel or guesthouse for foreigners," the source said.

Hundreds held

Sources estimate that Chinese authorities in Xinjiang have detained hundreds of ethnic Kazakhs this month, freezing their bank accounts and assets pending "investigation," for “extremist” behavior that includes normal Islamic practices.

Both Kazakhs and ethnic minority Uyghurs are being detained in “political study centers” in unprecedented numbers across the region.

Students who traveled to Egypt for Islamic studies have been rounded up by Egyptian authorities at China's behest, with some being taken back to China and most held incommunicado.

There are also moves afoot by authorities in Altay to “strengthen Han culture” in the border region, by insisting that minority groups learn to speak better Mandarin.

Official figures show that there are around 1.5 million Kazakhs in China, mostly concentrated in and around the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture.

China has previously welcomed Kazakhs who wished to relocate from Kazakhstan, but many Kazakhs with Chinese nationality are now heading back in the other direction, with their numbers peaking at nearly
38,000 in 2006.

China Jails Ethnic Kazakh Man Over Quranic Recitation Audio

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## HermantheGerman

> Mainland China is actually the world's biggest terrorist state.


True !

The Government doesn't trusts it's citizens !
The citizens don't trust the government !
Neighbors don't trust each other !
Relatives / Family members don't trust each other !

Chinese citizens can work hard, become multi millionaires, travel abroad, come back home and..........and find out that all their wealth has been taken with NO questions allowed.

A society of total MISS TRUST !

Now google that in your ducky website  ::chitown::

----------


## HermantheGerman

Ohhh, and to top it off, life in China reminds me of a song:

"Sometimes all I need is the air that I breath just to love you"......... cough, cough, cough....cough...excuse me....cough......cough..... ahemmmm cough. Can someone shut the window.

Have you heard about the newly advance sterilization technique from China ?
It's called Air Pollution ! Its free and given to you without prescription from your local Politburo.  :smiley laughing:

----------


## OhOh

> True !
> 
> The Government doesn't trusts it's citizens !
> The citizens don't trust the government !
> Neighbors don't trust each other !
> Relatives / Family members don't trust each other !
> 
> Chinese citizens can work hard, become multi millionaires, travel abroad, come back home and..........and find out that all their wealth has been taken with NO questions allowed.
> 
> ...



If only it happened in China eh, then you might have a point.

----------


## misskit

*Uyghur Detentions Continue in Xinjiang, Despite Pledge to End With Party Congress*More than two months since the Communist Party Congress in Beijing, authorities in northwest China’s Xinjiang region continue to place ethnic Uyghurs deemed “extremists” in political re-education camps, despite assurances the detentions would end after the sensitive annual meeting.

Since April 2017, Uyghurs accused of harboring “extremist” and “politically incorrect” views have been jailed or detained in re-education camps throughout Xinjiang, where members of the ethnic group have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.

The detentions ramped up ahead of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, held Oct. 18-24 last year, with officials claiming that the campaign was part of “safety measures” to prevent violent incidents around the time of the event.

Some local officials in Xinjiang had told family members arrests would end and detainees be returned home when the Congress was concluded, but sources recently told RFA’s Uyghur Service that authorities continue to round up residents more than two months later.

According to an official from Aqsaray township’s No. 1 village, in Hotan (in Chinese, Hetian) prefecture’s Qaraqash (Moyu) county, who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity, police arrested dozens of Uyghurs and placed them in a re-education camp as recently as last month.

“There were 85 people sent to the re-education camps in our township [on Dec. 18], and more were taken there [on Dec. 28],” he said, confirming that 33 additional residents had been arrested in the second roundup—bringing to 118 the total detained within a 10-day period.

An official from neighboring Kashgar (Kashi) prefecture’s Poskam (Zepu) county, who also asked to remain unnamed, told RFA that authorities have been instructed to “make sure that everything is safe” while patrolling the streets of the county, and that they had been provided with notebooks including a list of “the names and pictures of individuals on record” to be detained.

One suspect on the list was identified as Abdusemet Metkerim, 23, from Talbagh village, in Poskam’s Seyli township.

“He had illegal religious video materials in his possession,” the official said of Metkerim, adding that authorities had issued a warrant in the young man’s name in September.

Additional names on the list were not immediately available, he said, as it was “locked up in a drawer” at the time of the phone call.



Overcrowded camps


Prior reporting by RFA has found that as arrests in Xinjiang have increased in recent months, the region’s re-education camps have been inundated by detainees, who are forced to endure cramped and squalid conditions in the facilities.

Sources say that authorities often convert government buildings and schools into makeshift re-education camps to deal with the overcrowding, and routinely shift detainees between locations—that include prisons—without informing their family members.

In Bayin’gholin Mongol (Bayinguoleng Menggu) Autonomous Prefecture’s Korla city—where sources told RFA last week that as many as 1,000 people have been admitted to the city’s detention facilities over the course of a few days—a local government employee named Erkin Bawdun recently said that area re-education camps “are completely full.”

“One of my friends overheard the camp governor shouting at police over his walkie-talkie, saying ‘Please stop bringing people, there is no more space here in the camp for anyone,” said Bawdun, who helps to oversee Lengger village, in Korla’s Awat township.

Authorities regularly detain residents for allegedly “extremist” incidents that took place years before Xinjiang party chief Chen Quanguo was appointed to his post in August 2016 and began implementing several harsh policies targeting religious freedom in the region.

According to Bawdun, Awat township maintains a “department for cases of special concern” that had recently detained a group of 13 women who “gathered and listened to religious preaching” some six years ago.

Bawdun’s manager confirmed that “in 2012, they gathered at a house and conducted religious teachings.”

“Four of them were arrested in July, and the remaining nine were taken away [in late December],” the manager said.

None of the women had received sentences, he said, and it was unclear where they had been taken.

“They won’t be taken to the re-education camps because they are treated as part of a special case and will be dealt with separately,” he added.

China regularly conducts “strike hard” campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.

While China blames some Uyghurs for "terrorist" attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.


Uyghur Detentions Continue in Xinjiang, Despite Pledge to End With Party Congress

----------


## Latindancer

Crikey, apparently there are :

China (Xinjiang)
11,303,355 -15,000,000+ (Uyghur American Association)

Kazakhstan
223,100 (2009)

Uzbekistan
55,220 (2008)

Kyrgyzstan
49,000 (2009)




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghurs

----------


## misskit

*Rights Situation in Xinjiang Has ‘Further Deteriorated’ in Recent Months: CECC*Restrictions on religion and security controls have intensified in northwest China’s Xinjiang region in recent months, a congressional commission said Monday, warning that Washington’s anti-terrorism cooperation with Beijing must not come at the cost of the rights of ethnic Uyghurs.

In a statement, the Congressional Executive Commission on China (CECC) said that the situation in Xinjiang had “further deteriorated” since the release of its 2017 annual report, which found that freedoms of speech and religion, the rule of law, and individual rights and freedoms had worsened under the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

“Reports indicate XUAR Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo has implemented a hardline, all-encompassing security network throughout the region, by overseeing the hiring of tens of thousands of new security personnel, the convening of mass rallies, and the involuntary collection of residents’ DNA, fingerprints, eye scans, and blood types,” said Senator Marco Rubio, CECC chairman.

“Civilians are detained without cause, ‘political education’ camps proliferate, and a vast surveillance apparatus invades every aspect of daily life. These rights violations are deeply troubling and risk serving as a catalyst for radicalization.”

Representative Chris Smith, cochairman of the CECC, similarly expressed alarm over the state of human rights in Xinjiang.

“The Chinese government’s expansive surveillance and security network in Xinjiang is a gross violation of privacy and international human rights, including the right to religious freedom, as the government is turning mosques into political propaganda centers and labeling religious beliefs as extremist,” he said.

“These policies seem to be completely counterproductive and a recipe for instability and dissatisfaction rather than security.”

Smith urged U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to avoid condoning restrictions on freedom in Xinjiang in the name of counterterrorism.

“The U.S. should be calibrating our counterterrorism cooperation with China to ensure that we do not condone or advance a crackdown on peaceful domestic dissent or the freedom of religion, association, and expression,” he said.

Rubio and Smith highlighted the detention and “likely mistreatment” of up to 30 family members of U.S.-based Uyghur activist Rebiya Kadeer, which the CECC said was “yet another example of China’s efforts to silence criticism of the Party or of government policies through intimidation, detention, and threats to the family members of activists living abroad.”

Kadeer’s children, grandchildren, and other relatives are reportedly in detention, including her sons Ablikim and Alim Abdureyim—both of whom previously suffered torture and abuse during periods of detention and imprisonment.

Kadeer was a political prisoner for more than five years before being released on medical parole in 2005, and since her relocation to the U.S. that year, Chinese authorities have carried out a campaign of harassment against her family members who remained in Xinjiang.

The CECC also expressed concern over an expansion of detentions in Xinjiang’s political re-education camps, where large numbers of Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and others have been held for months at a time for “crimes” such as praying, wearing “Islamic” clothing, or having foreign connections.

Additionally, the commission said, Chinese authorities have ordered Uyghurs studying abroad in countries including Egypt, Turkey, France, Australia, and the U.S. to return to Xinjiang, and have subsequently detained some of them in re-education camps, “about which very little is known.”

Officials have also been issued quotas for the number or percentage of the population in their jurisdictions that must be sent to undergo “political education,” the CECC said, citing overseas reports.

China regularly conducts “strike hard” campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.

While China blames some Uyghurs for "terrorist" attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.


Rights Situation in Xinjiang Has ?Further Deteriorated? in Recent Months: CECC

----------


## Latindancer

It seems to be a war of attrition.

----------


## misskit

*Around 120,000 Uyghurs Detained For Political Re-Education in Xinjiang’s Kashgar Prefecture*




Around 120,000 ethnic Uyghurs are currently being held in political re-education camps in Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) prefecture of northwest China’s Xinjiang region alone, according to a security official with knowledge of the detention system.

Since April 2017, Uyghurs accused of harboring “extremist” and “politically incorrect” views have been jailed or detained in re-education camps throughout Xinjiang, where members of the ethnic group have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.

Prior reporting by RFA’s Uyghur Service found that as arrests in Xinjiang increased around the sensitive 19th Communist Party Congress in Beijing in October, the region’s re-education camps have been inundated by detainees, who are forced to endure cramped and squalid conditions in the facilities.

The security chief of Kashgar city’s Chasa township recently told RFA on condition of anonymity that “approximately 120,000” Uyghurs are being held throughout the prefecture, based on information he has received from other area officials.

“I have great relationships with the heads of all the government departments and we are in regular contact, informing each other on the current situation,” he said, adding that he is also close with the prefecture’s chief of security.

Tens of thousands of people are detained within Kashgar city alone, the Chasa township security officer said, citing statistics from the city’s subdistricts.

“Around 2,000 [are detained] from the four neighborhoods of Kashgar city, as well as an additional 30,000 in total from the city’s 16 villages,” he said.

Among Kashgar city’s four neighborhoods, the largest number of detainees—more than 500 people—are from Yawagh, while among its 16 villages, the largest number are from Yengi-osteng, he added, without providing specific details.

Kashgar city is home to four re-education camps, the security chief said, the largest of which was established in the city’s No. 5 Middle School in May 2017.

“It’s located in the Shinka neighbourhood and is newly built,” he said.

“The plan was initially to build the new school in that area and transfer the current middle school students there. That is why it was named No. 5 Middle School.”

Around 80 people are living in the school’s main hall, the security chief said, while 20-25 people sleep in each of its classrooms.


Overcrowded and squalid


Sources say that authorities often convert government buildings and schools into makeshift re-education camps to deal with overcrowding, and routinely shift detainees between locations—that include prisons—without informing their family members.

In Bayin’gholin Mongol (Bayinguoleng Menggu) Autonomous Prefecture’s Korla city—where sources told RFA recently that as many as 1,000 people have been admitted to the city’s detention facilities over the course of a few days—a local government employee named Erkin Bawdun recently said that area re-education camps “are completely full.”

Bawdun said that a friend who spent time as an inmate at a local re-education camp told him he had seen officials from the center tell the police to “stop bringing people … as it is already too full.”

He described cells that had previously held eight people now accommodating 14 inmates, who “were not allowed pillows” and “had to lay on their sides because there was not enough room to lay flat,” let alone space to turn over or stretch their legs.

Other acquaintances told Bawdun that they had seen “detainees walking barefoot,” and that inmates were “not allowed clothes with buttons or metal zippers,” belts, shoelaces, or “even underwear” in some cases, despite average low temperatures of around 15 degrees Fahrenheit (-10 degrees Celsius) at night in December.

Since Xinjiang party chief Chen Quanguo was appointed to his post in August 2016, he has initiated unprecedented repressive measures against the Uyghur people and ideological purges against so-called “two-faced” Uyghur officials—a term applied by the government to Uyghurs who do not willingly follow directives and exhibit signs of “disloyalty.”

China regularly conducts “strike hard” campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.

While China blames some Uyghurs for "terrorist" attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.




Around 120,000 Uyghurs Detained For Political Re-Education in Xinjiang?s Kashgar Prefecture

----------


## misskit

*China's Xinjiang to build 'Great Wall' to protect border: governor*BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s violence-prone far western region of Xinjiang will build a “Great Wall” around its borders to prevent the infiltration of militants from outside the country, state media reported on Tuesday citing the regional governor. 


Hundreds of people have been killed in Xinjiang in the past few years in violence between Uighurs, a mostly Muslim people who speak a Turkic language, and ethnic majority Han Chinese, especially in the heavily Uighur southern part of Xinjiang. 


China blames the violence in Xinjiang on Islamist extremists and separatists, some of whom it says have links to groups outside the country. 



Rights groups and Uighur exiles say it is more a product of Uighur frustration at Chinese controls on their culture and religion. China denies any repression. 


Xinjiang governor Shohrat Zakir said Xinjiang would step up border measures to create a “Great Wall”, the official China Daily reported. 


“We will try our best to leave no gaps or blind spots in social security management and ensure the key areas remain absolutely safe,” he said at the opening of the regional assembly’s annual session. 


Technology along the border would be improved and roads and other infrastructure increased, Shohrat Zakir said. 


“The overall situation was stable in 2017, which made people feel safer,” he said. “We won’t allow separatism to stage a comeback and will ensure religious extremism never rises again from the ashes and terrorist attacks are doomed to failure.” 



The “Great Wall” comments were similar to those President Xi Jinping made last year during the annual session of the country’s parliament, where he told Xinjiang lawmakers of the need to build a “great wall of iron” to safeguard stability.

Xinjiang has been relatively quiet over the past year or so after a spate of incidents, which has coincided with a massive increase in security, including collecting DNA and other biometric data from the whole population. 


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-f...KBN1FB14G?il=0

----------


## misskit

*Call From Blacklisted Number Lands Uyghur Woman in Political Re-Education Camp*

A Uyghur woman from a remote northwestern corner of the Xinjiang region of China was recently hauled off to a political re-education camp set up to punish members of her Muslim ethnic group deemed disloyal to China.


Her crime: answering a phone call from a relative whose number was on a government blacklist.


RFA’s Uyghur Service has learned that Mihray Jume, 37, was picked up by a policeman in recent weeks and taken to the Beshtope Re-education Camp in Kunas (Shinyuan, in Chinese) county in Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture.


A police officer from Araltope Police Station in the same county, confirmed that Jume, whose occupation he said was “housewife,” is in detention at the Kunas Besh camp.


“She is in Kunas,” said the officer, who declined to give further details.


A second officer told RFA by telephone that he had arrested Mihray and handed her over to the police from Beshtope.


“I put her in a police car to be taken to Beshtope,” said the officer.


Jume’s had answered a phone call from a blacklisted number, he said.


“The reason (for her detention) was that her brother-in-law’s wife called her and she answered it. The person registered to that number was blacklisted,” said the officer.


Since April last year, ethnic Uyghurs accused of holding “extremist” and “politically incorrect” views have been detained in re-education camps throughout Xinjiang, where members of the ethnic group have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.


Chinese authorities have not publicly acknowledged the existence of re-education camps in Xinjiang, and the number of inmates kept in each facility remains a closely guarded secret, but Uyghur activists estimate that up to 1 million Uyghurs have been detained throughout the region since April 2017.


Since Xinjiang party chief Chen Quanguo was appointed to his post in August 2016, he has initiated unprecedented repressive measures against the Uyghur people and ideological purges against so-called “two-faced” Uyghur officials—a term applied by the government to Uyghurs who do not willingly follow directives and exhibit signs of “disloyalty.”


Uyghurs, as well as Xinjiang ethnic minority Kazakhs and Kyrgyz, who have family member living abroad have come under state pressure designed to force their relatives to return to China. Those who have heeded the demand have been sent to re-education camps.


China regularly conducts “strike hard” campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.

While China blames some Uyghurs for "terrorist" attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.


https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018153451.html

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## OhOh

> but Uyghur activists estimate that up to 1 million Uyghurs have been detained throughout the region since April 2017.


They of course would always under estimate the numbers of detainees.




> experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.


Have the 'experts" suggested who is responsible for the actual violence leaving "hundreds dead" in the past 9 years? or are we to assume it is the local police?

----------


## misskit

Rights Groups Condemn China’s Detention of RFA Reporters’ Relatives


Human rights and press freedom watchdog groups condemned China’s detention of close relatives of four U.S.-based reporters for RFA’s Uyghur Service in apparent retaliation for their coverage of the Xinjiang region, as a fifth Uyghur reporter came forward on Thursday with an account of missing family members.


The Committee to Protect Journalists said it is “alarmed” by news that authorities in the northwestern China’s Xinjiang region have detained multiple relatives of U.S.-based RFA journalists Gulchehra Hoja, Shohret Hoshur, Mamatjan Juma, and Kurban Niyaz. More than two dozen relatives have been affected by the clampdown, RFA has learned.


"Punishing family members of journalists beyond the reach of the Chinese government is a cruel, if not barbaric, tactic," said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Steven Butler said in a statement.


"The Chinese government should immediately account for these people's health, whereabouts, and legal status and set them free,” he said.


The New York-based CPJ was responding to a Washington Post report on Wednesday on the four Uyghur reporters, whose work has documented a brutal crackdown on the Turkic-language speaking Muslim minority since the installation of a hard-line Communist Party boss in the Xinjiang region in August, 2016.


Amnesty International, meanwhile, issued an urgent appeal for 20 relatives of Hoja, a 17-year veteran RFA reporter, who “have been detained and are at risk of torture” and were believed to have been targeted for her work for the U.S.-government-funded broadcaster based in Washington.


“Media reports from Radio Free Asia, Buzzfeed, the Globe and Mail, the Associated Press and others, as well as information gathered by Amnesty International, indicate that in the spring of 2017, authorities throughout the region began detaining Uighurs en masse, and started sending them to administrative detention facilities or sentencing them to long prison terms,” said Amnesty.


Hoja’s brother Kaisar Keyum was taken into custody by Chinese police in October 2017, while her parents are unreachable and suspected to be in custody.


Another brother of Hoja’s has been detained since September 2017 and her extended family – as many as 20 relatives – are feared detained and being held in undisclosed locations, she told RFA.


When her brother was detained, police told Hoja’s mother that her employment with RFA was the reason for his detention. The relatives may have been detained for communicating with her through a WeChat group, according to a cousin who she was able to contact, Hoja said.


'Stop calling inside China'


Hoshur’s brothers Shawket Hoshur and Rexim Hoshur were jailed from August 2014 until they won release December 2015, in part due to pressure on China from the U.S. Congress.


However, the two brothers were detained again in September 2017 and are now being held in the Qorghos county re-education camp. Shohret’s younger brother Tudaxun Hoshur, who was sentenced in 2015, remains jailed.


Shohret told RFA he has heard from family members in Xinjiang who have told him they were contacted by Chinese authorities urging them to ask him to stop calling inside China.


RFA Uyghur Deputy Director Mamatjan Juma reported that his brothers Ahmetjan Juma and Abduqadir Juma were detained in May 2017.


While the whereabouts of Ahmetjan, who has a family and a toddler son, are unknown, Abduqadir was taken to Urumqi No. 1 Prison, a facility known for incarcerating political prisoners in inhumane conditions in Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang.


Abduqadir suffers from heart and health issues that require medical care, and his sister was denied access to him in prison, Mamatjan Juma said.


“He needs immediate medical attention. I am extremely worried that his health condition will dramatically worsen without proper food and medication and, more importantly, the inhumane treatment he faces in Chinese prison,” he said.


Juma said his mother has suffered a heart attack and has been hospitalized four times in recent weeks. His father died in October 2017 and he learned of his father’s passing only 10 days later.


“I cannot send money to help because of Chinese government restriction on my family,” he said.


RFA Uyghur broadcaster Kurban Niyaz’s youngest brother, Hasanjan Niyaz, was arrested in May 2017 in Bugur county, and in July sentenced to six years in jail on charges of “holding ethnic hatred.”


Fifth RFA reporter affected


Niyaz’s other relatives in Xinjiang have been visited by police, who have questioned them about Niyaz and another U.S-based brother, he said.


Following reports by the Washington Post, the Associated Press and other international media outlets that brought attention the fate of the four reporters’ families, a fifth RFA journalist on Thursday revealed that three of his relatives and in-laws have been detained.


RFA broadcaster Eset Sulaiman said his elder brother, an educator in the Tianshan region, was picked up by authorities around October 2017 and sent to undergo forced study at a “Political Re-education Camp” in Qomul City (in Chinese, Hami).


His mother-in-law, Saadet Kichik, and father-in law, Memteli Sopi, both pensioners in their 70s, were also detained in October 2017 and sent to the same re-education camp.


“Because of my job at RFA and my wife’s position on the board of the Uyghur American Association, Chinese authorities have retaliated against and threatened us by detaining three relatives in the Uyghur Region,” said Sulaiman, who last saw his relatives in person in 2008.


“Because I cannot contact my family since the end of 2017, I did not hear about my mother’s death in real time,” he said.


“She passed away February 18, but I heard this news four days later through my relative in Sweden. I don’t know what happened to my other brothers and sisters,” added Sulaiman.


“We’re very concerned about the well-being and safety of our journalists’ family members, especially those in need of medical treatment,” said Rohit Mahajan, director of public affairs at RFA in Washington.


“We’re also particularly concerned about the use of detentions as a tactic by Chinese authorities to silence and intimidate independent media, as well as to inhibit RFA’s mission of bringing free press to closed societies.”


Amid what many analysts see as a worldwide slide toward more authoritarian rule, RFA journalists have been targeted by other illiberal Asian regimes, many of which are close allies of China.


Chen Quanguo's draconian policies


RFA closed its operations in Cambodia in September amid a government crackdown on the media, and two former RFA Khmer Service reporters were taken into custody on Nov. 14. They formally charged with “illegally collecting information for a foreign source.”


Uon Chhin and Yeang Sothearin, who deny the charges, were denied bail from pre-trial detention and face a possible jail term of up to 15 years if convicted of the charges against them.


The RFA Uyghur journalists have produced detailed reports on how Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, who took office in August 2016, has set up numerous detention facilities throughout Xinjiang and imposed harsh policies affecting the 10 million Uyghurs in China.


The camps are variously called “counter extremism centers,” “political study centers,” or “education and transformation centers” and are believed to hold tens of thousands of Uyghurs as well as ethnic Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities.


“People are often sent to these detention facilities if they are known religious practitioners, have relations with ‘foreign contacts,’ or have themselves been caught up in social stability campaigns or have relatives who were involved in the same,” said Amnesty International in its appeal for Hoja’s relatives.


“Authorities have detained people who receive phone calls from outside of China. Authorities have also tried to ensure that nobody uses encrypted messaging apps, and instead rely on domestic apps, which have no encryption or other privacy safeguards,” said Amnesty.


Asked about the detentions at a news conference in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said he had no information on the cases.


“I suggest you raise your question to the competent department,” he said Wednesday, adding: “We welcome all foreign media to do fair and objective reporting in China.”


RFA, which broadcasts in nine languages in six authoritarian Asian countries, “is the only Uyghur voice in the free world out of the control of the Chinese government,” said Dolkun Isa, president of World Uyghur Congress, an advocacy group in Washington.


“We know that Chinese government has illegally detained hundreds of thousands of innocent Uyghurs in concentration camps. But we had never imagined that Chinese government would go after the loved ones of Uyghur journalists working at RFA,” he added.


Despite China’s rising wealth and growing global clout, the Chinese media languishes near the bottom of most major international rankings of media freedom.


"China continues to be the world’s biggest prison for journalists ... and continues to improve its arsenal of measures for persecuting journalists and bloggers," Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in its annual report for 2017.


The Paris-based RSF ranked China 176th in press freedom last year, above only Syria, Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea.

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018164751.html

----------


## misskit

*Uyghur Teenager Dies in Custody at Political Re-Education Camp*A teenage Uyghur boy detained for traveling overseas has died of unknown causes at a political “re-education camp” in Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) prefecture, in northwest China’s Xinjiang region, according to local authorities.


Police officers delivered the body of 17-year-old Yaqupjan Naman to his family in Yekshenbe Bazar township, in Kashgar’s Yopurgha (Yuepuhu) county, after the young man died last week, a source recently told RFA’s Uyghur Service, speaking on condition of anonymity.


Naman’s father, a locksmith named Naman Qari, was not provided with the cause of his son’s death and was forced to bury his body under police supervision, the source added.


In early 2016, at the age of 15, Naman visited Turkey as a tourist with his friends against his father’s wishes. Qari travelled to Turkey days later to bring him home, in a bid to avoid attracting any attention from authorities in Xinjiang, who view such trips overseas as suspicious and a sign of religious “extremism.”


Despite his quick return to China, police placed Naman on a blacklist and arrested him soon afterwards, sending him to one of the many re-education camps throughout Xinjiang where authorities detain Uyghurs accused of harbouring “strong religious beliefs” and “politically incorrect” thoughts.


Family members who ask for the whereabouts of detained loved ones and other members of the community who inquire about those who have been sent for re-education also face arrest for “harboring incorrect ideology,” as part of a bid by local authorities to prevent information about the camps from reaching the outside world.


A local ruling Chinese Communist Party cadre that answered a call to the Bayawat township police station said he wasn’t aware of the case and handed the phone to an officer, who hung up when asked which village Naman’s family lives in.


When RFA called back, another officer who answered the phone said “we don’t know,” when asked what the cause of Naman’s death was, and referred further questions to the chief of the central Public Security Bureau.


But an officer at the Chenren township police station confirmed in a phone call that the name of the 17-year-old who died in detention at a re-education camp was named “Yaqupjan … [from] No. 12 Village” in Yekshenbe Bazar.


The officer, who also declined to provide his name, said the policeman in charge of Naman’s case in No. 12 Village is named “Muradil,” adding that the young man had died “approximately 10 days ago,” without providing further details.


When asked how many people had died in re-education camps in the last month, the officer said he did not know.



Camp conditions


Since April last year, ethnic Uyghurs have been detained in re-education camps throughout Xinjiang, where members of the ethnic group have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.


In January, the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) said it had learned of the death of prominent Uyghur Islamic scholar Muhammad Salih Hajim in Chinese police custody, some 40 days after he was detained in the Xinjiang regional capital Urumqi along with other relatives, though it was unclear if he was being held in a prison or a re-education camp at the time.


Earlier that month, sources told RFA that amid a campaign of arrests that had led to serious overcrowding in re-education camps, authorities in Xinjiang were neglecting the health of Uyghur inmates, causing them to develop medical conditions.


Since Xinjiang party chief Chen was appointed to his post in August 2016, he has initiated unprecedented repressive measures against the Uyghur people and ideological purges against so-called “two-faced” Uyghur officials—a term applied by the government to Uyghurs who do not willingly follow directives and exhibit signs of “disloyalty.”


China regularly conducts “strike hard” campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.


While China blames some Uyghurs for "terrorist" attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.



https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018154926.html

----------


## OhOh

> A teenage Uyghur boy detained for traveling overseas has died of unknown causes


Has he been to any countries that have serious germ warfare / murder epidemics going on, bitten by a spider in Oz, attended a Boris for PM rally or was seen drinking water from a plastic bottle........ ?

----------


## misskit

*Xinjiang Authorities Detain Uyghurs ‘Wanting to Travel Abroad’*Chinese authorities in Ili Kazakh (in Chinese, Yili Hasake) Autonomous prefecture have added “interest in travel abroad” to the list of reasons they are detaining ethnic Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region’s vast network of political “re-education camps” and prisons, according to an official source.


Since April 2017, Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” views have been jailed or detained in re-education camps throughout Xinjiang, where members of the ethnic group have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.


Official announcements have stated that those who are sent to the camps include former prisoners, suspects and anyone who has travelled overseas, and say the camps will “cleanse” them of ideology that endangers state security.


But the security chief of No. 2 Village in Bayanday township, in Ili Kazakh’s Ghulja (Yining) county, recently told RFA’s Uyghur Service that “nearly 30” of the township’s Uyghur residents had been detained since the middle of 2017, “mainly because they were suspected of wanting to travel abroad.”


“They are not related [and were not part of a group planning a trip], however, after we uncovered three to four people [in our village], the rest came forward” from other villages in the township to admit their wrongdoing and seek leniency, he said.


“First, I informed the township’s [Communist] party secretary, through whom the information was passed to the Public Security Bureau. After that, they were arrested, and … placed in re-education.”


Some of the detainees “have already been sentenced and sent to prison,” he said, adding that he did not know what they were convicted of or how long their jail terms are, while others remain in the camps.


The security chief, a Communist Party member who told RFA he had held his appointed position in No. 2 Village for six years, said that rooting out those who intend to travel abroad and other “bad elements” in the population “is my job, and I did it voluntarily.”


Other security chiefs in the area are also actively informing on the residents of their villages, he said, adding that he had been rewarded by higher-level authorities on three separate occasions for his efforts.


He noted that five members of his seven aunts’ and uncles’ families are currently being held in re-education camps, but said he would never allow his personal relationships to undermine his loyalty to the party and state.


“One of the sons of my father’s sister is in a re-education camp,” among other relatives, the chief said, adding that he had not attempted to use his influence as an official to obtain their release.


“If they have failings, they need to go for re-education.”


In an earlier interview, the chief told RFA that authorities in Bayanday are also using age as one of the criteria to determine whether to detain Uyghurs in re-education camps, as those born after 1980 are considered “violent” and “untrustworthy.”


He, and the head of women’s affairs in Bayanday’s No. 3 Village, confirmed that some of the roughly 250 people detained in camps from each of their villages had been pre-emptively targeted for re-education simply because they were younger than 40 years of age and “susceptible” to influence by dangerous elements.



Camp network


Chinese authorities have not publicly acknowledged the existence of re-education camps in Xinjiang, and the number of inmates kept in each facility remains a closely guarded secret, but Uyghur activists estimate that up to 1 million Uyghurs have been detained throughout the region since April 2017, and say nearly every Uyghur household has been affected by the campaign.


Since Xinjiang party chief Chen Quanguo was appointed to his post in August 2016, he has initiated unprecedented repressive measures against the Uyghur people and ideological purges against so-called “two-faced” Uyghur officials—a term applied by the government to Uyghurs who do not willingly follow directives and exhibit signs of “disloyalty.”


China regularly conducts “strike hard” campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.


While China blames some Uyghurs for "terrorist" attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.



https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018162009.html

----------


## Latindancer

> In an earlier interview, the chief told RFA that authorities in Bayanday are also using age as one of the criteria to determine whether to detain Uyghurs in re-education camps, as those born after 1980 are considered “violent” and “untrustworthy.”
> 
> 
> He, and the head of women’s affairs in Bayanday’s No. 3 Village, confirmed that some of the roughly 250 people detained in camps from each of their villages had been pre-emptively targeted for re-education simply because they were younger than 40 years of age and “susceptible” to influence by dangerous elements.


WTF ????

----------


## sabang

*Radio Free Asia (RFA)* is a private, nonprofit international broadcasting corporation and *propaganda apparatus of the United States* that broadcasts and publishes online news, information, and commentary to listeners in East Asia while "advancing the goals of U.S. foreign policy."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia

Noteworthy is the fact that RFA has no representation or coverage in Thailand, a military dictatorship in which over 200 people have been killed in political violence since 2006, and the only two governments elected by an absolute majority have been ousted by military coup. Thailand's "re-education camps" are of course well known, except apparently to RFA.

So why the inordinate interest in Xinjiang? I suggest that may have something to do with the fact that, as a major region of central Asia, Xinjiang is an important part of the "Belt n Road" initiative, linking China to Europe, Africa and the Gulf states. The US would only see this as unwelcome competition, and influence spreading.

Prognosis- take with a grain of salt.

----------


## HuangLao

> *Radio Free Asia (RFA)* is a private, nonprofit international broadcasting corporation and *propaganda apparatus of the United States* that broadcasts and publishes online news, information, and commentary to listeners in East Asia while "advancing the goals of U.S. foreign policy."
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia
> 
> Noteworthy is the fact that RFA has no representation or coverage in Thailand, a military dictatorship in which over 200 people have been killed in political violence since 2006, and the only two governments elected by an absolute majority have been ousted by military coup. Thailand's "re-education camps" are of course well known, except apparently to RFA.
> 
> So why the inordinate interest in Xinjiang? I suggest that may have something to do with the fact that, as a major region of central Asia, Xinjiang is an important part of the "Belt n Road" initiative, linking China to Europe, Africa and the Gulf states. The US would only see this as unwelcome competition, and influence spreading.
> 
> Prognosis- take with a grain of salt.



The Great Game continues, today, in a different fashion and referred participants. 
Empire building from the respective parties is cyclical in nature and leads to eventual downfall of the chosen powers. 

Few pundits comprehend the real historiology of the broader region and the contributions and influence of these ancient people of The Steppes.
History rewritten for the convenience of the time.

----------


## misskit

^^ *US Lawmakers Call For Investigation of Mass Incarcerations, Surveillance of Uyghurs in Xinjiang*Two U.S. lawmakers have called on U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad to visit northwest China’s Xinjiang region and gather information on senior officials responsible for the mass surveillance and detention of ethnic Uyghurs to determine whether Washington should level sanctions against them.


In a letter dated April 3, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio and U.S. Representative Chris Smith, the chair and co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, said Branstad should investigate the situation, as well as the detention of family members of six RFA Uyghur Service reporters, for possible implementation of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.


“We urge you to visit the XUAR (Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region), including the ‘political education centers,’ and to prioritize the situation in the XUAR in your interactions with Chinese government and Communist Party interlocutors, including the plight of the family members of these U.S.-based RFA journalists,” the letter said.


“Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in the XUAR have been subjected to arbitrary arrest, egregious restrictions on religious practice and culture, and a digitized surveillance system so pervasive that every aspect of daily life is monitored—through facial recognition cameras, mobile phone scans, DNA collection, and an extensive and intrusive police presence.”


Since April 2017, Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” views have been jailed or detained in political “re-education camps” throughout Xinjiang, where members of the ethnic group have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.


China's central government authorities have not publicly acknowledged the existence of re-education camps in Xinjiang, and the number of inmates kept in each facility remains a closely guarded secret, but local officials in many parts of Xinjiang have in RFA telephone interviews forthrightly described sending significant numbers of Uyghurs to the camps and even described overcrowding in some facilities.


Maya Wang of the New York-based Human Rights Watch told The Guardian in January that estimates of Xinjiang residents who had spent time in the camps went as high as 800,000, while at least one Uyghur exile group estimates that up to 1 million Uyghurs have been detained throughout the region since April 2017, and some Uyghur activists say nearly every Uyghur household has been affected by the campaign.


Among those in custody are dozens of family members of RFA Uyghur Service reporters, whose detentions Rubio and Smith said serve to “intimidate the families of U.S. government employees and undermine some of the most effective reporting from within the XUAR.”


“We urge you to personally lead diplomatic efforts to prioritize these cases, seek clarity as to the whereabouts and well-being of these individuals, and press for their release. If there is no immediate resolution to these cases, we ask that the State Department consider denying visas to executives or administrative staff of Chinese state-run media operating in the United States.”


The lawmakers also called on the U.S. Embassy in Beijing to begin compiling “relevant information regarding specific XUAR officials responsible for the arbitrary mass detention and abuse of Uyghurs for possible sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act.”


The Magnitsky Act enables U.S. officials to freeze any U.S. assets held by those sanctioned, and to bar them from entry into the United States.



'A powerful message'


Nury Turkel, a Uyghur-American attorney and former president of the Washington-based Uyghur American Association (UAA) exile group, told RFA's Uyghur Service that the letter "demonstrates the growing interest of the U.S. Congress in the worsening human rights situation for Uyghur people in China."


"Requesting our embassy in Beijing to collect information on the human rights abusers and to sanction them under the Global Magnitisky Act would send a powerful message to those Chinese officials orchestrating and implementing the cruel and degrading treatments that the Uyghur people have been subjected to," he said.


"Ambassador Branstad should fulfill the promises that he made during his confirmation hearing, that he would work to improve the human rights situation in China.”


Since Xinjiang party chief Chen Quanguo was appointed to his post in August 2016, he has initiated unprecedented repressive measures against the Uyghur people and ideological purges against so-called “two-faced” Uyghur officials—a term applied by the government to Uyghurs who do not willingly follow directives and exhibit signs of “disloyalty.”


China regularly conducts “strike hard” campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.


While China blames some Uyghurs for "terrorist" attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.




https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018141926.html

----------


## Latindancer

Exactly_ how_ do these re-education camps re-educate people*,* anyhow ?

----------


## OhOh

Being banned from fartbuuk, twatts etc., Waterboarding , electric shock treatment, chemical sterilisation, frontal lobotamy ...... have been proven successful I hear.

Don't forget Chinese Burns, a favourite when I was a lad.

----------


## misskit

*Xinjiang Authorities Detain Uyghur Pro Footballer For ‘Visiting Foreign Countries’*

Authorities in northwest China’s Xinjiang region have detained 19-year-old Uyghur Erfan Hezim—a former member of China’s national youth football team—in a “political re-education camp” for “visiting foreign countries” after he traveled abroad to train and take part in matches, according to local sources.


Hezim, also known by his Chinese name Ye Erfan, is a top soccer forward in the Chinese Super League who began playing professionally at the age of 15, and in July last year inked a five-year contract with Jiangsu Suning F.C.


Two months ago, during winter break, Hezim returned home to visit his parents in Dorbiljin (in Chinese, Emin) county, in Xinjiang’s Tarbaghatay (Tacheng) prefecture, and was detained by police while visiting a market in the county seat, an official from the Dorbijin Police Central Command told RFA’s Uyghur Service.


“Erfan Hezim was detained by officers from the Dorbiljin Market Police Station,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.


“Currently, he is being detained at the Jiaochu township reeducation center. He was detained two months ago for visiting foreign countries.”


An officer who answered the phone at the Dorbiljin Market Police Station told RFA he “can’t say where Hezim is currently being held,” and referred further inquiries back to the Dorbijin Police Central Command.


A neighbor of Hezim’s parents confirmed to RFA that he had been detained and said his family was in shock.


“They have not been able to see Erfan once over the past two months,” the neighbor said, adding that as an only child, his detention had been particularly hard on Hezim’s mother.


“Erfan’s mother is ill. She has been crying nonstop for the past two months since Erfan was detained. She is losing herself—she cries and murmurs, so it is difficult to know what she is saying.”


A Jiangsu Suning F.C. supporter told RFA that Hezim had visited Spain from Jan. 10-30 and Dubai from Feb. 3-15, adding that his travel was “not for personal reasons, but for training and match purposes.”


Since April 2017, Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” views have been jailed or detained in re-education camps throughout Xinjiang, where members of the ethnic group have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.


Official announcements have stated that those who are sent to the camps include former prisoners, suspects and anyone who has travelled overseas, and say the camps will “cleanse” them of ideology that endangers state security.


Last month, sources told RFA that authorities in Ili Kazakh (Yili Hasake) Autonomous prefecture, where Tarbaghatay prefecture is located, have added “interest in travel abroad” to the list of reasons they are detaining Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region’s vast network of re-education camps and prisons.



Call for information


Reports of Hezim’s detention emerged as the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) exile group issued a call for information about “disappearances or arbitrary detentions of Uyghurs” in Xinjiang’s re-education camps.


In a statement issued on Thursday, the WUC said it is creating a list bearing the names, dates of birth, city of residence, and dates and circumstances of detention, of individuals held in the camps, which it plans to submit to various institutions of the European Union, and “demand that the EU take action to push for their immediate release.”


China's central government authorities have not publicly acknowledged the existence of re-education camps in Xinjiang, and the number of inmates kept in each facility remains a closely guarded secret, but local officials in many parts of Xinjiang have in RFA telephone interviews forthrightly described sending significant numbers of Uyghurs to the camps and even described overcrowding in some facilities.


Maya Wang of the New York-based Human Rights Watch told The Guardian in January that estimates of Xinjiang residents who had spent time in the camps went as high as 800,000, while at least one Uyghur exile group estimates that up to 1 million Uyghurs have been detained throughout the region since April 2017, and some activists say nearly every Uyghur household has been affected by the campaign.


Earlier this month, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio and U.S. Representative Chris Smith—the chair and co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China—called on U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad to visit Xinjiang and gather information on senior officials responsible for the mass surveillance and detention of Uyghurs to determine whether Washington should level sanctions against them.


In a letter to the Ambassador, the lawmakers called the camp network in Xinjiang “the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.”


Since Xinjiang party chief Chen Quanguo was appointed to his post in August 2016, he has initiated unprecedented repressive measures against the Uyghur people and ideological purges against so-called “two-faced” Uyghur officials—a term applied by the government to Uyghurs who do not willingly follow directives and exhibit signs of “disloyalty.”


China regularly conducts “strike hard” campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.


While China blames some Uyghurs for "terrorist" attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.


https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018162312.html

----------


## Latindancer

> While China blames some Uyghurs for "terrorist" attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.


This is probably the essence of it. China may be trying to provoke an outburst of protest, and then stamp down hard on it on the pretext of stamping out terrorism.

----------


## tomcat

...Han Chinese are a lot like caucasians when it comes to treatment of minorities...

----------


## Latindancer

*Some* caucasians, anyway. Depends on which lot you're descended from...

----------


## tomcat

> Depends on which lot you're descended from...


...*trying to think of Caucasians who treated minorities kindly...fail*...

----------


## Latindancer

The Irish, perhaps ? Or the Scots ? They were usually downtrodden by the English...

----------


## HuangLao

> ...Han Chinese are a lot like caucasians when it comes to treatment of minorities...


The historic similarities are quite striking...

----------


## tomcat

> trying to think of Caucasians who treated minorities kindly...fail*





> The Irish, perhaps ? Or the Scots ?


...they were the oppressed minorities, not the oppressors of minorities...

----------


## Latindancer

Yes, but there were minorities in those countries. For instance, I have read that there are 28 different races represented in Scotland.

----------


## tomcat

> I have read that there are 28 different races represented in Scotland


...rodents don't count...

----------


## Latindancer

Well, that was a conversation stopper, wasn't it ?

----------


## misskit

*Thousands March in Brussels to Protest Mass Detentions of Uyghurs*Nearly 2,000 ethnic Uyghurs living in exile from their homeland in China marched on Friday in Brussels, political seat of the European Union, to call attention to the plight of hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs held by Beijing in political re-education camps in northwest China’s Xinjiang region.


Protesters came from across Europe, Australia, Japan, and Turkey, while other protests were held on Friday in Washington D.C., Canada, Australia, and Japan.


“This is only the beginning,” Dolkun Isa, president of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, said in a statement after Friday’s march.


“This protest showcases the complete awakening and unity of the Uyghur people,” Isa said.


“We are here to call on the EU, the U.N., the U.S., and the international community to raise the case of the nearly one million Uyghurs extrajudicially detained by the Chinese authorities,” he said.


“We urge the European Union to act on behalf of the Uyghur people, [and] we are here to send a clear message to the Chinese government that no matter how it represses the Uyghur people, it can never break our spirit for freedom, democracy, and human rights.”


Also speaking after the march, former WUC president and respected leader Rebiya Kadeer said that Friday’s protest had been brought together by “the tears of our people.”


“We are going to save our people in the camps,” Kadeer said.


“In the 21st century, there has been no other government but China that has locked up a million people in detention. Therefore, we will continue protests like this in the future,” she said.


Discrimination, repression


Since April 2017, members of the mostly Muslim Uyghur ethnic group suspected of separatist views have been detained in camps throughout Xinjiang, where Uyghurs have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.


Central government authorities in China have not publicly acknowledged the existence of re-education camps in Xinjiang, and the number of inmates kept in each facility remains a closely guarded secret. However, officials in many parts of the region have described in RFA telephone interviews sending large numbers of Uyghurs to the camps and have even described overcrowding in some facilities.


The United States has meanwhile called on China to “end their counterproductive policies” in Xinjiang and has urged Beijing to release the estimated hundreds of Uyghurs arbitrarily detained there.


Speaking at a press briefing on April 20, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters that Washington is “increasingly concerned about excessive restrictions on freedom of religion and freedom of beliefs in China,” as well as the country’s “efforts to pressure other governments into forcibly returning Uyghurs to China or to coerce family members.”


Since Xinjiang party chief Chen Quanguo was appointed to his post in August 2016, he has initiated unprecedented repressive measures against the Uyghur people and ideological purges against so-called "two-faced" Uyghur officials, a term applied by the government to Uyghurs who do not willingly follow directives and who exhibit signs of "disloyalty."


China regularly conducts “strike hard” campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.


While China blames some Uyghurs for "terrorist" attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018164256.html

----------


## misskit

*Popular Uyghur Singer’s Whereabouts Unknown, Believed Detained in Xinjiang Re-Education Camp*A Uyghur pop star in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), who had worked to bridge the divide between his ethnic group and the country’s Han Chinese majority, is missing and believed detained in a “political re-education camp,” according to sources.


Ablajan Ayup, 34, known as the “Uyghur Justin Bieber,” was taken into custody by a state security unit in the XUAR capital Urumqi on Feb. 15 as he returned from Shanghai, where he had traveled to perform as part of a music tour, a friend told RFA’s Uyghur Service, speaking on condition of anonymity.


The friend said that Ayup’s arrest followed a “brief detention and questioning in December 2017,” although he was unsure of why the singer, who is also known as “AJ,” had been investigated at the time.


According to his friends on WeChat, Ayup last posted to the social media site on the evening of Feb. 14, and has neither performed nor been heard from since.


Police in Urumqi’s Tianshan district and in Hotan (in Chinese, Hetian) prefecture’s Guma (Pishan) county, where Ayup is from, told RFA that they are aware of who he is, but could not confirm that he had been detained.


But a police officer in Guma’s Chawda township acknowledged that authorities in Ayup’s nearby home township of Sanju had briefly detained him there at the end of last year.


“I know he was arrested, but I don’t know where he was held,” the officer said, before referring additional questions to the Sanju township and Guma county police.


Since April 2017, Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” views have been jailed or detained in re-education camps throughout the XUAR, where members of the ethnic group have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.


China's central government authorities have not publicly acknowledged the existence of re-education camps in the XUAR, and the number of inmates kept in each facility remains a closely guarded secret, but local officials in many parts of the region have in RFA telephone interviews forthrightly described sending significant numbers of Uyghurs to the camps and even described overcrowding in some facilities.


Maya Wang of the New York-based Human Rights Watch told The Guardian in January that estimates of XUAR residents who had spent time in the camps went as high as 800,000, while at least one Uyghur exile group estimates that up to 1 million Uyghurs have been detained throughout the region since April 2017, and some Uyghur activists say nearly every Uyghur household has been affected by the campaign.


Last month, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio and U.S. Representative Chris Smith—the chair and co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China—called on U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad to visit Xinjiang and gather information on the detention of Uyghurs, which they termed "the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.”



Popular singer


Ayup was born in Sanju township in 1984 and relocated to Turpan at the age of 15 to study art. He returned home and worked as a teacher while writing music on the side until 2006, when he got a break and became a nationally recognized performer.


Drawing inspiration from his idol, Michael Jackson, Ayup wrote songs about education and Uyghur identity, and became very popular among Uyghurs—particularly children.


He rarely discusses politics, but has nonetheless run afoul of the authorities, as noted in an article about him by Time magazine in 2014.


After ethnic violence in July that year left at least 100 people dead outside of the city of Kashgar (Kashi), according to state media, authorities shut down a concert Ayup had planned to hold in Urumqi that was to be a display of ethnic unity, less than an hour before showtime. The singer responded by posting a picture of himself on Instagram with a caption that read “I am not a terrorist!”


In July 2017, University of Washington anthropologist Darren Byler wrote about how Ayup generally “demonstrates a careful awareness of the desires of both his audience and his censors,” saying that in doing so, “he is able to continue to inspire hope in his audience of young Uyghurs.”

But for Uyghurs in the XUAR, toeing the line is no easy task, particularly since regional party chief Chen Quanguo was appointed to his post in August 2016 and embarked on unprecedented repressive measures against members of the ethnic group.

One of Ayup’s friends on social media speculated that he may have been detained because he had once traveled to Malaysia—one of dozens of countries authorities say are off limits to Uyghurs because of the risk of “extremist” Muslim indoctrination. Others suggested that he had been targeted for his work with a charity that benefited Uyghurs, or because of his love for Uyghur heritage.

In speaking with Byler last year, Ayup indicated that despite his efforts to avoid controversy, he was coming under increasing scrutiny from authorities.“Actually I am just a singer not a politician,” he said at the time. “I only know about music.”

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018131924.html

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## OhOh

> is missing and believed detained in a political re-education camp, according to sources.





> a friend told RFAs Uyghur Service, speaking on condition of anonymity.





> One of Ayups friends on social media speculated that he may have been detained


Looks like three dependable, trustworthy sources and facts your quoting, marvellous.




> Ayup indicated


Don't suppose you have a link to where this "indication" was published, do you?




> Ablajan Ayup


You sure he's not from Sheffield?

----------


## misskit

*Navigating Checkpoints in the Uyghur Homeland*On a visit in April 2018 to the Uyghur homeland in Northwest China I was amazed by the number of checkpoints that turn every city and town into a maze of ethno-racial profiling and ID scans. In some areas, the checkpoints are every several hundred meters. The checkpoints are only for those who pass as Uyghur. Han folks and obvious foreigners are usually directed to walk through the exits of the checkpoints with the wave of a hand. The checkpoints are not for them.


Since 2009 there have been a number of large-scale violent incidents involving Uyghurs, state security and Han Chinese civilians. Since 2014 the state has conducted a so-called People’s War on Terror that has subjected Uyghurs between the ages of 15-45 to intense scrutiny. As a result of this campaign, the state has detained hundreds of thousands of young Uyghurs in a reeducation camp system while radically increasing the police presence.


At the checkpoint exiting the highspeed rail station in Turpan I observed the way “native” (Uy: yerlik) people were directed through two long lines to have their IDs checked while others were permitted to go through a line through an exit gate on the left without any check at all. The determination of who was “native” was made by a Uyghur officer who was scanning our faces for racial phenotypes and the level of fear in the individual. People who walked confidently without looking at the officer were sometimes read as Han even if they were not. Speaking Uyghur I asked the Uyghur women around me which line a foreigner should go through. They said I should go with them.


A face scan checkpoint to exit the high-speed train in Turpan. The line on the left side which goes through a simple metal gate held open by an officer is for Han people.




When it was my turn I explained in Uyghur to the young Uyghur officer that I was a foreigner. He said we needed to go into the police station across the square to register. As we walked toward the station he asked me in a really pointed way if I could also speak Chinese. I said I could. He seemed to be suggesting that I do so when we entered the station itself. 

We joked about how hard it was to learn languages. He said he didn’t have good learning environment, so his English was not good. When I entered the police station I understood why he was suggesting that I speak Chinese, the Han officers were observing the work of the many junior Uyghur police officers in the station. If I spoke Uyghur, it may have been a problem. I explained in Chinese that I was just visiting Turpan for the afternoon and planning to see some tourist sites. 

They joked about how in America people were able to take vacations. The police never get a break, they said.  A Uyghur officer scanned my face on my passport photo and then matched it to a scan of my face using an app on her phone. They explained that this scanning was for my protection while I was in Turpan. Face-scanning people was just a normal part of life here.

While I was there a young Uyghur man was escorted in. He was nervous and stuttering a bit, his face was pale. The officer accompanying him said his ID had beeped when he went through the checkpoint. My second face scan of the day was done so I wasn’t able to stay and hear what they were going to do with him.


Over the course of a week in cities across the Uyghur homeland I went through dozens and dozens of checkpoints. I saw young Uyghur officers berate elderly Uyghurs for not showing their IDs. I saw many random checkpoints at the sides of the road that only targeted Uyghur young men and women; or that only targeted cars driven by Uyghurs. Throughout my time there I did not see a Han person asked to show his or her ID at spot checks in the Uyghur districts of Ürümchi, Turpan or Kashgar. The unwritten rules were clear.


A random smart phone spot check near Kashgar’s New Bazaar.




At some checkpoints, officers also ask Uyghur young people to give them the passwords to open their smart phones. At these checkpoints, the officers look at the spyware app Clean Net Guard (Jingwang Weishi) that all Uyghurs are now required to install on their phones. The officers match the registration of the phone to the ID of the person and they also see if any alerts have been issued by the app. The app scanned the content on the phone and content sent from the phone for any material deemed “extremist” or “separatist.” These types of checkpoints are particularly harrowing for young Uyghurs, because the evidence from these scans is used to send Uyghurs to indefinite detention in reeducation camps.


At a checkpoint in Kashgar’s Old City I came across a Uyghur woman screaming at a Han officer in Chinese. With tears in her eyes she was yelling, “How many people are left in your family?” He tried to shut her up by barking “Yak!” “Yak!” (No! No!) in Uyghur and then switching to Chinese he yelled “Bu!” “Bu!” (No! No!) trying to shut her up. People are not permitted to protest the indefinite detention of their loved ones. Those that do are often detained themselves. I didn’t linger because I didn’t want the outcome to be worse for her.



At this checkpoint in Kashgar the sign says in both Uyghur and Chinese that ID cards will be checked. In practice only Uyghur IDs are checked.



https://livingotherwise.com/2018/05/...ghur-homeland/

----------


## misskit

*Uyghur Schoolchildren, Parents Forced to Abstain From Fasting During Ramadan*Authorities in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) are forcing Uyghur students and their parents to sign pledges that they will not fast during the holy Islamic month of Ramadan in a bid to further undermine the religious traditions of the mostly Muslim ethnic group.


Officials have typically forced restaurants to stay open and restricted access to mosques during Ramadan, and last year sources told RFA’s Uyghur Service that Uyghur Communist Party cadres, civil servants and government retirees were made to sign documents that said they would neither fast nor pray during the holy month, ostensibly to set an example to other Uyghurs in the community.


But a student in Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) prefecture’s Peyziwat (Jiashi) county recently told RFA that school officials made him and his classmates sign agreements with their parents that they would not fast during Ramadan—which falls between May 16 and June 14 this year—marking the first time authorities have been known to target school-age children with the measures.


The report suggest that authorities are making unprecedented incursions into the personal lives of Uyghurs to eliminate what they call signs of religious “extremism” in the region.


“As we are students, we don’t fast,” said the student, who spoke with RFA on condition of anonymity.


“We have signed a school agreement and also written a letter of promise.”


When asked if his parents were fasting during Ramadan, the student said that they weren’t because “they are not allowed to practice such things in front of … their children.”


“To act as role models, of course they will not fast,” he added.


A female cadre from Peyziwat county said that ahead of Ramadan “all cadres and party members were called to the county office for a meeting, in which we were told to ‘be more vigilant’ and to ‘pay special attention’ to anyone who complains about the government’s policy regarding religious extremism.”


“The cadres are working hard on … educating [residents] about the incorrectness of fasting,” she added.


When asked whether fasting was considered an “illegal religious activity,” the cadre acknowledged that it is not, but said “people shouldn’t complain when living under such good conditions.”


She also confirmed a report by New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) earlier this month that authorities are imposing regular “home stays” on Muslim Uyghur families of cadres who record information about their lives and political views, and subject them to political indoctrination, as part of an increasingly invasive “strike hard” campaign in the region.


“They are helping farmers get out of poverty,” she said of the home stay policy, which the government says provides families with access to education about technical skills and teaches them Mandarin Chinese to help residents find better work.


Other sources, including an officer at a police station in Aksu (Akesu) prefecture, said increased security measures are in effect around the region during Ramadan.


“We have intensified patrols in order to retain stability, and at the moment there are no instability issues,” said the officer, before hanging up the phone.



Existing measures


The new restrictions surrounding Ramadan are in line with existing measures targeting religious “extremism” that have been introduced in recent years.


Since April, thousands of Uyghurs accused of harboring “extremist” and “politically incorrect” views have been detained in political re-education camps and prisons throughout Xinjiang, where members of the ethnic group complain of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.


Authorities have relied on a list circulated early last year of “75 Signs of Religious Extremism” to detain Uyghurs amid a string of harsh policies attacking their legitimate rights and freedoms enacted since Communist Party secretary Chen Quanguo was appointed to run the region in August 2016.


Among the signs of extremism on the list were “conducting business as usual” and “women who wear religious clothing to work” during Ramadan, “storing or purchasing large quantities of food for home” and “acting abnormal,” and “praying in groups in public outside of mosques.”


But party officials told RFA that they had been notified of several new “signs of extremism” in April last year, including people who stand with their legs wide apart while praying, dye their hair with henna, wear short trousers, wear a watch on their right wrist, and those suddenly abstaining from alcohol.


Another list informs officials to watch out for the so-called “28 Signs of Illegal Religious Activities.”


Ahead of Ramadan this year, the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) exile group issued a statement urging the Chinese government to ensure the right to religious freedom for Uyghurs, and to allow them to observe the holy month without restrictions.


“Each year, the month of Ramadan has been turned into one of fear and anxiety because of the increased restrictions, which has caused untold disturbance in the daily life of the Uyghur people,” WUC president Dolkun Isa said at the time. 


China regularly conducts “strike hard” campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.


While China blames some Uyghurs for "terrorist" attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.


https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018151019.html

----------


## misskit

*US Rejects China’s Request For UN to Cut Ties With NGO Linked to Exiled Uyghur Leader*A U.S. envoy has strongly rejected a call by China to withdraw special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) from an NGO that promotes the rights of minority peoples, based on its ties to the head of an exile Uyghur group Beijing accuses of “terrorism.”


In a letter dated May 17, China’s permanent mission to the U.N. urged the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations under ECOSOC to remove consultative status for Germany-based Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), after the group named World Uyghur Congress (WUC) President Dolkun Isa as its representative during the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) in April.


The Chinese delegation claimed that Isa—a German citizen of Uyghur ethnicity—had been “participating, inciting and funding separatism and terrorism for years,” adding that while participating in regional dialogues at UNPFII he had indicated that he was “representing WUC instead of STP,” despite only having accreditation as an STP representative.


“All the above actions seriously violates relevant rules and regulations of the United Nations,” the letter said, urging the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations “to uphold the authority of the U.N. Charter and withdraw the consultative status of STP.”


During the resumed session of the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations on Monday, the Chinese delegation reasserted its position that STP’s status should be withdrawn, saying that the “acts of this society run counter to the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter.”


In response to the request, Ambassador Kelley Currie, the U.S. Representative for Economic and Social Affairs to the U.N., said she was saddened to see the committee “indulging in the Chinese delegation's Islamophobia, in which they conflate the efforts of an individual to advance the religious and human rights of a persecuted minority in China with terrorism, without providing any substantiated evidence.”


Currie noted that Washington has repeatedly asked Beijing to provide proof of its allegations that Isa was involved in terrorist activities in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), but had never been given “any actionable intelligence that would indicate that what they are saying is true.”


“This is not about the Society for Threatened Peoples and their contributions to the United Nations, this is about the temerity that [STP] have to allow an individual who is silenced in China—and a whole community, frankly, that is silenced in China—to speak out on behalf of the rights of that community,” the ambassador said, urging China to withdraw its request.


“Isn’t this what the U.N. is all about,” she asked. “Isn’t this whole organization here to promote self-determination?”

Currie said that reports of mass incarcerations in the XUAR were documented by looking at Chinese procurement requests on Chinese websites requesting Chinese companies to tender offers to build “political re-education camps,” and that Beijing was seeking to prevent Isa from speaking out about the issue, as well as other rights abuses there.


“This is what this is about today—let’s please not make any mistake about what we’re talking about,” she said. 


Lacking any evidence of terrorist activities, she added, Washington would stand by its decision to grant Isa—“a German citizen in good standing and without a criminal record”—a multiple entry, 10-year visa to the U.S., and the right to continue to meet with U.S. officials.


“This is clearly an incident of the Chinese government using its position on this committee, and its friends on this committee, to engage in a reprisal against an individual,” Currie said.


Committee chair Jorge Dotta ruled that the U.N. would discuss China’s concerns with STP and decide whether to withdraw the NGO’s consultative status by May 25.



‘Crimes against humanity’


Speaking to RFA’s Uyghur Service on Tuesday, Isa said China seeks to “cover up its crimes against humanity” in the XUAR, where thousands of Uyghurs accused of harboring “extremist” and “politically incorrect” views have been detained in political “re-education camps” and prisons throughout the region since April 2017.


“That is why China is always afraid of the Uyghur issues raised at the U.N.,” he said, referring to complaints by Uyghurs of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.


“It is no coincidence that China wants to prevent me from speaking at the U.N. by accusing me of ‘terrorism,’ a bogus charge it has never been able to substantiate.”


In February, INTERPOL confirmed that it had deleted a “Red Notice”—an international wanted person alert—for Isa, who fled China in the mid-1990s, for his involvement in peaceful Uyghur student protests in the late 1980s.


Isa, who was granted refugee status in Germany in 1996 and later gained German citizenship, learned in 1999 that China had issued the Red Notice against him, demanding his arrest and extradition back to China to face charges. 


As a result of the alert, Isa said he had faced harassment—including detention and arrest—by authorities in South Korea, India, the U.S., Turkey and Italy while advocating for human rights for the Uyghur people.


Isa said that China attempts to “silence all Uyghur voices,” both at home and abroad, but “cannot break our resolve to speak the truth of its brutal rule in East Turkestan,” using the Uyghur name for the XUAR.


“I will speak in spite of Chinese harassment, resistance, and false accusations. I will continue to speak until the Uyghur issue becomes a central issue to be resolved at the U.N. and all world capitals.”


China's central government authorities have not publicly acknowledged the existence of re-education camps in the XUAR, and the number of inmates kept in each facility remains a closely guarded secret, but local officials in many parts of the region have in RFA telephone interviews forthrightly described sending significant numbers of Uyghurs to the camps and even described overcrowding in some facilities.


Maya Wang of the New York-based Human Rights Watch told The Guardian in January that estimates of XUAR residents who had spent time in the camps went as high as 800,000, while at least one Uyghur exile group estimates that up to 1 million Uyghurs have been detained throughout the region since April 2017, and some Uyghur activists say nearly every Uyghur household has been affected by the campaign.


Last month, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio and U.S. Representative Chris Smith—the chair and co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China—called on U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad to visit Xinjiang and gather information on the detention of Uyghurs, which they termed "the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.”


https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018154314.html

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## OhOh

Terrorists and freedom fighters eh, so similar to some.

----------


## Hugh Cow

It is mainly western democracies that bring up human rights complaints. You will certainly not here it from Asean or Russia as well as most muslim countries. Unfortunately for the Uyghurs they are muslim and therefore unlikely to get much support from the west which has to contend with anti muslim feelings within it's own borders as well as its own interests in dealing with China, therefore the Uyghurs will come a poor third regardless of how oppressed they are by the Chinese government. Of course China will do as it pleases it is a totalitarian regime that cares little about international opinion or domestic opinion. The only defenders China has are the OhOhs of the world who are the modern day equivalents of Neville Chamberlain.

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## tomcat

...the greater the oppression the Uyghers suffer, the more likely they are to be responsive to calls for Jihad from Saudi/Gulf financiers...it appears few others are supporting their cause for increased internal freedoms, let alone independence as Eastern Turkestan...known in Beijing as Western Hanistan...

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## HuangLao

Historically, chasing imperial quests always comes back to haunt in one form or another.

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## OhOh

> Of course ameristan will do as it pleases it is a totalitarian regime that cares little about international opinion or domestic opinion.


FIFY




> the greater the oppression the Uyghers suffer,


What's the % of the ethnic group allegedly "oppressed" in the MSM which our japanese concubine publishes here. What's the % of ameristanis incarcerated in comparison?

Some perspective of the government actions would lead some to conclude that the Chinese are leading in the easy come easy go stakes.

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## tomcat

...^red herrings with a side order of nonsense...

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## misskit

> Terrorists and freedom fighters eh, so similar to some.


I’m sure this one was a real bad-ass.

*Elderly Uyghur Woman Dies in Detention in Xinjiang ‘Political Re-Education Camp’*An elderly Uyghur woman has died from health complications after being incarcerated at a political “re-education camp” in Ili Kazakh (in Chinese, Yili Hasake) Autonomous Prefecture, in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), according to sources.


Since April 2017, Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” views have been jailed or detained in re-education camps throughout Xinjiang, where members of the ethnic group have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.


A source recently told RFA’s Uyghur Service that the elderly Uyghur woman died at the Yamachang camp in Bayanday township, in Ili Kazakh’s Ghulja (Yining) county, as a result of being “unable to cope with the pressure and terrible conditions” at the facility.


The source, who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity, was unable to provide the name or age of the woman, but said she was one of more than 20 relatives of a baker in Bayanday named Sawurjan, whose two sons run a bakery in Egypt.


All of Sawurjan’s relatives have been detained and sent for re-education because of the sons’ connections abroad, he added.


An official who answered the phone in No. 3 village said no women from his village had died, but noted that “there was someone who died in a nearby village.”


The official said he did not know the name of the woman, but that she died in March while being held in either No. 5 or No. 6 Village.


“I think she lived in the Orman area,” the official said, adding that “she was an old lady.”


When asked whether the woman was related to Sawurjan, the official said she was not, adding that the baker lives in Bayanday’s No. 2 Village.


When asked about a woman from Orman who died in March, an official at the No. 2 Village government building provided RFA with a telephone number for one of her family members, but repeated calls to the number went unanswered.


Much of the confusion about the woman’s fate stems from the secrecy of the re-education internment process, which falls outside the court system and, unlike judicial sentences, is not reported by local or state media, both tightly controlled in China.



Elderly detainees


Reports suggest that authorities have no age limit for incarcerating Uyghurs in the XUAR, and countless numbers of the elderly are being held in re-education camps throughout the region—many of whom have been targeted for taking part in a pilgrimage to Mecca or are retired officials who have joined a local mosque community as part of their Islamic faith.


Others have been thrown into camps after speaking out about the detention of their family members.


Sources say the elderly face rough treatment at their hands of their overseers in the camps and endure poor diets and unhygienic conditions in the often overcrowded facilities—circumstances that can lead to severe complications for people already vulnerable to health issues associated with age.


In January, sources told RFA that detention centers in Korla (Kuerle), the seat of central Xinjiang’s Bayin’gholin Mongol (Bayinguoleng Menggu) Autonomous Prefecture, are “completely full” and have been turning detainees away because they could not accommodate them.


One source quoted a friend who was admitted to a camp in the area describing cells that had previously held eight people being made to accommodate 14 inmates, who “were not allowed pillows” and “had to lay on their sides because there was not enough room to lay flat,” let alone space to turn over or stretch their legs.



Camp network


China's central government authorities have not publicly acknowledged the existence of re-education camps in the XUAR, and the number of inmates kept in each facility remains a closely guarded secret, but local officials in many parts of the region have in RFA telephone interviews forthrightly described sending significant numbers of Uyghurs to the camps and even described overcrowding in some facilities.


Maya Wang of the New York-based Human Rights Watch told The Guardian in January that estimates of XUAR residents who had spent time in the camps went as high as 800,000, while at least one Uyghur exile group estimates that up to 1 million Uyghurs have been detained throughout the region since April 2017, and some Uyghur activists say nearly every Uyghur household has been affected by the campaign.


Last month, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio and U.S. Representative Chris Smith—the chair and co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China—called on U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad to visit Xinjiang and gather information on the detention of Uyghurs, which they termed "the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.”


China regularly conducts “strike hard” campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.


While China blames some Uyghurs for "terrorist" attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.



https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018164854.html

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## Klondyke

Are they the same Uighurs as reported here?

https://teakdoor.com/speakers-corner/...ml#post3765295 (Al Jazeera Documentaries)

*The Guantanamo 22
How a group of men from China's Uighur community were sold in Afghanistan and imprisoned in Guantanamo as terrorists.

https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes...112137598.html*

----------


## OhOh

> according to sources





> A source recently told RFA’s Uyghur Service





> The source, who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity, was unable to provide the name or age of the woman





> An official who answered the phone





> The official said





> Reports sugges





> China regularly conducts “strike hard” campaigns





> experts outside China sa


9 unnamed "sources".




> U.S. Senator Marco Rubio and U.S. Representative Chris Smith—the chair and co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on Chin


A source with an agenda? An article from an ameristani government site.

Not even a 0 on my factual scale.

----------


## misskit

*China Locks Up, Tortures Muslims in 'Re-education Camps'*Chinese authorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang are detaining Muslim ethnic minorities en masse and subjecting them to torture and brainwashing to honor the ruling Chinese Communist Party and renounce the tenets of their faith, rights groups warned on Wednesday.


"The authorities force the detainees to accept this so-called education, which is political indoctrination," Human Rights Watch (HRW) China researcher Maya Wang told RFA on Wednesday. "Before they eat, they have to wish [President] Xi Jinping good health, or thank the government and thank the party, before they are allowed to eat anything."


"They are forced to study Chinese characters, and anyone who challenges this arbitrary detention is punished, some physically, some by being locked up in isolation with no food or water," she said.


Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress, which represents the ethnic minority Uyghur group overseas, said many detainees are closely monitored using the latest facial recognition technology, which is believed to predict a person's actions through the analysis of micro-expressions.


"They use surveillance video of micro-expressions to analyze what people are thinking or feeling," Raxit said. "By looking at changes in these expressions each day ... they can tell whether the person is likely to engage in acts of collective or individual protest."


He said the consequences for not engaging with this process can be dire.


"People have been tortured to death, while others have been beaten to death, or prevented from sleeping, or refused food or water," Raxit said. "Either that or they do whatever would be most humiliating to that person's psychological profile. Sometimes they humiliate them physically, and have been known to employ electric batons."



‘Secularize and modernize’


Adrian Zenz, a lecturer in social research methods at the Germany-based European School of Culture and Theology, says, "The state basically sees southern Xinjiang as a big problem area and a concentration of difficult-to-control populations."


"They want people in regular wage jobs and also in different places in Xinjiang where they are under much more control and in very nonreligious settings," he told the rights group RDSL Monitor in an interview this week. "They want people to secularize and to modernize."


Murat, another Muslim from Xinjiang, told RFA that he was similarly incarcerated, beaten and tortured in a "re-education center."


“Political education centers are generally like prisons," Murat told RFA. "Electric shocks, beatings, and humiliation all take place in there. It's very cruel."


He said inmates are under constant video surveillance.


"Nobody talks; there is a camera on the ceiling and even in the toilet," he said.


Beginning in April 2017, Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” views have been jailed or detained in re-education camps throughout the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), where members of the ethnic group have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.


Earlier this month, an official in Xinjiang's Qaraqash (in Chinese, Moyu) county, said that nearly half of the population of his village is currently detained in re-education camps.


China's central government authorities have not publicly acknowledged the existence of re-education camps in the XUAR, and the number of inmates kept in each facility remains a closely guarded secret, but local officials in many parts of the region have in RFA telephone interviews forthrightly described sending significant numbers of Uyghurs to the camps and even described overcrowding in some facilities.


Citing credible reports, lawmakers Marco Rubio and Chris Smith, who head the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China, said recently that as many as 500,000 to a million people are or have been detained in the reeducation camps, calling it ”the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.”


Zenz estimates that the number “could be closer to 1.1 million, which equates to 10-11 percent of the adult Muslim population of the region."




https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018150827.html

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## Latindancer

> many detainees are closely monitored using the latest facial recognition technology, which is believed to predict a person's actions through the analysis of micro-expressions.


I wonder what Paul Eckman thinks about this ? Probably horrified...

----------


## misskit

*Uighurs live with fear, trauma as families remain stranded in China's growing 're-education camps'*Last year, when Almas Nizamidin returned to Urumqi — the capital city of China's far-west region of Xinjiang — he was on a mission to find his wife who had been taken from her home by several plain-clothes policemen under no official charge.

The 27-year-old construction worker from Adelaide, who became an Australian citizen in 2014 after leaving China in 2009, flew back immediately after hearing the news of his wife, only to find the city he grew up in completely unrecognisable.


"It looked like an occupation," he said, “There were lines of tanks on the streets, and a police blockhouse every 100 metres where police officers scan people's IDs and the contents of their phones," he said.



More. Uighurs live with fear, trauma as families remain stranded in China's growing 're-education camps' - ABC News

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## misskit

*One in 10 Uyghur Residents of Xinjiang Township Jailed or Detained in ‘Re-Education Camp’*More than ten percent of the inhabitants of a mostly Uyghur-populated township in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have been jailed or are detained in “political re-education camps,” according to local officials.

Beginning in April 2017, Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” views have been jailed or detained in re-education camps throughout the XUAR, where members of the ethnic group have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.

The head of the judicial department of Tuwet township, in Hotan (in Chinese, Hetian) prefecture’s Qaraqash (Moyu) county, recently told RFA’s Uyghur Service that more than one out of every 10 of the township’s 32,000 residents had been imprisoned or detained in a re-education camp since April last year.

“There are 1,721 people in re-education camps,” said the head of the department, who gave his name as Rozimemet.

“The number of people sent to prison is 1,731,” he added.

An officer at the Chinibagh village police station, in the seat of Qaraqash county, recently told RFA that around 40 percent of the more than 1,700 residents of his home village of Yengisheher had been detained in re-education camps.

When asked if authorities in Tuwet township had been tasked with attaining a quota for jailing or detaining 40 percent of residents, Rozimemet said they had not, but he acknowledged that they had been given a target, without elaborating.


Camp network

China's central government authorities have not publicly acknowledged the existence of re-education camps in the XUAR, and the number of inmates kept in each facility remains a closely guarded secret, but local officials in many parts of the region have in RFA telephone interviews forthrightly described sending significant numbers of Uyghurs to the camps and even described overcrowding in some facilities.

Citing credible reports, lawmakers Marco Rubio and Chris Smith, who head the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China, said recently that as many as 500,000 to a million people are or have been detained in the re-education camps, calling it ”the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.”

Adrian Zenz, a lecturer in social research methods at the Germany-based European School of Culture and Theology, said the number “could be closer to 1.1 million, which equates to 10-11 percent of the adult Muslim population of the region." 

China regularly conducts “strike hard” campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.

While China blames some Uyghurs for "terrorist" attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.


https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018132506.html

----------


## misskit

*US Government Holds Hearing on Human Rights Crisis in East Turkistan*This week, Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), convened a hearing on the

. The hearing looked at the serious and deteriorating human rights situation faced by Uyghurs, examined the Chinese government’s efforts to build the world’s most advanced police state in East Turkistan and explored policy options to address these issues within U.S.-China relations.


Witnesses at the hearing testified to the existence of “political reeducation” centers or camps throughout East Turkistan where over 1 million Uyghurs and other Turkic ethnic people are held and subjected to torture, medical neglect and maltreatment, solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, and other forms of abuse resulting in the death of some detainees.


Those who testified included U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, the chair of the hearing, who spoke about serious and deteriorating human rights situation faced by Uyghur Muslims and members of other Muslim ethnic minority groups and highlighted that U.S. and multi-national corporations are selling products to the Chinese government that assist in its repression and human rights violations in East Turkistan. He also presses the US Commerce Department on how they could prevent companies like Thermo Fisher Scientific from selling technology like DNA sequencers that directly correspond to human rights violations against Uyghurs.

Ambassador Kelley Currie, U.S. representative at the U.N. Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), spoke about how the Chinese government of President Xi Jinping has been strengthening its persecution of Muslims since April of last year, calling it a counterterrorism measure. Ambassador Currie testified that the United States have been trying to advance the Uyghur cause at the United Nations, but very few countries are ready to support them, due to China’s political and economic pressure. She also noted with great concern that China was attempting to redefine human rights and alter the UN system.


Senator Angus King compared the Western silence about China today to the silence in the 1930s about the Holocaust.
Gulchehra Hoja, Uyghur Service journalist, Radio Free Asia spoke about her experience covering Uyghur issues in East Turkistan while dealing with her own personal issues having family and friends detained in internment camps. She said more than 20 members of her family remain unaccounted for after being taken away by Chinese authorities last year. She further stated that Uyghur families across the world are experiencing similar heartbreak and that almost everyone in the diaspora have had friends or relatives disappear.


Historian Rian Thum, a scholar of East Turkistan at Loyola University, New Orleans, presented photographic evidence of how the regime is building new “transformation through education” camps and expanding the existing ones. He also insisted that, should all these camps be closed tomorrow, the problem of Xinjiang would not be solved. Even outside the camps, the province remains a police state, “the most closely surveilled place on the planet,” worse than North Korea and comparable only to China in the worst years of the Cultural Revolution.


Jessica Batke, senior editor of ChinaFile, reported on the atrocities perpetrated in the “transformation through education” camps where one million Uyghurs are detained because of their faith, and denounced the successful campaign by China to prevent or sideline discussions of the Uyghur situation at the United Nations.


Members of the Commission also urged the Administration to consider the application of Global Magnitsky Sanctions against senior government and Party officials in East Turkistan responsible for these rights violations, including Party Secretary Chen Quanguo.

MORE World Uyghur Congress | WEEKLY BRIEF ? JULY 27

----------


## misskit

*US Government Holds Hearing on Human Rights Crisis in East Turkistan*


This week, Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), convened a hearing on the

. The hearing looked at the serious and deteriorating human rights situation faced by Uyghurs, examined the Chinese government’s efforts to build the world’s most advanced police state in East Turkistan and explored policy options to address these issues within U.S.-China relations.


Witnesses at the hearing testified to the existence of “political reeducation” centers or camps throughout East Turkistan where over 1 million Uyghurs and other Turkic ethnic people are held and subjected to torture, medical neglect and maltreatment, solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, and other forms of abuse resulting in the death of some detainees.


Those who testified included U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, the chair of the hearing, who spoke about serious and deteriorating human rights situation faced by Uyghur Muslims and members of other Muslim ethnic minority groups and highlighted that U.S. and multi-national corporations are selling products to the Chinese government that assist in its repression and human rights violations in East Turkistan. He also presses the US Commerce Department on how they could prevent companies like Thermo Fisher Scientific from selling technology like DNA sequencers that directly correspond to human rights violations against Uyghurs.

Ambassador Kelley Currie, U.S. representative at the U.N. Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), spoke about how the Chinese government of President Xi Jinping has been strengthening its persecution of Muslims since April of last year, calling it a counterterrorism measure. Ambassador Currie testified that the United States have been trying to advance the Uyghur cause at the United Nations, but very few countries are ready to support them, due to China’s political and economic pressure. She also noted with great concern that China was attempting to redefine human rights and alter the UN system.


Senator Angus King compared the Western silence about China today to the silence in the 1930s about the Holocaust.
Gulchehra Hoja, Uyghur Service journalist, Radio Free Asia spoke about her experience covering Uyghur issues in East Turkistan while dealing with her own personal issues having family and friends detained in internment camps. She said more than 20 members of her family remain unaccounted for after being taken away by Chinese authorities last year. She further stated that Uyghur families across the world are experiencing similar heartbreak and that almost everyone in the diaspora have had friends or relatives disappear.


Historian Rian Thum, a scholar of East Turkistan at Loyola University, New Orleans, presented photographic evidence of how the regime is building new “transformation through education” camps and expanding the existing ones. He also insisted that, should all these camps be closed tomorrow, the problem of Xinjiang would not be solved. Even outside the camps, the province remains a police state, “the most closely surveilled place on the planet,” worse than North Korea and comparable only to China in the worst years of the Cultural Revolution.


Jessica Batke, senior editor of ChinaFile, reported on the atrocities perpetrated in the “transformation through education” camps where one million Uyghurs are detained because of their faith, and denounced the successful campaign by China to prevent or sideline discussions of the Uyghur situation at the United Nations.


Members of the Commission also urged the Administration to consider the application of Global Magnitsky Sanctions against senior government and Party officials in East Turkistan responsible for these rights violations, including Party Secretary Chen Quanguo.



MORE World Uyghur Congress | WEEKLY BRIEF ? JULY 27

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## OhOh

ameristanis accusing others of human rights atrocities.

 :smiley laughing:

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## misskit

*US Senators Urge Top Diplomat to Raise Concerns With China Over RFA Reporters’ Detained Relatives*Six U.S. Senators have penned a letter to Washington’s top diplomat, urging pressure on China’s government to provide information about the relatives of reporters with RFA’s Uyghur Service missing in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), and to free those who have been detained or jailed.

Beginning in April 2017, Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas have been jailed or detained in re-education camps throughout the XUAR, where members of the ethnic group have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.

China is believed to have detained more than two dozen close relatives of six U.S.-based reporters for RFA’s Uyghur Service in apparent retaliation for their coverage of the XUAR.

In a letter dated July 26, and recently obtained by RFA, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia—the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence—and five other bipartisan Senators wrote to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to raise concerns about China’s attempts to punish the RFA reporters for their work.

“RFA’s Uyghur Service journalists, most of them U.S. citizens and residents of Virginia, have relatives in China—including elderly parents—who have been detained, jailed, or forcibly disappeared in what appears to be an act of direct retaliation against these U.S. journalists for their work in exposing the deteriorating human rights situation in the XUAR,” the lawmakers wrote.

“We are deeply concerned that these cases illustrate that a foreign nation is pursuing extreme measures in an attempt to interfere with Radio Free Asia’s congressionally mandated mission of bringing free press to closed societies.”

The Senators noted that most of the relatives are believed to be held in the re-education camps which, aside from a brief mention as “training centers” in state media recently, China's central government authorities have not publicly acknowledged the existence of.

While the number of inmates kept in each facility remains a closely guarded secret, local officials in many parts of the region have in RFA telephone interviews forthrightly described sending significant numbers of Uyghurs to the camps and even described overcrowding in some facilities.

“In your capacity as the United States’ senior diplomat, we urge you raise this urgent issue in your diplomatic communications with your Chinese counterparts, seek answers as to the whereabouts and well-being of these missing, detained, and jailed relatives, and appeal for these individuals to be unconditionally released at every opportunity,” the letter said.

“We ask you to make clear to the Chinese government that these cases are a priority for the U.S. Government. We also ask that you brief our offices within the next few weeks with an update on their cases, to include specifics about your engagement with the Chinese government to date, and your plan for future engagement.”

The letter to Pompeo came after several top U.S. officials and a U.S. lawmaker called out China last week for its treatment of Uyghurs in the XUAR, slamming Beijing for what they said was a systematic effort to destroy the Muslim minority’s religious and cultural identity.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, and Senator Marco Rubio spoke at separate events in Washington decrying China’s re-education camps in the XUAR and calling on the country to end its religious persecution of the Uyghurs, in a rare example of U.S. officials at such senior levels concertedly drawing attention to the issue.

Earlier in July, Pompeo told Voice of America in an interview that China should refrain from using “the guise of a counter terrorism investigation to persecute religious freedom” and condemned Beijing’s draconian policies in the XUAR.

Citing credible reports, Rubio and his CECC co-chair Representative Chris Smith, said recently that as many as 500,000 to a million people are or have been detained in the re-education camps, calling it ”the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.”

Adrian Zenz, a lecturer in social research methods at the Germany-based European School of Culture and Theology, said the number “could be closer to 1.1 million, which equates to 10-11 percent of the adult Muslim population of the region.”

In March, several human rights and press freedom watchdog groups slammed China’s detention of the RFA Uyghur Service reporter’s relatives and called for their release.


https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018144350.html

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## tomcat

*The Hole at the Heart of China’s Silk Road*

A seething and repressed Xinjiang can’t become a hub for trade.

By Mihir Sharma
August 8, 2018, 5:00 AM GMT+7





The western province has become a police state. 

_Mihir Sharma is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.
_
Nobody pretends the People’s Republic of China is an entirely benign power, least of all its leaders in Beijing. Yet, even by the standards of what continues to be a remarkably repressive state, the stories that are emerging from behind the Great Firewall about the crackdown on Xinjiang’s Uighur Muslim population are deeply disturbing and deserve more of the world’s attention.

The one country on earth which should best understand the danger and futility of such efforts has reportedly set up “reeducation centres” across the length and breadth of its largest province, where political prisoners are instructed to repeat mantras about the greatness of the Chinese state and of President Xi Jinping. They write self-criticisms late into the night. Observant Muslims are forced to drink alcohol.

Persistent dissenters are allegedly subject to torture, including in a terrifying device known as a “tiger chair.” One recent academic study warnsthat anything between several hundred thousand and over a million residents of Xinjiang may have been sent to the camps. The Chinese government has repeatedly denied the existence of any reeducation camps, saying that the people of Xinjiang "live and work in peace and enjoy development and tranquillity.” It has also argued in the past that the “tiger chair” is “padded for comfort.”

Now, you could be outraged by these stories and demand, as some countries have done, that Chinese leaders respect the human rights of all their citizens. But fewer and fewer governments want to take the risk of offending China. And, after all, more than half the people of Xinjiang are Muslims – and who today would really go out on a limb and speak out against the “reeducation” of faithful Muslims? So in Xinjiang, as in Tibet, the world is likely to give China a pass.

But there’s another question that Chinese leaders, and the rest of us, should be asking. And that is: What does this repression mean for China’s ambitions in Central Asia and beyond?
After all, Xinjiang may today be a distant border province. But it occupies a very different position on the map of the world as Xi would remake it. The Silk Roads of the past went through what is now Xinjiang and, if the Belt and Road Initiative ever takes off, it is Xinjiang that will be its hub and heart. The province is intended to connect Central Asia, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and Siberia to the densely industrialized Chinese heartland.
China’s crackdown is meant at least in part to pacify the region, which has seen fluctuating waves of resentment and separatist sentiment over the years. But can a province so tightly controlled by the authorities become the crossroads of a continent’s trade?

Uighurs are now largely forbidden to travel abroad – and even those who leave the province for other parts of China are suspect. Visa requirements for visitors from places like Pakistan have been tightened. Fewer will visit; others have found that wives and children across the border have vanishedinto camps.
Trade is more than a few sealed trucks rolling up to a checkpoint set amid walls and barbed wire. Trade cannot happen without people – without the coming and going of traders, without bustling border cities and entrepots where deals are made and demand is weighed.

Perhaps China’s planners imagine that Xinjiang need be nothing but usefully located real estate, a barren land through which trains will thunder, shipping their products west. That is, however, unlikely to happen. For one, Xinjiang does not stand in isolation. Many of its people are part of a larger Central Asian cultural network. The case of an ethnically Kazakh Chinese woman who fled after working in one of the camps, for instance, has become a cause célèbre in Kazakhstan.

The government in Astana is already having to deal with increasing popular anger about the Xinjiang crackdown and is quietly complaining to China. The louder the discontent at home, the less polite its complaints will be. Do Chinese leaders imagine that the Belt and Road can be laid down without the cooperation of Central Asia’s governments or of its people?

Perhaps China imagines instead that continued mass settlement of the province by ethnically Han Chinese migrants from elsewhere in the country will solve the problem. The government has, after all, ensured that the province’s residency rules are the most liberal in China. But that will merely create a social tinderbox that no “smart” police state, such as is being piloted in Xinjiang’s cities, can truly control.

It’s not yet too late for China to realize its errors and to seek reconciliation with Xinjiang’s Uighurs. If the land-based economic corridors of Xi’s imagination are to become a reality, then China will need to build a peaceful and secure Xinjiang that’s integrated effectively with its neighbors. A police state full of brutal reeducation camps will merely provoke a terrifying backlash – and the Belt and Road will be among the casualties.

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## Latindancer

The Chinese are really screwing them at both ends, aren't they ? These unfortunate people can't live as they are, and can't escape.

...."They interrogated him about his work with   a tourist agency inviting Chinese to apply for Kazakh tourist   visas, which they claimed was a way to help Chinese Muslims   escape"....

Communist behaviour is just awful.

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## uncle junior

> But fewer and fewer governments want to take the risk of offending China. And


People being afraid to confront the ones in power.....lotta that going around these days

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## Latindancer

They must be wimps. A lot of China's strategy is bluff and bluster....sabre-rattling....brinksmanship.

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## tomcat

> A lot of China's strategy is bluff and bluster....sabre-rattling....brinksmanship


...until the tanks appear in the town square and the protesters are hunted down and shot...

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## cyrille

That's the thing about brinksmanship...kind of effective when you have a lengthy record of not giving a shit where the brink is.

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## Latindancer

They have never used brinksmanship with their own people. It's always been the heavy-handed use of power.

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## OhOh

> ...until the tanks appear in the town square and the protesters are hunted down and shot...


Nah, I don't thinks so.

They've learnt from the British, Germans, Jews and ameristanis. Just fence them off, stop any food, water (except for torture purposes) or power and they gradually disappear. If they get too uppity bomb them from their super planes, safe from the natives catapult stones and far from prying "investigative", free, western eyes.




> A lot of China's strategy is bluff and bluster....sabre-rattling....brinksmanship.


Learning fast eh, from another alleged civilised world leader.




> These unfortunate people can't live as they are, and can't escape.


Try getting through ameristani passport control without paying ones taxes.




> Communist behaviour is just awful.


The "free world's" however is wonderful eh? Better or worse, ask the new members of the "moderately prosperous societies" in Asia. Mostly run by dictators by all western accounts.

Compare them with the citizens of Europe, Australasia and ameristan. Who have been the actual winners in the last 20 years?

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## misskit

*Xinjiang Political ‘Re-Education Camps’ Treat Uyghurs ‘Infected by Religious Extremism’: CCP Youth League*_
An official Chinese Communist Party recording recently obtained by RFA’s Uyghur Service characterizes Uyghurs who have been sent for political “re-education” as “infected by an ideological illness”—not unlike a disease that must be treated at a hospital. The 12-minute Uyghur language audio recording issued in October 2017 offers a rare glimpse into Beijing’s justification for its network of political “re-education camps” used since April 2017 to jail or detain Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The XUAR’s Party Youth League recording, entitled ‘What Kind of Place is the Educational Transformation Center,’ was published Oct. 11, 2017 on the WeChat social media network by Talap/Tagdim [Request/Offer] Salon and addressed to Uyghur youth as part of a bid to assuage concerns over the camps, which credible reports suggest have held upwards of 1.1 million people, or 10-11 percent of the adult Muslim population of the XUAR. Aside from a brief mention in a recent article carried by state media, China's central government authorities have not publicly acknowledged the existence of the camps, and the number of inmates kept in each facility remains a closely guarded secret. The following are excerpts from the recording:_



In recent times, amid a growing heavy crackdown, a small number of people—particularly young people—have gone to re-education camps to study. However, their parents, friends and relatives, and the general public don’t understand the benefits of re-education, and as a result they are worried and fearful. So let us give answers to their questions and their concerns today.

Members of the public who have been chosen for re-education have been infected by an ideological illness. They have been infected with religious extremism and violent terrorist ideology, and therefore they must seek treatment from a hospital as an inpatient. In recent years, there have been violent incidents occurring in Xinjiang, one after another, instigated by the “three evil forces [of “terrorism,” “religious extremism,” and “separatism”], which has threatened the safety of people from all ethnic communities and caused serious damage and losses. These terrorists have one thing in common: they were infected by religious extremism and a violent terrorism disease.

The religious extremist ideology is a type of poisonous medicine which confuses the mind of the people. Once they are poisoned by it, some turn into extremists who no longer value even their own lives … If we do not eradicate religious extremism at its roots, the violent terrorist incidents will grow and spread all over like an incurable malignant tumor.

Although a certain number of people who have been indoctrinated with extremist ideology have not committed any crimes, they are already infected by the disease. There is always a risk that the illness will manifest itself at any moment, which would cause serious harm to the public. That is why they must be admitted to a re-education hospital in time to treat and cleanse the virus from their brain and restore their normal mind. We must be clear that going into a re-education hospital for treatment is not a way of forcibly arresting people and locking them up for punishment, it is an act that is part of a comprehensive rescue mission to save them.

In order to provide treatment to people who are infected with ideological illnesses and to ensure the effectiveness of the treatment, the Autonomous Regional Party Committee decided to set up re-education camps in all regions, organizing special staff to teach state and provincial laws, regulations, the party’s ethnic and religious policies, and various other guidelines. They mobilized the public to learn the common language [Mandarin Chinese], complete various technical training courses, and take part in cultural and sport activities, teaching them what is correct and incorrect … so they can clearly distinguish right from wrong … At the end of re-education, the infected members of the public return to a healthy ideological state of mind, which guarantees them the ability to live a beautiful happy life with their families.

‘Same as physical illnesses’

Ideological illnesses are the same as physical illnesses, in that they must be treated in time, and should never be ignored and allowed to become serious. Otherwise, later we will regret it, as it will be too late … Being infected by religious extremism and violent terrorist ideology and not seeking treatment is like being infected by a disease that has not been treated in time, or like taking toxic drugs … There is no guarantee that it will not trigger and affect you in the future. If people don’t attend re-education class because there is no one to take responsibility for the household chores, or if they choose to run away from re-education, that can be considered being very irresponsible to themselves, their families and society.

Families of those who have been taken for re-education may have concerns over whether they will be charged for re-education classes, provided with food, or if they will be uncomfortable during periods of cold weather, or punished. All these worries are unnecessary … If the trainees fail to achieve the desired results, they will continue classes free of charge until they are qualified and fit to leave … Citizens, please remain calm and relax, no one in the re-education camps will starve, be left in the cold, be punished, or be forced to work. On the contrary, they are given a rare, free chance of re-education in order to reform themselves.

Some people worry that once they have been through the re-education process, they will be classified as bad people, and that even after having worked hard to complete the re-education program they will be discriminated against and treated differently. In fact, this is an unnecessary concern. Just like people who have had an operation, and have taken medication before recovering from their illnesses, the public won’t see them as someone who is ill.

However, we must be cautious about one fact: having gone through re-education and recovered from the ideological disease doesn’t mean that one is permanently cured. We can only say that they are physically healthy, and there is no sign that the disease may return. After recovering from an illness, if one doesn’t exercise to strengthen the body and the immune system against disease, it could return worse than before. So, after completing the re-education process in the hospital and returning home … they must remain vigilant, empower themselves with the correct knowledge, strengthen their ideological studies, and actively attend various public activities to bolster their immune system against the influence of religious extremism and violent terrorism, and safeguard themselves from being infected once again, to prevent later regrets.

This has been an explanation of re-education and should alleviate the public’s anxiety. We hope that every youth thoroughly understands the harm of religious extremism and violent terrorism, strengthens their mental immune system against the virus, and returns to the great family of the Chinese nation to lead a healthy and happy life.

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/infected-08082018173807.html

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## Latindancer

> Citizens, please remain calm and relax, no one in the re-education camps will starve, be left in the cold, be punished, or be forced to work. On the contrary, they are given a rare, free chance of re-education in order to reform themselves.


The whole article  is the most extreme example of mendacious, fictiionalised nonsense created by the Mainland Chinese that I have ever seen.....it is just stunning in its blatant lies.

 But the part I quoted really takes the cake. Unbelievable !

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## sabang

Bit like Thailand then. "Reeducation" is the Asian way, and of course only for the good of the citizens.

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## misskit

*Tens of Thousands of Xinjiang’s Kuchar County Residents Held in Political ‘Re-Education Camps’*More than 45,000 residents of a mostly Uyghur-populated county in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) are being held in three main political “re-education camps,” according to a local official, who said the facilities are guarded by armed personnel.

Beginning in April 2017, Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas have been jailed or detained in political re-education camps throughout the XUAR, where members of the ethnic group have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.

A staffer at the Kuchar (in Chinese, Kuche) county police department in the XUAR’s Aksu (Akesu) prefecture recently told RFA’s Uyghur Service that three camps housing most of the county’s detainees are located in the Yengisher district of the county seat—about 10 kilometers (six miles) from Kuchar city center.

“I believe it is more than 45,000 … [or] slightly less than 10 percent [of the population],” the staffer said, speaking on condition of anonymity, when asked how many residents of Kuchar county are currently held in the camps.

No.3 Re-Education Camp—the largest of the three—holds detainees accused of “minor offenses,” he said, adding that the facility is mostly used to teach inmates Mandarin Chinese.

“[The camp holds] more than 10,000 [detainees], though it could be 15,000,” he said.

“The most serious offenders are sent to the No. 1 and No. 2 re-education camps … I have heard they also built a fourth camp, but no one has been sent there yet.”

The staffer told RFA that camp No. 1 holds “about 5,000 or 6,000” people who have been accused of listening to unsanctioned religious teachings, made the holy Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca or studied abroad in countries blacklisted by China’s government because of the threat of religious extremism.

Camp No. 2 holds “between 5,000 and 10,000” detainees, he said, without providing details about the alleged “offenses” committed by people interned at the facility.

The staffer was unable to provide an estimate of the number of people who are forced to attend “open re-education camps,” where students are permitted to return to their homes at night after daily indoctrination classes.

He said all four camps were accessible from downtown Kuchar via Hu Yang Road, through the village of Zhong Da Gou, and were well fortified.

“[No. 2 Re-Education Camp] was a prison and was expanded before being turned into a re-education camp—both No.1 and No. 2 were prisons originally,” the staffer said, while No. 3 camp had been “newly built.”

“They built the walls higher … more than three meters (10 feet),” he said of the camps.

“You can only see the second or third floors, and nothing below that, but there are armed guards on top of the buildings, inside the gates, and outside the gates.”

A staffer at Haniqatam township’s No. 7 village police station, in Kuchar county, recently told RFA that as many as 6,000 residents of the township have been held in re-education camps for as long as two years.

Camp network

An editorial in China’s official Global Times newspaper recently dismissed international coverage of the re-education camps in the XUAR, which it labeled “training institutes,” saying western media outlets were incorrectly referring to them as “detention” sites and “baselessly criticizing China’s human rights.”

Aside from the brief mention in the article, China's central government authorities have not publicly acknowledged the existence of political re-education camps in the XUAR, and the number of inmates kept in each facility remains a closely guarded secret. But local officials in many parts of the region have in RFA telephone interviews forthrightly described sending significant numbers of Uyghurs to the camps and even described overcrowding in some facilities.

Citing credible reports, U.S. lawmakers Marco Rubio and Chris Smith, who head the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China, said recently that as many as 500,000 to a million people are or have been detained in the re-education camps, calling it ”the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.”

Adrian Zenz, a lecturer in social research methods at the Germany-based European School of Culture and Theology, said the number “could be closer to 1.1 million, which equates to 10-11 percent of the adult Muslim population of the region.”

Last week, China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) and a partner NGO, Equal Rights Initiative, said they had found through interviews with people in the region that up to 3 million residents of the XUAR, especially ethnic Uyghurs, may have been detained in the political re-education camps or forced to attend “education sessions” for “de-radicalization” as of June this year.


https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018124248.html

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## tomcat

...more Uyghur harrassment: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-45147972

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## OhOh

You were never in N. Ireland at the time of the troubles then?

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## uncle junior

> You were never in N. Ireland at the time of the troubles then?


Becuz if the answer yes, this PRC ~Uighur situation becomes acceptable....

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## OhOh

> situation


Which one? 

Using the BBC video as examples:

If you mean being "forced" to walk through a metal detector in the street, where terrorists have used bombs on civilians, not understanding what foreigners are saying or not wanting to be videoed. I'm all for it. 

However you may mean something else, please clarify.

 ::chitown::

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## uncle junior

> Which one?


How many PRC-Uighur situations does this thread cover?

I was referring to the one you were referring to in your post about not having been to N Ireland

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## OhOh

[QUOTE=uncle junior;3808827]does this thread cover?[/QUOT]

The majority of posts in this thread are Mk's cut and pastes from ameristani funded and directed propaganda sites. 

So what of all the situations, which you suggest are "covered" in this thread, are you concerned about and why?

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## uncle junior

[QUOTE=OhOh;3808974]


> does this thread cover?[/QUOT]
> 
> The majority of posts in this thread are Mk's cut and pastes from ameristani funded and directed propaganda sites. 
> 
> So what of all the situations, which you suggest are "covered" in this thread, are you concerned about and why?


carry on......

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## misskit

*Despite Overwhelming Proof China Denies UN’s Claims that Over a Million People Held in Internment Camps*BEIJING – China rejected on Monday allegations raised by a U.N. panel that over a million Uighurs may be held in internment camps in the restive Xinjiang region, but said that some people “underwent re-education” after being deceived by extremists.


Hu Lianhe, deputy director general of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee, said that authorities in the far western Xinjiang region protected the full rights of all citizens equally.


China says that Xinjiang faces a serious threat from Islamist militants and separatists who plot attacks and stir up tensions between the mostly Muslim Uighur minority who call the region home and the ethnic Han Chinese majority.


“The argument that over a million people are detained in re-education centers is completely untrue,” Hu told the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on the second day of its regular review of China’s record.


“On freedom of religious belief, Xinjiang guarantees citizens freedom of religious belief and protects normal religious activities,” he said.


“Those deceived by religious extremism … shall be assisted by resettlement and re-education,” he added.




Gay McDougall, a panel member, said on Friday it had received many credible reports that 1 million ethnic Uighurs in China are held in what resembles a “massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy, a sort of no rights zone”.


“To say that they don’t violate rights of minorities does not prove anything. We have to more than a denial of allegations,” she told the Chinese delegation on Monday.


“I notice that you didn’t quite deny that these re-education or indoctrination programs don’t take place,” she added, seeking clarification on how many people undergo re-education.


Hu said China has clamped down on “extremist and terrorist crimes” in Xinjiang in accordance with the law, saying that there had been assassinations, explosions and poisonings there.


But, he said, it did not target any particular ethnic minority or seek ‘de-Islamisation” of the region.


Earlier on Monday, in the country’s first response to the U.N. criticism, a state-run newspaper said that massively stepped-up security in Xinjiang has helped prevent “great tragedy”.




Meanwhile, The Chinese authorities have been limiting access of human rights groups to the country. Police from Cambodia to France have capitulated to pressure from Chinese law enforcement or Party “discipline” officers and handed over allegedly corrupt fugitives without any semblance of due process.


Universities struggle with ferocious complaints from Chinese diplomats about whether the institutions may describe Taiwan as an independent country, or have the Dalai Lama as a commencement speaker.


The question for democracies or businesses isn’t whether to engage: it is how to engage in a principled manner. This means treating China like many governments treat US President Donald Trump when he makes outrageous statements or adopts retrograde policies. Democratic leaders condemn Trump’s remarks about “fake news” – but don’t condemn China for its censorship or propaganda.


They criticize Trump for his hostility towards the UN, but have nothing to say on China’s efforts to weaken the institution.
It is time for new standards to reverse these highly abnormal relationships with China. Forty years into China’s “reform era”, Beijing has made clear it’s not moving on democracy, a free press, or an independent legal system, though courageous people continue to push for these at considerable personal risk.


If powerful outside voices mindlessly engage, they not only stab these brave people in the back – they may also find themselves obliged to dance to the tune of a highly repressive government.


By Stephanie Nebehay, Sophie Richardson
Reuters, Aljazeera



https://www.chiangraitimes.com/despi...ent-camps.html

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## OhOh

Your "detention/re-education centre" looks like many factory sites all over Asia. Factory units, medical centre, school, accommodation blocks, offices and recreation/parking areas.

 I wonder how many "human rights groups" get to interview the detainees here:

----------


## Latindancer

I do wonder about the exact details of how they re-educate Uyghurs.

----------


## OhOh

> I do wonder about the exact details of how they re-educate Uyghurs.


All of them or just a very small proportion? If it is, as published, millions it will take years.

----------


## uncle junior

> I do wonder about the exact details of how they re-educate Uyghurs.



maybe along the line as when the BiB gently persuade a suspect to confess

----------


## Latindancer

Particularly Burmese

----------


## OhOh

> I do wonder about the exact details of how they re-educate Uyghurs.




How Xi Jinping tackled radicalism in Xinjiang

The scourge of extremism, which had hit  Xinjiang in 2009 and later in 2014 is now diminishing because of the  measures taken by the Central Government of China

S M Hali  May 12, 2018

_"Xinjiang is a province in Western China. It is the country’s largest  province, occupying 16 percent of China’s surface area, and has the  country’s largest population of Muslims. In the past, China’s eastern  provinces enjoyed greater opulence and a higher rate of development,  perhaps because they are closer to the coastal region and ports.  However, this disparity caused Xinjiang’s population to face a sense of  deprivation, which was manipulated by China’s detractors, who tried to  incite the Muslim population, ethnic Uighurs, into insurgency.
_
_President  Xi Jinping quelled the insurgency with a two pronged policy. Security  forces cracked down on the troublemakers with an iron hand, while  development projects with the inclusion of Uighurs ushered an era of  prosperity. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) or the New Silk Road,  which promises a new age of affluence, has Xinjiang as its focal point.  The flagship BRI project, the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)  terminates at Xinjiang’s ancient city of Kashgar, which was a major city  of the ancient Silk Road and has become BRI’s launching pad into  Central Asia and beyond._
_The steps taken by both the central  government and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to dispel a sense  of deprivation, promote conventions of religious beliefs and conduct an  era of harmony is remarkable.
_
_I have been visiting Xinjiang for  the past four decades and am a witness to its various stages of  development. From a sleepy backwater of the 1970s, Urumqi has become a  sprawling metropolis, with high-rise buildings, busy roads, marketplaces  and shopping malls. A network for underground Metro trains and  high-speed railways is reaching the final stages of completion.
_
_Currently  I am touring Xinjiang as a guest of the BRI to delve deep into its core  and feel the pulse of this massive project. A detailed tour of the  Xinjiang Islamic Institute and discussions with AdudulrekepTumniaz,  President of the Institute and deputy director of Xinjiang Islamic  Association was very reassuring. The Institute is 28 years old and has  came a long way. My previous visit was in 2011 and since then, a new  campus with modern class rooms, an impressive mosque, well equipped  library, cosy dormitories and state of the art sports facilities has  been completed in 2017, which can compete with any modern western  university.

__To combat radicalism,security forces  cracked down on the troublemakers with an iron hand, while development  projects with the inclusion of Uighurs ushered an era of prosperity

__The  Chinese constitution ensures freedom of religion and Islam is no  exception, however, western critics and detractors of China have been  spreading rumours about the practice of Islam being curtailed. Since  extremists have been distorting the tenets of Islam, quoting verses out  of context and leading the faithful astray with their particular brand  of religion to fulfil their heinous designs, the Islamic Institute has  picked up the cudgel to produce scholars and religious teachers who can  become Imams in various mosques and University Professors and teachers  as well as research scholars to guide the faithful and protect them from  extremism.
_
_The Bachelor’s Degree being conferred upon the Islamic  Scholars from the Institute — which numbers around 1200 per year — is  spread over five years. Imbibed with the knowledge of Islam, equipped  with the wherewithal to take up the responsibility of guiding others,  these graduates have an open mind and are well versed in technology  science, social studies and current international affairs to meet the  challenge head on.
_
_The scourge of extremism, which had  hit Xinjiang in 2009 and later in 2014 is now diminishing because of the  measures taken by the Central Government of China and the Xinjiang  Uyghur Autonomous Region are bearing fruit. Security is tight; vigilance  is efficient and more effective because the physical, financial and  moral well-being of the citizens is being guarded. More opportunities  for education, vocational training, employment opportunities and  religious freedom are producing healthy students. Young boys and girls  especially from the less developed and impoverished regions are being  afforded the opportunity to study in state of the art boarding schools,  where they are being provided quality education, mastery over arts,  sciences, languages and extracurricular activities at state expense to  complete high school and gain admission in inland institutions of higher  learning.
_
_Facilities for practicing religion are also being  enhanced. Modern and well equipped mosques, slaughter houses where halal  meat can be procured or the Eid-ul-Azha rituals practiced and support  in pilgrimage are paying rich dividends. The government is ensuring that  pilgrims for Hajj and Umrah are provided logistic support, while  spiritual education and respect for the rights of the faithful is  maintained. Medical facilities, which were redundant in Xinjiang once  upon a time, have now been established to a level which is  unprecedented. Traditional as well as conventional medicine is offered  to the urban as well as rural dwellers with the additional advantage of  telemedicine, on concessional or gratis basis.
_
_With such a heavy  investment, financially, spiritually and morally, there is no way the  detractors of China can lead the faithful astray any longer._
_The  writer is a retired Group Captain of PAF. He is a columnist, analyst  and TV talk show host, who has authored six books on current affairs,  including three on China"

https://dailytimes.com.pk/238763/how...m-in-xinjiang/
_

A different opinion to the RFA version, 40+ articles by MK,  postulated here. Can't she find anyone else other than BBC? Seems like a one trick operation. How high up the food chain does it go?

My only reservation is the author admits openly that:

 "_Currently  I am touring Xinjiang as a guest of the BRI to delve deep into its core  and feel the pulse of this massive project."

_Whether it influences his article I'll leave up to you to decide. Whether the institutions he discusses and their operations are facts or illusions I'll leave up to you to confirm or deny.

Whether the team at RFA/CIA/0.001% members/ameristani social comment forums/HM Governments mouthpiece BBC can disrupt his opinions being read by having their social media vassals stop him publishing, is yet to be determined. 

But then he is Asian, does an Asian's opinions matter?

----------


## misskit

*China Expels BuzzFeed Journalist Who Reported on Mass Detentions, Surveillance*China’s decision to effectively expel a BuzzFeed journalist who won a human rights award for her reporting on the mass incarceration of Uyghurs and other Muslims in “re-education” camps has refocused attention on an unfolding human rights crisis in its northwestern region of Xinjiang, a press freedom group has said.


The decision by China’s foreign ministry not to renew the visa of BuzzFeed's China bureau chief, Megha Rajagopalan, came after she carried out extensive investigative reporting into heavy surveillance measures in Xinjiang, and the use of huge camps to detain Uyghurs and other minority groups for “re-education,” the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a statement.


Rajagopalan wrote via her Twitter account: “In May, China's Foreign Ministry declined to issue me a new journalist visa,” she said. “They say this is a process thing; we are not totally clear why.”


“I also want to make clear that though I can't do it from inside China anymore; I'm not going to stop reporting on and speaking about state surveillance, repression and incarceration of millions of Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang,” she wrote.


Rajagopalan, who had covered Asia for BuzzFeed News since 2016, had won a 2018 Human Rights Press Award for her report on Xinjiang's heavy surveillance measures and re-education camps, the CPJ said.


"Denying a visa to BuzzFeed reporter Megha Rajagopalan is a transparent attempt to stifle news coverage of how China treats the [Uyghur] population of Xinjiang," the CPJ’s Asia program coordinator Steven Butler said in a statement on the group’s website.


"If Chinese authorities truly believe their insistence that they are not committing human rights violations in Xinjiang, they should open the door for more journalists to freely report on the issue,” Butler said.


Meanwhile, the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China (FCCC) called on ruling Chinese Communist Party officials to make public their reasons “for effectively ejecting a credentialed foreign journalist from China."



Others forced to leave


Rajagopalan is the latest in a string of outspoken foreign journalists to be forced to leave China by the authorities after covering “sensitive” topics.


In December 2015, China’s foreign ministry refused to renew the working visa of a French journalist who angered Beijing by writing an article critical of its policies in Xinjiang.


Ursula Gauthier, the Beijing-based correspondent for French news magazine L'Obs, had "flagrantly championed acts of terrorism and acts of cruelly killing innocents," the foreign ministry said.

Gauthier meanwhile said she had done no such thing.


Gauthier had suggested that a string of violent incidents in Xinjiang could be the result of oppressive policies, and questioned China's motives in expressing sympathy for the victims of the Nov. 13, 2015, attacks in Paris.


In May 2015, Qatar-based satellite channel Al Jazeera closed its English-language Beijing bureau after Chinese officials revoked its correspondent's visa and refused to allow a replacement journalist.


Melissa Chan, Al Jazeera English's China correspondent from 2007-2015, had covered numerous stories about the environment, social justice, labor rights, and human rights.


A survey carried out by the FCCC at the start of the year found that 40 percent of China-based journalists felt reporting conditions in 2017 had deteriorated from the year before, compared with 29 percent in the FCCC’s 2016 survey.


Reporting grew more difficult in many areas of China, but in particular Xinjiang, China’s westernmost region, the survey found.


It said 73 percent of respondents who traveled to Xinjiang in 2017 were told by officials and security agents that reporting was prohibited or restricted, compared with 42 percent in 2016, the group said in an annual report in January.


It said 15 percent of respondents said they encountered problems during the visa renewal process, compared with just six percent in the previous year, and twice the number of respondents said their problems were related to the content of their reporting.


Correspondents also reported higher levels of concern about surveillance and invasion of privacy, as well as greater pressure by overseas Chinese officials on media organization headquarters, it said.



'Orwellian police state called Xinjiang'


Earlier this month, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) expressed concerns over China’s mass internment of ethnic Uyghurs and restrictions on their religious freedom.


The panel said it was "deeply concerned" by reports that China “has turned [Xinjiang] into something that resembles a massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy” in the name of eradicating “religious extremism” and “maintaining social stability.”


Beginning in April 2017, Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas have been jailed or detained in political “re-education camps” throughout the region.


A recent editorial in the ruling party-affiliated Global Times dismissed international coverage of the Xinjiang re-education camps, which it labeled “training institutes,” saying western media outlets were incorrectly labeling them as “detention” sites and “baselessly criticizing China’s human rights.”


Aside from the brief mention in the article, China's central government authorities have not publicly acknowledged the existence of political re-education camps in Xinjiang, and the number of inmates kept in each facility remains a closely guarded secret.


But in interviews with RFA, local officials in many parts of the region have described sending significant numbers of Uyghurs to the camps and even described overcrowding in some facilities.


Dolkun Isa, the president of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) exile group, called Rajagopalan's visa denial "a shining example of how much China fears Western  media reporting on CCP's brutal rule in East Turkestan, especially the high-tech surveillance state it crated and the extrajudicial incarceration of one million Uyghurs."

"Western governments should make it clear to China that this is unacceptable and there will be  reciprocal consequences," he told RFA in an email.

"Western media should also make it clear to China that they will continue to shine a light on the Orwellian police state called Xinjiang," added Isa.



Reported by Pan Jiaqing for RFA’s Cantonese Service, by Xi Wang for the Mandarin Service, and by Alim Seytoff for the Uyghur Service. 


https://www.rfa.org/english/news/chi...018115500.html

----------


## OhOh

As we should all understand as a foreigner, were are accepted as guests until we're not. Visas can be cancelled/stopped on an immigration officers whim and forced to leave a country. Many countries have similar rules. 

Possibly even civilised western ones, with democratically elected governments to boot.

 :Smile:

----------


## tomcat

*Muslim Governments Silent as China Cracks Down on Uighurs
Bloomberg News
*by Peter Martin, Karen Leigh, Onur Ant, Archana Chaudhary, Thomas Kutty Abraham, Chris Kay, Yudith Ho, and Vivian Nereim

August 31, 2018, 4:00 AM



 Most nations maintain close economic, trade ties with Beijing UN expert says up to 1 million Muslims in re-education camps


Ethnic Uyghur men at a local market in Kashgar. Photographer: Kevin Frayer/Getty ImagesAs calls grow in the U.S. and Europe to pressure China to halt alleged human-rights abuses against its Muslim minority, Beijing has so far escaped any serious criticism from governments across the Islamic world.

Almost three weeks after a United Nations official cited credible reports that the country was holding as many as 1 million Turkic-speaking Uighurs in re-education camps, governments in Muslim-majority countries have issued no notable statements on the issue. The silence became more pronounced this week after a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers urged sanctions against senior Chinese officials.

We are hopeful that the State Department will seek addition opportunities to condemn these abuses while also undertaking robust diplomatic engagement with like-minded governments to further elevate this human rights crisis in international forums and multilateral institutions, lawmakers led by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey wrote Wednesday in a letter to Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. They joined European Union officials who have previously expressed concern about the camps in Xinjiang.

By contrast, the leaders of Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan havent released public statements on the clampdown. Neither has Saudi Arabia. Even Turkey, which has in the past offered favorable policies to Turkic-speaking groups and hosts a small Uighur population of its own, remained silent as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan grappled with an economic crisis.

*Trade Ties*

The split underscores how Chinas position as a key trading partner and aid provider to many Muslim-majority nations -- as well as its longstanding policy to avoid commenting on the internal affairs of other countries -- is now paying off. The alleged abuses are also occurring in one of Chinas most remote and heavily policed frontiers, making it hard to acquire first-hand evidence, such as photos and videos, that might sway public opinion in the Islamic world.


Chinese military police attending an anti-terrorist oath-taking rally in Hetian in Feb. 2017.

Photographer: AFP via Getty Images
China generally has friendly relations with most Muslim countries, mostly around trade, said Hassan Hassan, senior fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, a Washington think tank. The Muslim world is largely unaware of the situation in Xinjiang, he added. Its not covered almost at all in Arabic media, and even jihadis dont dwell on it as much as they do about other conflicts.
China officially denies problems in Xinjiang, a vast region the size of Alaska bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan thats home to some 10 million Uighurs. On Thursday, Beijing warned the U.S. lawmakers not to interfere in its internal affairs.

The policies and equal rights that Chinese minorities enjoy are far better than in the U.S., which has lot issues with racism and human rights protection, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a briefing in Beijing. The lawmakers should focus on issues at home instead of interfering in other countries internal politics, playing judges on human rights and casting blame, or even threatening to impose unreasonable sanctions, she said.
*Strike First*

The UNs Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said in a report released Thursday that estimates of the number of Xinjiang residents held in camps ranged from the tens of thousands to upwards of one million. The panel called for an immediate halt to the detentions, the release of those already held and an official investigation into allegations of racial and religious profiling.

Chinas clampdown has been fueled by President Xi Jinpings orders to strike first against Islamist extremism following deadly attacks in the region involving Uighurs, and reports that some members of the minority were fighting alongside terror groups in Syria. A Communist Party-run newspaper has rebuked criticism of the crackdown, arguing that it had prevented Xinjiang from becoming another Syria.


Rohingya boys play in Kutupalong camp, Coxs Bazar in Bangladesh on Aug. 28.

Photographer: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
The silence on Uighurs contrasts with outrage last year when some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fled clearance operations by the Myanmar military, which the UN has since likened to genocide. One big difference between the two cases: Myanmars economy is 180 times smaller than that of China, which is the top trading partner of 20 of the 57 member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
China accounts for about a 10th of Saudi Arabias oil exports and roughly a third of Irans, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. It is Malaysias top source of foreign investment. And it has ensured the flow of more than $60 billion in loans for China-Pakistan Economic Corridor infrastructure projects.
Muslim nations dont want to damage their relations with China, and consider China a potential ally against the West and the U.S., and therefore they are trying to stay silent, said Omer Kanat, chairman of the executive committee at the World Uyghur Congress, an overseas Uighur advocacy group.

Over the years, these governments have vocally opposed U.S. slights of Muslims, including President Donald Trumps 2017 ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries. Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif called it a great gift to extremists.

An expert testifying before a United Nations human rights panel on Aug. 10 cited reports that Beijing may be holding up to one million Uighurs in re-education camps. Bloomberg reported in January on the government conducting experiments with facial recognition technology in the region.
The governments of Turkey, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt did not respond to requests to comment for this story. Multiple phone calls to the OIC for comment were not answered.


Indonesian Muslims protest the treatment of Rohingya ethnic group in Myanmar, in Jakarta in Sept. 2017.

Photographer: Ed Wray/Getty Images
*Dangerous Spillover*

To be sure, maintaining trade ties isnt the only motivator. Some governments are loathe to draw global attention to their own shabby human rights records. Beijing has largely refrained from involving itself in conflicts in the Muslim world.
Those nations dont particularly respect human rights themselves, so its hard to imagine that they would jump at an opportunity to criticize China, said David Brophy, Senior Lecturer in Modern Chinese History at the University of Sydney.
Still, it could prove increasingly difficult to maintain their silence, as Chinas policies in Xinjiang spill across its borders.


Police officers stand guard in Kashgar, Xinjiang province.

Photographer: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
In Kazakhstan -- a neighboring economic partner key to Xis signature Belt and Road trade initiative -- an undocumented, ethnic-Kazakh Chinese citizen recently testified to being forced to teach in a camp before escaping. Kazakh authorities, risking Beijings anger, allowed her to remain.

The incident shows that the crackdown is starting to seep into Chinas foreign relations, said James Millward, a professor at Georgetown University and author of Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang.
What were seeing is the policy effects of a shift in philosophy with regard to cultural diversity and ethnic diversity in China, he said.

----------


## OhOh

> Majestically enthroned amid the vulgar herd


Care to reply to these points, my liege?




> As calls grow


From an amerstani financial source. Whose income is determined by government controlled rating agencies and government controlled social media "opinion".




> after a United Nations officia cites credible reportsl


One can imagine many "credible" reports being "incredible to others.




> governments in Muslim-majority countries have issued no notable statements on the issue.


One wonders who understands their people better, their own governments or western ones?




> a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers urged sanctions against senior Chinese officials.


Sanctions eh, how novel.




> international forums and multilateral institutions


ameristani doesn't do either.




> They joined European Union officials


Elected or not?




> The split underscores how Chinas position as a key trading partner and aid provider to many Muslim-majority nations -- as well as its longstanding policy to avoid commenting on the internal affairs of other countries -- is now paying off.


I suspect some are tired of being bombed, physically or financially.




> making it hard to acquire first-hand evidence, such as photos and videos,


So let's ask some tame experts for the numbers that make our assertions "credible".




> even jihadis dont dwell on it as much as they do about other conflicts.


Keeping their benefactors safe from public shame.




> The lawmakers should focus on issues at home instead of interfering in other countries internal politics, playing judges on human rights and casting blame, or even threatening to impose unreasonable sanctions, she said.


ameristan's only interaction, threats and actual bombing.




> estimates of the number of Xinjiang residents held in camps ranged from the tens of thousands to upwards of one million.


Are the "experts" at loggerheads with each other?




> to strike first against Islamist extremism following deadly attacks in the region involving Uighurs, and reports that some members of the minority were fighting alongside terror groups in Syria.


Or do an ameristan, fund the terroist whilst useful and then renage on promises, a much more lucrative option for it's politicians and MIC.




> Rohingya boys play in Kutupalong camp, Coxs Bazar in Bangladesh on Aug. 28.


Whereas of course back in Myanmar they all had seashore villas with Bangladeshi servants eh? 




> which the UN has since likened to genocide.


But not the millions forced to flee Syria by the ameristan and it's vassals, throat slitters




> Muslim nations dont want to damage their relations with China, and consider China a potential ally against the West and the U.S., and therefore they are trying to stay silent, said Omer Kanat, chairman of the executive committee at the World Uyghur Congress, an overseas Uighur advocacy group


We are to beleive government officials or religious leaders?




> An expert testifying before a United Nations human rights panel


Hopefully more aware than some experts here.




> Those nations dont particularly respect human rights themselves, so its hard to imagine that they would jump at an opportunity to criticize China, said David Brophy, Senior Lecturer in Modern Chinese History at the University of Sydney.


"Those nation", says a representative, dependent on confirming socially acceptable trends, of increasingly racist Oz. Pot calling kettle black?

 ::chitown::

----------


## harrybarracuda

"Re-education camps".

Must be 10 hours a day of watching cringeworthy Winnie the Pooh videos.

----------


## OhOh

*No, the UN Did Not Report China Has Massive Internment Camps for Uighur Muslims*

"_Media outlets from Reuters to The Intercept falsely claimed the  UN had condemned China for holding a million Uighurs in camps. The claim  is based on unsourced allegations by two independent commission  members, US-funded outfits and a shadowy opposition group.

__Numerous major media outlets, from Reuters to The Intercept, have  claimed that the United Nations has reports that the Chinese government  is holding as many as 1 million Uighur Muslims in internment camps.  But a close examination of these news stories, and of the evidence  behind them  or the lack thereof  demonstrates that the extraordinary  claim is simply not true.
_
_A spokesperson from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human  Rights (OHCHR) confirmed in a statement to the Grayzone that the  allegation of Chinese camps was not made by the United Nations, but  rather by a member of an independent committee that does not speak for  the UN as a whole. That member happened to be the only American on the  committee, and one with no background of scholarship or research on  China.
_
_In an email to the Grayzone Project, OHCHR spokesperson Julia  Gronnevet confirmed that the CERD was not representative of the UN as a  whole.
__
You are correct that the Committee on the Elimination of  Racial Discrimination is an independent body, Gronnevet wrote. Quoted  comments were made during public sessions of the Committee when members  were reviewing State parties._

Poor journalism or propaganda for the sheeple, you decide. Did any of the sources bother with the official UN press statement or blindly follow others without fact checking?

Much, much more here:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/no-the-un-did-not-report-china-has-massive-internment-camps-for-uighur-muslims/5652242

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/...23452&LangID=E

It appears, according to an official UN spokesxxx that all the MSM reports were fake. Many posters here continued to use the fake reporting and numbers as facts.
Looks like some here need to examine their prefered "sources" more closely.




> BEIJING  China rejected on Monday allegations  raised by a U.N. panel that over a million Uighurs may be held in  internment camps in the restive Xinjiang region, .....


Fake




> Chinas decision to effectively expel a BuzzFeed journalist who won a human rights award for her reporting on the mass incarceration of Uyghurs and other Muslims in re-education camps .....
> 
> ......came after she carried out extensive investigative reporting into heavy surveillance measures in Xinjiang, and the use of huge camps to detain Uyghurs and other minority groups for re-education,
> 
>   .......incarceration of millions of Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, she wrote.


Fake




> UN expert says up to 1 million Muslims in re-education camps


Fake




> Almost three weeks after a United Nations official cited credible reports that the country was holding as many as 1 million Turkic-speaking Uighurs in re-education camps,.....


Fake




> The UNs Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said in a report released Thursday that estimates of the number of Xinjiang residents held in camps ranged from the tens of thousands to upwards of one million. The panel called for an immediate halt to


Fake

----------


## harrybarracuda

> https://www.globalresearch.ca/no-the-un-did-not-report-china-has-massive-internment-camps-for-uighur-muslims/5652242
> 
> https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/...23452&LangID=E


Firstly, you're a fucking idiot posting bullshit from "globalresearch.ca" which is a known whackjob website.

Secondly, you're a fucking idiot posting a UN report that states:




> The Rapporteur reiterated the concern expressed in 2016 by the Committee against Torture about cases of torture, deaths in custody, arbitrary detention and disappearance of Tibetans, Uyghurs and Mongolians.  Would China impartially investigate officials implicated in such cases and bring them to justice?


Which clearly expresses the concerns the UN has about China's policies to try and stamp out any free expression or cultural identity.

You toadying sychophant.

Stop brown nosing the chinkies, you're making a prize arse of yourself.

----------


## misskit

^^FAKE. What a load of hog wash. 

First, what was reported from Reuters.

*U.N. says it has credible reports that China holds million Uighurs in secret camps*


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-c...-idUSKBN1KV1SU

Gay McDougall is a member of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. She works for the U.N.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inte...Discrimination

Check out the site. 

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CE...embership.aspx

Why do you reckon she’s shady? Looks to have good credentials to others. Very well respected lawyer.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_McDougall

https://www.americanbar.org/publicat...mcdougall.html

From your own link.

GAY MCDOUGALL, Committee Co-Rapporteur for China, raised concern about the numerous and credible reports that in the name of combatting “religious extremism” and maintaining “social stability”, the State party had turned the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region into something that resembled a massive internment camp shrouded in secrecy, a “no rights zone”, while members of the Xinjiang Uyghur minority, along with others who were identified as Muslim, were being treated as enemies of the State based on nothing more than their ethno-religious identity.  The Co-Rapporteur noted reports of mass detention of ethnic Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities, and estimates that upwards of a million people were being held in so-called counter-extremism centres and another two million had been forced into so-called “re-education camps” for political and cultural indoctrination.  All the detainees had their due process rights violated, while most had never been charged with an offense, tried in a court of law, or afforded an opportunity to challenge the legality of their detention.  

Reports further indicated, continued Ms. McDougal, that the State party was making even the most common-placed expressions of ethno-religious significance to Muslims into a penal offence, including daily greetings, possession of certain Halal products, and growing a full beard or wearing a full-face headscarf.  Recent amendments to the legal framework appeared designed to enable even greater control of Xinjiang Uyghur and other minority groups; the Criminal Law amendments, the National Security Law of 2015, the Counter-Terrorism Law of 2016, the Cybersecurity Law of 2017, and the Religious Affairs Regulations Law amended in 2018, established imprecise and too broad definitions on national security offences related to “terrorism” and “extremism” that enabled abusive, arbitrary and discriminative prosecution and conviction.  


Have you any proof Julie Gronnevet is the official spokesperson for the UN?

----------


## HermantheGerman

The Truth comes only from a communist politburo or a friendly Putin site.   :smiley laughing:

----------


## misskit

^^^^ Nearly forgot this.

Buzzfeed journalist denied new China visa following award-winning coverage of Xinjiang crackdown

Buzzfeed’s China bureau chief Megha Rajagopalan has been forced to leave China after her journalism visa application was denied by the authorities without explanation.


Rajagopalan had been covering Asia since 2012 and has reported extensively on the crackdown in Xinjiang, a western region of China populated by Muslim.



MORE
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/08/2...ang-crackdown/

AND 22nd Human Rights Press Awards winners | Human Rights Press Awards


The story which won the prize.

*This Is What A 21st-Century Police State Really Looks Like*Far from the booming metropolis of Beijing, China is building a sprawling system that combines dystopian technology and human policing. “It’s a kind of frontline laboratory for surveillance.”

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article...ere#.vu4zllx3p

----------


## harrybarracuda

> The Truth comes only from a communist politburo or a friendly Putin site.


Or Chinese state controlled media.

 :Smile:

----------


## harrybarracuda

> *No, the UN Did Not Report China Has ‘Massive Internment Camps’ for Uighur Muslims*


Writes a post that says the UN did not mention internment camps.

Includes a link where the UN mentions internment camps.




> The Co-Rapporteur noted reports of mass detention of ethnic Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities, and estimates that upwards of a million people were being held in so-called counter-extremism centres and another two million had been forced into so-called “re-education camps” for political and cultural indoctrination.


What a fucking bozo.

 :rofl:

----------


## HermantheGerman

Dear OhOh,

may I remind you:




> Ignorant savage, pick a topic you know something about and can argue  from a position of knowledge. Your statements here are childish.


Whenever you write about China, Communists, Putin, or some dictator that is farting right now PLEASE THNK TWICE ! Maybe even consider holding your breath until some real knowledge or common sense pops into your brain (might take years  :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic): ).

----------


## OhOh

Glad you all took the time to comment. Thanks.

----------


## harrybarracuda

> Glad you all took the time to comment. Thanks.


No, thank you for the comedy gold.

----------


## tomcat

> Glad you all took the time to comment.





> No, thank you for the comedy gold


...and all the virtual manure that makes our forum threads grow...

----------


## misskit

*Trump considering sanctions on China over Muslim detention camps*The Trump administration is weighing whether to slap sanctions on the Chinese government for detaining hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uighurs and other minority Muslims in internment camps, current and former American officials told the New York Times.


Why it matters: As the Trump administration battles China on trade, Beijing’s human rights violations in Xinjiang have largely been sidelined amid resistance from President Trump. A move to sanction officials over the issue would be one of the first times the administration has engaged China on human rights. Officials are also reportedly considering imposing limits on American sales of surveillance technology that Chinese security agencies and companies are using to surveil Uighurs in northwest China.

https://www.axios.com/tag/china/

----------


## OhOh

Pot calling kettle black.

How immature for a government's officers to engage in such childish behaviour.

I'm positive China and many other countries laugh as much as these two countries leaders out for a meal:

----------


## harrybarracuda

> Pot calling kettle black.
> 
> How immature for a government's officers to engage in such childish behaviour.
> 
> I'm positive China and many other countries laugh as much as these two countries leaders out for a meal:


My we are waffling tonight aren't we.

----------


## tomcat

> we are waffling tonight


...only need the chicken...

----------


## misskit

*Interview: 'The U.S. is Taking The Issue of The Concentration Camps Quite Seriously'*2018-09-11




Dolkun Isa (L), the president of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) and Omer Kanat, chairman of the WUC Executive Committee, at the White House in Washington, Sept. 10, 2018.WUC.







Dolkun Isa, the president of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) and Omer Kanat, chairman of the WUC Executive Committee, paid a brief visit to Washington on Monday, amid growing U.S. government concern for the Chinese government’s treatment of the roughly 11 million Uyghurs living in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The United Nations, human rights groups and independent experts estimate that China is holding a million Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas in political re-education camps in the XUAR. The camps, whose existence China has indirectly acknowledged while claiming they are vocational training facilities and disputing the numbers incarcerated, has prompted calls by U.S. lawmakers for targeted sanctions against select Chinese government officials. On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that The Trump administration is considering sanctions against Chinese senior officials and companies to punish Beijing's detention of Uyghurs and other minority Muslims in internment camps. Alim Seytoff, director of RFA’s Uyghur Service, spoke to the two leaders of the Munich-based WUC, which lobbies for the interests of Uyghurs, after their discussions at the White House about the situation in Xinjiang. Isa, 51, learned in July that his mother died on May 17 at the age of 78 in one of the camps. He refers to Xinjiang as East Turkestan, the Uyghurs’ preferred name for their homeland.



RFA: What is the purpose of your sudden trip to Washington?

Isa: I was invited to meet with high-level officials in the White House to discuss the latest situation in East Turkestan and address the questions they have.


RFA: Did you request the meeting with the White House or vice versa?

Isa: We did request meetings several times in the past. But this time I came to meet with them at their request.

RFA: So did you mostly discuss the detention of one million Uyghurs people in China’s political reeducation camps?

Isa: Yes, the most important discussion was about the detention of one million Uyghurs in China’s concentration camps. I am very pleased that the White House is deeply concerned with Uyghur detentions in the camps. I am deeply grateful for the concerns expressed by the White House, U.S. Congress and NGOs over the tragic situation of the Uyghur people. I did express our appreciation to the repeated expressions of concerns over the camps issue by Vice President (mike) Pence, Secretary of State (Mike) Pompeo and members of Congress. I am glad the U.S. is taking the issue of the concentration camps quite seriously.

RFA: Apparently, the U.S. is taking the lead in expressing its concerns over the detention of one million Uyghurs by the Chinese authorities. Like you stated, high-level U.S. officials including Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Pompeo and U.S. Ambassador to UN Nikki Haley raised this issue. Members of Congress held a hearing on this issue and penned two letters expressing their concerns and urging sanctions on Chinese officials.  You’ve been to the European Parliament and met with European officials a few times now. Are similar concerns are being expressed by European officials taking the cue from the American officials?

Isa:  The European officials are seriously interested in the issue of the camps and gravely concerned. Last week, I met with officials at the European Parliament and European Commission as well as officials from Belgium and Germany. We briefed them on the expressions of concern and actions taken by the U.S. administration and Congress. We requested that they take similar measures. We were also reassured by the officials of the European Parliament and European governments that they would raise this issue with their Chinese counterparts during bilateral dialogues and meetings. I am confident that there will be certain measures taken by the European Parliament and European Commission in the coming weeks.

RFA: At the moment, the U.S. government and the European governments are expressing serious concerns and putting pressure on China. But how do you see Turkey, and Arab and other Muslim countries that remain silent on this issue?

Isa: This is deeply disappointing. The reason is the Uyghur people in East Turkestan are a Turkic Muslim people. The vast majority of the Uyghur people have been detained in China’s concentration camps for religious reasons. Under such circumstances, the Muslim countries should take this issue more seriously and express more sympathy to us than Western nations. Sadly, we have not seen any interest or expression of concern over this issue by a single Muslim country. Not only have they kept their silence. But the painful truth is, as we have witnessed many times at the UN, some Muslim countries, like Pakistan, are not only turning a blind eye to the suffering of Uyghur Muslims, but they have consistently supported the Chinese government’s position. This is indeed disappointing.

RFA: The New York Times has reported that the U.S. is weighing sanctions on Chinese officials. What is your comment on this, if the U.S. 
indeed sanctions Chinese officials such as Chen Quanguo and Shohret Zakir?

Kanat: We have been doing everything to make this happen. These Chinese officials must be sanctioned under the Global Magnitsky Act for committing massive human rights violations against the Uyghur people.

RFA: Seven Chinese officials, including two Uyghurs--Shohret Zakir and Showket Imin--were identified for sanctions in the letter sent by Senator Marco Rubio along with 16 members of Congress to Secretary Pompeo and Secretary (Steven) Mnuchin. If sanctioned, this will be the first time in history that the U.S. and the West sanctions Uyghur officials, whom many Uyghurs consider to be turncoats, for doing the Chinese Communist Party's work.  What kind of message the sanction sends to other Uyghurs who support China's human rights violations against their own Uyghur people both inside and outside China?

Kanat: The message to such Uyghurs is clear: They will pay a price for cooperating with the Chinese government in violating the human rights of their own Uyghur people. This is symbolic punishment. But it will warn other Uyghurs not to participate in China’s repression of the Uyghur people.

RFA: If the U.S. government sanctions the seven Chinese officials, what kind of hope does it give to the Uyghur people?

Kanat: The hope it conveys to the Uyghur people is that humanity has not died and there are those who care about us and our suffering. The international community doesn't just watch our suffering. This will become a tremendous source of hope and light for the Uyghurs who live in total darkness at the moment, due to detentions in the concentration camps. It will give Uyghurs hope that there will be accountability for what China is doing to them. And the U.S. and the West will stand with us. They will not sacrifice us for their economic interests, as some do.


https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018160816.html

----------


## harrybarracuda

> *Interview: 'The U.S. is Taking The Issue of The Concentration Camps Quite Seriously'*


And in other news....

----------


## OhOh

> RFA: So did you mostly discuss the detention of one million Uyghurs people in China’s political reeducation camps?


You keep posting RFA claim of 1,000,000 detainees as a fact. Any proof to show us?




> sa: Yes, the most important discussion was about the detention of one million Uyghurs in China’s concentration camps


There it is again , a mention of an unproven number.




> the New York Times reported that The Trump administration is considering sanctions against Chinese senior officials and companies to punish Beijing's detention of Uyghurs and other minority Muslims in internment camps.


It appears the NYT and ameristani politicians have seen through the fake number. No mention of the concentration campseither RFA's editors slipping.




> I am glad the U.S. is taking the issue of the concentration camps quite seriously.


New label, now their "concentration camps". They will loose the UK, German, Israeli and ameristan vote. Too many skeletons in their own back yard.

Nobody's been bombed yet. It aint serious.




> Isa: The European officials are seriously interested in the issue of the camps and gravely concerned. ..............
> 
> We were also reassured by the officials of the European Parliament and European governments that they would raise this issue with their Chinese counterparts during bilateral dialogues and meetings.


Two glib nothing political statements from unnamed officials.




> The international community doesn't just watch our suffering


Oh yes it does all around the world every day. Some even invest their own reputations in keeping it going. There's a $, a shekel or a pound to me garnered.

----------


## harrybarracuda

When are you going to realise that your cretinous, pedantic waffling does not work?

 :rofl: 




> _The Co-Rapporteur noted reports of mass detention of ethnic Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities, and estimates that upwards of a million people were being held in so-called counter-extremism centres and another two million had been forced into so-called “re-education camps” for political and cultural indoctrination._


Remember that this bloke was your mate until you read it properly.

You arse.

----------


## OhOh

> The Co-Rapporteur


The reported source of this figure was a person appointed by ameristan to be their CERD representative. He was one of many Co-Rapporteurs, 18 in total, who "reported" to an independent committee at the UN. 

None of the other 17 made such claims.

Who, as stated by the official UN spokeswoman, was not a UN authorised person to make such dubious and unproven statements, on behalf of the UN.




> A spokesperson from the UN Office of the High  Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) confirmed in a statement to the  Grayzone that the allegation of Chinese “camps” was not made by the  United Nations, but rather by a member of an independent committee that  does not speak for the UN as a whole. That member happened to be the  only American on the committee, and one with no background of  scholarship or research on China.
> 
> In an email to the Grayzone Project, OHCHR spokesperson Julia Gronnevet  confirmed that the CERD was not representative of the UN as a whole.
> 
> “You are correct that the Committee on the Elimination of Racial  Discrimination is an independent body,” Gronnevet wrote. “Quoted  comments were made during public sessions of the Committee when members  were reviewing State parties.”


I'll stand with my post which confirms the official UN position.

----------


## harrybarracuda

OhOh: TD's version of the Fast Show's "Indecisive Dave".

 :rofl:

----------


## misskit

*Chinese Official: Muslim Detention Camps Are ‘Educational Centers’*In the wake of mass detentions of ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in China, the country defended the camps on Thursday and characterized them as “educational centers.”

“It is not mistreatment,” Li Xiaojun, director for publicity at the Bureau of Human Rights Affairs of the State Council Information Office, told reporters at the sidelines of the U.N. Human Rights Council session. 

“What China is doing is to establish professional training centers[.]” Li continued, saying that the detention of the ethnic minority was the “necessary way to deal with Islamic or religious extremism.”

“The West has failed in doing so, in dealing with religious Islamic extremism,” he said. “Look at Belgium, look at Paris, look at some other European countries. You have failed.” Reuters reports that Li also denied that China’s camps are anything like the work camps seen in “eastern European countries,” apparently referring to the Soviet Gulag camps during the Cold War. 

The Trump administration is reportedly considering sanctioning China over their treatment of the Uighurs.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/china-...tional-centers

----------


## harrybarracuda

> *Chinese Official: Muslim Detention Camps Are ‘Educational Centers’*
> 
> 
> In the wake of mass detentions of ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in China, the country defended the camps on Thursday and characterized them as “educational centers.”


I suppose when you're being starved and tortured, the knowledge that you're getting a good old fashioned Chinese brainwashing, er, education is of great comfort.

----------


## Latindancer

Harry,  they are "health centres" because they are not starving people....they are administering intermittent fasting, which as everyone knows, has great health benefits.

----------


## harrybarracuda

> Harry,  they are "health centres" because they are not starving people....they are administering intermittent fasting, which as everyone knows, has great health benefits.


It's funny, they say that here in the sandpit every Ramadhan, but they have to import extra food because they're all stuffing their fat faces all night long. Then they need to go on a diet afterwards.

----------


## Latindancer

Our seriously brain-damaged member has commented with a red on my last post :

-09-2018 09:13 PM  HuangLao 
    Thread:  (China's Mass Detention of Xinjiang's Ethnic Minorities Shows No Sign of Let-up)China's Mass Detention of Xinjiang's Ethnic Minorities Shows No Sign of Let-up 
 Fukwitted and ignorant Eurocentric illusionist....dumb cnut

But his brain is so scrambled that it's not worth trying to debate with him here.

----------


## tomcat

> But his brain is so scrambled that it's not worth trying to debate with him here


...ask FaRT: he loves to debate...

----------


## tomcat

China has silenced American academics for years. Now they’re pushing back.
By Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Editorial page editor
September 23 at 7:50 PM


When it comes to China, Americans are victims of an insidious kind of censorship that stunts the debate they hear and read in nearly invisible ways.
The censorship — or self-censorship — stems from fear.
Many academics who specialize in China fear that if they are critical, the Communist rulers will deny them a visa. If you are an anthropologist who needs to interview Chinese villagers, being banned from the country can end your career.

A professor who speaks honestly about human rights abuses may fear a rebuke, or worse, from university administrators, who in turn fear losing their satellite campus in China — or the lucrative flow of Chinese students to their school.
Even if you were willing to risk your own future, you might worry that candor would endanger your colleagues here or in China. Those working at think tanks and other nonprofits must make similar calculations every day.

The upshot is that America’s — and Australia’s, and Europe’s — leading experts on China often remain silent as its regime becomes ever more repressive. Newspaper articles are published without their perspective, op-eds go unwritten, conferences present an incomplete view.
Which is what makes the Xinjiang Initiative so striking — an unprecedented response to an unprecedented, yet little-noticed, assault on freedom.
President Xi Jinping has been narrowing the space for free expression for years. His regime has imprisoned and tortured lawyers, silenced reporters and professors, even kidnapped and jailed critics from outside China’s borders.

But the human rights violations taking place now in the western province of Xinjiang are, as Human Rights Watch said in a recent report, “of a scope and scale not seen in China since the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution.”

More than 1 million people, by reliable estimates, have been rounded up and put in prisons, detention centers or reeducation camps. They are Muslims of Turkic ethnicity, and the government’s goal seems to be to eradicate their religion and inculcate Communist fealty. “Within these secretive facilities, those held are forced to undergo political indoctrination for days, months, and even over a year,” Human Rights Watch said.
Outside the camps, meanwhile, people are subjected to unprecedented surveillance and control, including the compulsory collection of biometric data, such as voice samples and DNA, and assignment of “trustworthiness” grades. Uighurs abroad are harassed and often unable to communicate with relatives inside China. Families are broken up, children indoctrinated while their parents are locked away.

China denies all this — the camps are for “vocational education,” it says — but won’t let inspectors or reporters in. So news of what is likely one of the greatest crimes against humanity of this young century hardly registers.

Jerome Cohen and Kevin Carrico, China scholars at New York University and Australia’s Macquarie University, respectively, find this unacceptable. They drafted the Xinjiang Initiative, asking for a pledge to raise awareness of these events in every public forum. More than 100 China scholars signed on.
“Hundreds of thousands of people of Uyghur and Kazakh descent are being held indefinitely in extra-judicial internment camps in Xinjiang today,” the joint statement explains. “Prisoners are detained due to their ethnicity or Muslim faith, tearing apart families, destroying lives, and threatening culture. These are horrific developments that should have no place in the twenty-first century.

“The global response to these developments, however, has been muted. Many are still unaware even of the existence of these camps. Reporting on the situation is hindered by an information blockade by the Chinese state, which denies even the existence of any such camps. And those who stand up and speak out openly against these policies may face the wrath of a rising power that is determinedly hostile to criticism.”

You could be discouraged that the number of signers is yet only in the low three digits. You could be discouraged that one signer already has withdrawn his name. “I’m sure it’s too hot for him, and I’m sure his colleagues have asked him to withdraw it,” Cohen told me.
But the list is growing and already impressive: young and old, from multiple continents, respected scholars from top-flight schools.
What’s most striking about the list is that these are, in a very real sense, China’s friends: men and women who have devoted years and decades to learning the language and understanding the people, who wish nothing but the best for China.
When they and people like them do not participate in the debate, the field is left to shills with little credibility and to the most feverish apostles of deterring and controlling China’s rise.

If, with the Xinjiang Initiative, more of them engaged with the public, awareness of China’s crimes would rise. But as they shared their appreciation for the challenges of development and for China’s accomplishments, so would Americans’ understanding. In the long run, China would be so much better off.

----------


## OhOh

More sanctions then, seems the best way eh.

----------


## harrybarracuda

*The fate of estimated up to one million people is unknown and most of the detainees’ families have been kept in the dark.*

China has intensified its campaign of mass internment, intrusive surveillance, political indoctrination and forced cultural assimilation against the region’s Uighurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups.


Amnesty International has interviewed more than 100 people outside of China whose relatives in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) are still missing, as well as individuals who said they were tortured while in detention camps there.


The internment of predominantly Muslim ethnic groups in the XUAR intensified after highly restrictive and discriminatory “Regulations on De-extremification” were adopted in March 2017.


Open or even private displays of religious and cultural affiliation, including growing an “abnormal” beard, wearing a veil or headscarf, regular prayer, fasting or avoidance of alcohol, or possessing books or articles about Islam or Uighur culture can be considered “extremist” under the regulation.


Travel abroad for work or education, particularly to majority Muslim countries, or contact with people outside China are also major reasons for suspicion. Male, female; young, old; urban, rural, all are at risk of being detained.


The ubiquitous security checks that are now a routine part of daily life for all in the XUAR provide ample opportunity to search mobile phones for suspicious content or check people’s identities using facial recognition software.


Individuals might come under suspicion through routine monitoring of messages sent on social media apps like WeChat, which does not use end-to-end encryption. Use of alternative messaging apps with encryption, such as WhatsApp, can also be a cause for detention.


Syrlas Kalimkhan said he installed WhatsApp on his father’s phone and tested it by texting, “Hi, Dad.” Later, the police asked his father, Kalimkhan Aitkal, 53, a farmer, why he had WhatsApp on his phone. He was later sent to a “re-education camp”.


The authorities label the camps as centres for “transformation-through-education” but most people refer to them simply as “re-education camps”. Those sent to such camps are not put on trial, have no access to lawyers or right to challenge the decision. Individuals could be left to languish in detention for months, as it is the authorities who decide when an individual has been “transformed”. 


Kairat Samarkan was sent to a detention camp in October 2017, after he returned to the XUAR following a short visit to neighbouring Kazakhstan.


Kairat told Amnesty that he was hooded, made to wear shackles on his arms and legs and was forced to stand in a fixed position for 12 hours when first detained. There were nearly 6,000 people held in the same camp, where they were forced to sing political songs and study speeches of the Chinese Communist Party. They could not talk to each other and were forced to chant “Long live Xi Jinping” before meals. Kairat told Amnesty that his treatment drove him to attempt suicide just before his release.


Those who resist or fail to show enough progress face punishments ranging from verbal abuse to food deprivation, solitary confinement, beatings and use of restraints and stress positions. There have been reports of deaths inside the facilities, including suicides of those unable to bear the mistreatment.


The authorities justify the extreme measures as necessary to prevent religious “extremism” and “terrorist activities”, and to ensure “ethnic unity” and national security. While states do have the right and responsibility to prevent violent attacks, the measures deployed must be necessary and proportionate and as narrow and targeted as possible to address a specific threat. There is no plausible justification for mass detentions of members of a particular ethnic group or religion of the type witnessed in the XUAR.


“So-called ‘re-education camps’ are places of brainwashing, torture and punishment that hark back to the darkest hours of the Mao-era, when anyone suspected of not being loyal enough to the state or the Chinese Communist Party could end up in China’s notorious labour camps. Members of predominately Muslim ethnic minority groups are living in permanent fear for themselves and for their detained relatives,” said Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International’s East Asia Director.


For months, relatives of the missing kept their anguish to themselves. They hoped the loss of contact with loved ones back home would be temporary. They feared making things worse if they sought outside help, since the Chinese government views contact with relatives living abroad as suspect, and, in some cases, grounds for detention in “re-education camps”. Now, with no clear end in sight for their torment, more and more are willing to speak up.


Bota Kussaiyn, an ethnic Kazakh student studying at Moscow State University, last spoke with her father, Kussaiyn Sagymbai, over WeChat in November 2017. Originally from the XUAR, their family had re-settled in Kazakhstan in 2013.


Bota’s father had returned to China in late 2017 to visit a doctor, but the authorities confiscated his passport after he arrived in the XUAR. Bota subsequently learnt from relatives there that her father had been sent to a “re-education camp”.


Her relatives in the XUAR were so afraid that further contact might put them under suspicion that they stopped communicating with her after that.


Bota told Amnesty: “My father is an ordinary citizen. We were a happy family before he was detained. We laughed together. We can’t laugh any more, and we can’t sleep at night. We live in fear every day. It has done great harm to my mother. We don’t know where he is. We don’t even know if he’s still alive. I want to see my father again.”


Many relatives and friends abroad report that the situation is making them feel responsible and “guilty” for the fate of their relatives, because it seems to be precisely these overseas connections that in many cases are causing their loved ones in the XUAR to fall under suspicion. The authorities accuse them of having ties to outside groups the Chinese government alleges promote “extremist” religious views or plot “terrorist activity”. The real purpose, though, seems to be the enforcement of an information blackout about the current crackdown against ethnic minorities in the XUAR.


To avoid arousing such suspicion, Uighurs, Kazakhs and others inside the XUAR have reportedly been cutting all ties with friends and family living outside China. They warn acquaintances not to call and delete outside contacts from social media applications. Unable to get reliable information from home, many living abroad inevitably fear the worst.


https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/09/china-up-to-one-million-detained/

----------


## Neo

Watch from 15.00

----------


## OhOh

I hope this trend doesn't spread to the west, it would lead to more selective memory loss. 

The west would never allow social scoring, 24/7 monitoring of society, embracement without due process, people being murdered on the street for social subterfuge, being stripped of one's online presence............

Only in Asia eh? 

 ::chitown::

----------


## misskit

The Loving Heart Kindergarten in Hotan, in a 2018 photo


*Interview: ‘The Situation in Our Country is Beyond Inhumane’*Adil Abduqadir, an ethnic Uyghur living in exile, left his home in Hotan (in Chinese, Hetian) prefecture, in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), for Turkey with his wife in March last year to avoid a forced abortion because she was pregnant with their fifth child, in violation of the country’s “family planning policy.” A month later, authorities in the XUAR began jailing and detaining Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas in political “re-education camps” throughout the region, where members of the ethnic group have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule. When Abduqadir learned of the new policy in the XUAR, he chose not to return home, where he and his wife were likely to face persecution and arrest.

In a recent interview, Abduqadir told RFA’s Uyghur Service that since he left China, his mother was handed a 10-year jail sentence, his older brother was imprisoned for five and a half years, and his four other children were sent to Hotan’s so-called Loving Heart Kindergarten for Uyghur youth whose guardians have been detained, which they are not free to leave. He has since established a campaign to free his children and those of other Uyghurs in the XUAR, noting that mass incarcerations have made the destruction of families an all too common occurrence in the region.


INTERVIEW HERE. https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018134155.html

----------


## OhOh

> He has since established a campaign to free his children and those of other Uyghurs in the XUAR, noting that mass incarcerations have made the destruction of families an all too common occurrence in the region.


I wonder how much he, if he exists, earns from his campaign "donations" from the same paymasters as RFA.

Hopefully enough to support himself, his wife/wives and his 5 children. Possibly the Turkish government is spending the EU monies on him in protection of his families rights to live, breath, eat and breed. He may of course have crossed the border into Syria and joined the "moderate throat slitting terrorist" to learn useful skills.

I don't suppose you know if he has a fartbuk page one can "like" ?

----------


## misskit

^^ Lovely kindergarten picture above, eh OhOh? You reckon all the barbed wire was photoshopped?

----------


## OhOh

> Lovely kindergarten picture above, eh OhOh? You reckon all the barbed wire was photoshopped?


I have no reason to believe your photo is fake at all. Many building are protected from threat, inside or out, by many different types of security systems. Unfortunately barb wire fences meh, whatever next, so many photos could be chosen to illustrate how many countries utilise the stuff.

In no particular order:

Australia, Japan. Singapore, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Germany, France, UK, Belgium, Norway, Israel, ameristan, Maldives, Russia , Canada, Thailand ........................, name a country that doesn't?

But you believe China, based on one of eighteen UN rapporteurs,  who cites an unproven number, echoed in an ameristani funded and directed propaganda site, is in some way evil for using it.

Take an unbiased look at what and who you are putting on a pedestal, erected from the factually proven, centuries of horrific crimes, before you dare to point your blood soaked finger elsewhere. Demand your poster boys and girls stop their proven crimes. If you achieve that I will applaud you, unfortunately you are a modern day Nelson, blind to what your brain cannot be allowed or wish to see.

You are failing to convince me, an ignorant, old, uneducated man. How do you expect to convince the worlds intelligent people of whatever age or sex? You have ten fingers, spread your "news posts" equally around the world, highlight all the worlds problems, wherever they are caused. 

You may of course feel you already do.

----------


## misskit

> Australia, Japan. Singapore, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Germany, France, UK, Belgium, Norway, Israel, ameristan, Maldives, Russia , Canada, Thailand ........................, name a country that doesn't?


Please, show me a photo of a kindergarten in any of these countries with barbed wire and high walls, as though the kindergarten is a prison.

----------


## harrybarracuda

> I hope this trend doesn't spread to the west, it would lead to more selective memory loss. 
> 
> The west would never allow social scoring, 24/7 monitoring of society, embracement without due process, people being murdered on the street for social subterfuge, being stripped of one's online presence............
> 
> Only in Asia eh?


Yeah, if you could just remind me where Europe or America has a million people locked up in "re-education camps"....

----------


## OhOh

> countries with barbed wire and high walls,











> has a million people locked up


Where is your number coming from 'arry?

Guantanamo, Gaza, Greece, Turkey, France, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Italy, Afghanistan, Australia

----------


## harrybarracuda

You need to learn the difference between "re-educated" and "deported".

https://www.merriam-webster.com/

----------


## tomcat

...so, unable to find a kindergarten surrounded by walls and barbed wire, Uh-Oh decides to expand the discussion to something else entirely different...weak...

----------


## harrybarracuda

Attempted distraction is HoHo SOP.

----------


## OhOh

> You need to learn the difference


You need to stop expanding the topic. We, you and I, were discussing your claim of "a million people locked up". You have continued with the addition of some "deported" group, a redefinition of the topic under discussion. 

Currently you have not:

1. Confirmed the 1m detainees number
2. Shown any evidence of the harm of the "education camps"
3. Clarified your "education/deported" linkage.

It may be clear to you what you are trying to say, it's not to me.





> Uh-Oh decides to expand the discussion to something else entirely different...weak...


You may wish to ask MK why she illustrated her article regarding "education camps" with a picture of, in the written article, a non related school. MK decided to focus on a particular use. It is her who "expanded" the  discussion not I. Take your new point to her for clarification.

The discussion was, from my part - posts #142 and #144, on the the use of barbed wire by many people. The text of the article had nothing to do with the illustration or schools. MK's or whoever her source was, muddied the waters.

Unfortunately most pre-schools, infant, secondary and universities, along with hospitals and wedding sites and children's school buses, have been bombed into rubble by the crusader coalition in many countries. That of course makes finding one particular sort difficult. 

However the fact that Chinese officials still have preschools available to their citizens, suggest there is something to thank them for. By all means support the stance of whichever poster you wish, but direct your accusations of diversion and weakness, to the correct poster, which in this case is not me.

Are you suggesting that barbed wire is not used, world wide, to dissuade illegal entry, exit, vandalism and theft?







> Uh-Oh decides to expand the discussion to something else entirely different...weak...

----------


## harrybarracuda

> You need to stop expanding the topic. We, you and I, were discussing your claim of "a million people locked up". You have continued with the addition of some "deported" group, a redefinition of the topic under discussion.


Fuck off you lying little turd.

I specifically said




> Yeah, if you could just remind me where Europe or America has a million people locked up *in "re-education camps"*....


in response to which you go off on one of your imbecilic little tangents by posting pictures of prisons and refugee camps.

A pathetic attempt at trying to change the subject and misquoting me at the same time.

And then a feeble attempt at trying to blame me for pointing out your fucking idiocy.

Moronic even by your usual witless standards.

----------


## OhOh

As currently nobody, has defined or produced any evidence of what a "re-education camp", is one can assume what one wishes. 

Care to answer clearly, the three accusations you made which I listed in post #151?

Clarity is the key 'arry. Not your pathetic whinges reminiscent of a 6 year old girl.

----------


## tomcat

> Clarity is the key


...keep striving...

----------


## uncle junior

> As currently nobody, has defined or produced any evidence of what a "re-education camp", is one can assume what one wishes.



Plenty of info on the web about what's going on if you look for it.....





> Discipline was strictly enforced and punishment could be harsh. Bekali was kept in a locked room almost around the clock with eight other internees, who shared beds and a wretched toilet. Cameras were installed in toilets and even outhouses. Baths were rare, as was washing of hands and feet, which internees were told was equated with Islamic ablution.
> 
> Bekali and other former internees say the worst parts of the indoctrination program were forced repetition and self-criticism. Although students didn’t understand much of what was taught and the material bordered on the nonsensical to them, they were made to internalize it by repetition in sessions lasting two hours or longer.



*China’s mass indoctrination camps evoke Cultural Revolution*

https://www.apnews.com/6e151296fb194...ral-Revolution

----------


## tomcat

> if you look for it


...I don't think looking for opposing opinions is his strong point...

----------


## harrybarracuda

> As currently nobody, has defined or produced any evidence of what a "re-education camp", is one can assume what one wishes. 
> 
> Care to answer clearly, the three accusations you made which I listed in post #151?
> 
> Clarity is the key 'arry. Not your pathetic whinges reminiscent of a 6 year old girl.



Typical HoHo bullshit:

"I didn't see the evidence or I don't believe it, therefore there is no evidence".

You utter fucking muppet, you really are just a rather shabby little one trick pony.

 :rofl:

----------


## harrybarracuda

> ...I don't think looking for opposing opinions is his strong point...



Areslicking the chinkies is his strong point. That and fantasising about Putin.

He really is a spineless sycophant.

----------


## harrybarracuda

*Who are the Uyghurs and what is happening in Xinjiang?*Uyghurs are a Muslim Turkic-speaking ethnic minority in China. Uyghurs (also spelled Uighur — either way, pronounced WEE-gur) — about 10 million people — live mostly in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), the farthest west and most heavily Muslim jurisdiction under Beijing’s control. The total population of Xinjiang is around 22 million.After ethnic riots in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, in 2009 that left nearly 200 people dead — and following Uyghur-connected terrorist attacks in Beijing in 2013 and Kunming and Urumqi in 2014 — extreme measures have been taken to lock down Xinjiang and restrict the mobility and speech of the Uyghur population.Xinjiang is now a totalitarian police state of historic proportions — it is widely cited as one of the most heavily policed places in the world today. Public security budgets have skyrocketed and futuristic surveillance systems have been pioneered in the region. As a result, over 20 percent of all criminal arrests in China happens in Xinjiang, despite the fact that the region contains only 1.5 percent of the country’s population.The official justification for such extreme measures is “counterterrorism” and “social stability.” But human rights groups have long argued that the level of repression is excessive, counterproductive, and a human rights violation, as it effectively censures all expressions of Uyghur culture, even normal religious and linguistic traditions.Alarming reports of a mass internment system have come out in the past year. Adrian Zenz, a researcher at the European School of Culture and Theology in Korntal, Germany, revealed the scope of the internment campaign and documented that construction of the camps began in earnest in March 2017.In the camps, officials seek to brainwash prisoners to disavow Islam and pledge loyalty to the Communist Party, and torture those who refuse, eyewitnesses have said.Arbitrary detentions without charge or trial are the norm for prisoners in these camps, and ethnically Kazakh Muslims have been “disappeared” in large numbers along with Uyghurs. Common “crimes” are “viewing foreign websites, taking phone calls from relatives abroad, praying regularly or growing a beard.” The widespread use of arbitrary detention is also being used as a tool to force Uyghurs abroad into silence.Up to a million Muslims have been put in the camps in Xinjiang, according to “many numerous and credible reports,” a United Nations panel said in early August 2018. The panel also called Xinjiang a “no rights zone” based on the reported mass internment program.China has specifically denied that “re-education” camps exist, but this is semantics: Evidence continues to build of a network of centers for “transformation through education” (教育转化 jiàoyù zhuǎnhuà) or “counter-extremism education” (去极端化教育 qù jíduān huà jiàoyù) holding many hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang.“An entire culture is being criminalized,” scholars like Rian Thum are saying. Another scholar, James Millward, comments: “In Xinjiang, the definition of extremism has expanded so far as to incorporate virtually anything you do as a Muslim.”
https://supchina.com/2018/08/22/xinj...llion-muslims/

----------


## OhOh

> Plenty of info on the web


Plenty of unfounded, unproven "expert" opinions. As yet not factual proven investigations from a competent unbiased source.




> I don't think looking for opposing opinions is his strong point...


I do post many items regarding Western China unfortunately the content of them don't match some posters allegations. Many here post opposing positions here, there are examples in the thread.

Do you post anything on western empires and their vassals doing far worse crimes on innocent men, women and children around the world last century, the one before, today and tomorrow. No. Pick up the baton, no. Posting irrelivent nonsense, yes. You are a winner, a real hero, have a green.





> After ethnic riots in Xinjiangs capital, Urumqi, in 2009 that left nearly 200 people dead  and following Uyghur-connected terrorist attacks in Beijing in 2013 and Kunming and Urumqi in 2014  extreme measures have been taken to lock down Xinjiang and restrict the mobility and speech of the Uyghur population.


Appears to have been some violent terrorist uprisings  similar to many around the world.




> The official justification for such extreme measures is counterterrorism and social stability. But human rights groups have long argued that the level of repression is excessive, counterproductive, and a human rights violation,


A security clamp down which some believe excessive.




> Arbitrary detentions without charge or trial are the norm for prisoners in these camps, and ethnically Kazakh Muslims have been disappeared in large numbers along with Uyghurs. Common crimes are viewing foreign websites, taking phone calls from relatives abroad, praying regularly or growing a beard.


Similar "courts" and detention without trial camps appear to exist in western countries. Allegedly to be shut down but still open detaining many for decades and subjecting them to illegal torture.




> Up to a million Muslims have been put in the camps in Xinjiang, according to many numerous and credible reports, a United Nations panel said in early August 2018.


Fake number suggested, but not proven, by one of eighteen members of, not an official, UN panel.




> An entire culture is being criminalized, scholars like Rian Thum are saying. Another scholar, James Millward, comments: In Xinjiang, the definition of extremism has expanded so far as to incorporate virtually anything you do as a Muslim.





> Uyghurs are a Muslim Turkic-speaking  ethnic minority in China. Uyghurs (also spelled Uighur  either way,  pronounced WEE-gur)  about 10 million people  live mostly in Xinjiang  Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR),


Unproven hearsay. Allegedly the entire culture (10m) of which if we believe an unproven claim of "up to 1m"  so maybe 3 to 10%, hardly "an entire culture".

Students of all ages  are being given, as some claim, a free of costs - accommodation, food, lecture fees .......University course in Citizenship.

"One Uyghur man told the FT that they are political education centres,  which are just like a university, only you cannot leave."

https://supchina.com/2018/08/22/xinj...llion-muslims/

Have you looked at how Europe is stripping it's religious groups of the beliefs and customs lately?

This is your western inspired, standard war on terror, as started by two planes hitting buildings "unopposed" in ameristan. Subsequently violent wars have started in many countries. None of which have finished but in all creating millions of refugees in camps, call it what you find most appropriate, re-education, detention, concentration, as you have posted "it's an interpretation". Millions have been shot, tortured, maimed, made homeless, forcibly detained, exploited ........ but the western gravy train to the untouchables continues.

Clean clothes, food, accommodation and reciting a few slogans, whilst sitting on chairs, for 2 or 3 months and then a free bus ride home. Many Thais, men, women and children, go off to the local Wat for similar reasons. Should we consider them similarly?

It does not compare with the throat slitting, gassing, raping, slaughter, wrought onto innocent civilians by others and vassals for profit around the world. 

Clarity instead of unproven innuendo. But what's new with you guys and gal posting your "news stories".

Western empires good, China and it's partners bad. I'm inclined to suggest it's racism at it's worst.

 ::chitown::

----------


## misskit

Al Jazeera has a good report on the Uyghurs and shows why China is so determined to hold control of Xinjiang.

----------


## OhOh

^China is exceptional because it's press is government controlled! Nowhere else is this the case, care to name these "free" countries?

----------


## uncle junior

#hoho.ffs

----------


## tomcat

> Nowhere else is this the case, care to name these "free" countries?


...diversion alert!...

----------


## Neo

> Have you looked at how Europe is stripping it's religious groups of the beliefs and customs lately?


your counter argument throughout amounts to 'look at them, not at us' or 'unproven claims' .. pretty weak really

The thread is about Xinjiang, China and China is making no secret about its citizen credit device to maintain the status quo. 

In some way admirable that you are willing to defend Xi 4 Life.. but in the context of China alone and not of global historic crimes against humanity its really quite an absurd and vain stance you're taking. 

How about you put up a credible counter argument about Xingjian Uigher enjoying life, free to practice their religion, celebrate their culture, pursue their own business. I think it would be hard to find evidence to back that kind of unquestionable counter argument. 

 ::chitown::

----------


## OhOh

> ...diversion alert!...


Lazy retort from a poster with nothing to say.

Looking in the mirror does cause mental anguish to some, eh.




> Xingjian Uigher enjoying life, free to practice their religion, celebrate their culture, pursue their own business


Ask around, I have a reputation of amply illustrating and highlighting Chinas achievements. Unfortunately my efforts are awarded with accusations of arse licking and parroting propaganda. Rubbishing my posts is not attempted, blind obedience to unproven allegations is what's accepted by many here as knowledge. Cowards or laziness?

----------


## tomcat

> Cowards or laziness?


...not the only two options: common sense and no desire to divert/derail threads come to mind as alternatives...try one...

----------


## OhOh

> no desire to divert/derail threads


The thread is about China's unproven actions on a minority stating it is outside international norms. Without understanding and comparing what is considered the norm, as displayed around the world, it has no references to compare. As such the allegations bear no standard to be compared with.


Or are you stating these types of things do not occur elsewhere, as illustrated with your use of the phrase, "common sense", which implies everybody knows and accepts other countries do no such thing? Either on their own soil or in a vassals black sites. 

Unfortunately that bubble of accepted "common sense" was popped when the "black sites" were found and the evil acts committed in them are now "common knowledge", to all.

 ::chitown::

----------


## tomcat

...^there! that wasn't so hard, was it?... :rofl: ...

----------


## harrybarracuda

> ...not the only two options: common sense and no desire to divert/derail threads come to mind as alternatives...try one...


I'm afraid the forum chinky arselicker refuses to accept anything other than state controlled media.

And if that fails, off he goes a-waffling.

----------


## Neo

> Ask around, I have a reputation of amply illustrating and highlighting Chinas achievements. Unfortunately my efforts are awarded with accusations of arse licking and parroting propaganda. Rubbishing my posts is not attempted, blind obedience to unproven allegations is what's accepted by many here as knowledge. Cowards or laziness?


Which doesn't do anything to answer my request. 

Unproven doesn't mean it didn't happen. 
Proven, that a peer concensus agrees that an action happened. 

The overwhelming opinion at this time, based on news reports and first hand accounts, is that there is inhumane repression going on in the Xinjiang region, you can keep saying unproven until you are blue in the face, but unless you have a counter argument showing the opposite is true, based on news reports and first hand accounts then really you are simply talking out of your arse.

----------


## tomcat

> you are simply talking out of your arse


....*_cough_*...this is the obvious conclusion...

----------


## harrybarracuda

> Which doesn't do anything to answer my request. 
> 
> Unproven doesn't mean it didn't happen. 
> Proven, that a peer concensus agrees that an action happened. 
> 
> The overwhelming opinion at this time, based on news reports and first hand accounts, is that there is inhumane repression going on in the Xinjiang region, you can keep saying unproven until you are blue in the face, but unless you have a counter argument showing the opposite is true, based on news reports and first hand accounts then really you are simply talking out of your arse.


The reply will probably begin "But what about" and then drone on about how bad Hitler was or something.

----------


## Neo

^^ makes a change from droning on about Putin I guess  :Smile:

----------


## misskit

Let’s get Putin involved!




*Interview: ‘We Are Left Wandering in Fear in a Foreign Land’*Nebi Hajim and Nur Muhammet are Uyghurs from northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) who have conducted business in Russia’s capital Moscow for many years. Uyghurs working overseas have regularly experienced problems renewing their travel documents and have often been forced to return home since April 2017, when Chinese authorities began jailing or detaining members of the ethnic group accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas in political “re-education camps” throughout the XUAR. In many cases, those who travel back to the region are taken into custody within minutes of their arrival. Hajim and Muhammet recently spoke to RFA about how their situation in Moscow has changed amid China’s policy of mass arrests in the XUAR and the dangers of working abroad as a Uyghur with a Chinese passport.

RFA: What kind of difficulties are Uyghur businessmen facing in Russia these days?

Hajim: Currently we are unable to renew our passports, and the [Uyghur businessmen] in Central Asia are also facing the same situation. Many people’s passports have expired because the Chinese Embassy refused to renew them. [Chinese authorities] are asking people to return to the country. But if we choose to return home, we will be locked up in a prison straightaway and left to rot there.

RFA: We have heard that there used to be a significant number of Uyghurs involved in business in Moscow—many from Atush (in Chinese, Atushi) city [in the XUAR’s Kizilsu Kirghiz (Kezileisu Keerkezi) Autonomous Prefecture]—but the number has dwindled. Do you know what happened to those who returned home?

Hajim: All those who returned were arrested on arrival and taken to re-education camps or prison. There was a man named Memet Hajim who went back and was arrested at the airport on arrival. He also had a young cousin, his brother’s son, who was 19 or 20 years old. He went back in January this year and was also taken away straight from the airport on landing … This is a common scenario at the moment.

RFA: So if your passport has expired, will it be difficult for you to travel and do business?

Hajim: Yes, that is correct. We can’t travel anywhere … We are in an extremely difficult situation, as we Uyghurs now have no home to return to, no one to rely on, and we are left wandering in fear in a foreign land. Those whose passports have expired must hide them and tell the police lies when being approached and checked—it is impossible to travel because of the risk. That is how we manage each day. We Uyghurs are in a very vulnerable situation.

RFA: How many [Uyghur] businessmen are currently in Moscow?

Hajim: I think there may be around 10. There used to be 30 or 40 of us, and also quite a lot of students. But now not many are left. [The Chinese authorities] have created such an environment of fear everywhere. People are either being taken away or “disappeared.”

RFA: Why are people returning home?

Hajim: Memet Hajim’s brother said he had people who would “protect” his son when he returned, but despite arriving at the airport with a Uyghur policeman, his son was arrested on landing and taken away. Memet Hajim said that as his family was never involved in inappropriate matters, they should be fine, but he was also arrested and taken away. There are many people who have been arrested upon landing at the airport after arriving from [Kyrgyzstan’s capital] Bishkek and [Kazakhstan’s largest metropolis] Almaty.

RFA: Do you know any cases in which the family members, parents, and siblings have been taken hostage by the authorities as a way of pressuring and forcing people living abroad to return to China?

Hajim: There are plenty of such cases—most of our family members are locked up. Many households have no one left. Many houses are padlocked from the outside.

RFA: This must have badly affected your business.

Hajim: Yes, every aspect of our lives has been ruined. Our family, children, finances—everything! I don’t know if this is a test from Allah, but we are being bullied and terribly mistreated.

‘We miscalculated’

RFA: We have heard that there are many Uyghur businessmen who have been arrested on their return to the XUAR. Do you know any of their names?

Muhammet: There was a man called Muhemmetjan who was interned. As far as I know, there are at least three businessmen who were arrested at the airport on arrival after flying from Moscow.

RFA: What are their names?

Muhammet: Muhemet Ablet, Ismetulla Ablimit, who is 24 or 25, and Yusupjan, who is 19 years old.

RFA: They were all arrested at the airport?

Muhammet: Yes. Having learned that Muhemet Ablet and Yusupjan were arrested on arrival at the Urumqi airport, Ismetulla Ablimit took a flight from Moscow to Beijing, as we thought that might be the safest option for him. However, he was also arrested on arrival at the Beijing airport.

RFA: What about the 19-year-old man?

Muhammet: He is Muhemet Ablet’s nephew. We tried to stop him from going back, as we knew from previous cases that he was at risk of being incarcerated, but his father insisted that if he didn’t return it would cause serious consequences for his other children, who are attending school.

RFA: Did he fly to Urumqi?

Muhammet: Yes, and he was arrested on landing. His father was also arrested and was taken to Atush.

RFA: Do you know any other people who were arrested after returning home?

Muhammet: I heard there have been many similar cases [of people returning from] elsewhere, but I only know the names of those who returned from Moscow. There aren’t many Uyghur businessmen here now … Almost everybody’s passports have expired, but when they go to the Chinese Embassy for an extension, they are refused and told they must return to China to “sort things out.” In other words, we must return so they can incarcerate us.

These are very complicated matters—[the Chinese government’s] policies towards our people have always been treacherous.

However, we miscalculated in thinking that we [businessmen] wouldn’t be their target. Now they have exposed their true intentions, and they are arresting people indiscriminately, whether they are loyal agents [of the ruling Communist Party] or traitors.


https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018171953.html

----------


## tomcat

*The Architect of China's Muslim Camps Is a Rising Star Under Xi
Bloomberg News*

If one individual sums up the values gap between a rising China and the West, it may well be Chen Quanguo.

The most senior Communist Party official in the far western region of Xinjiang is the architect behind a crackdown against Muslim minority Uighurs. The United Nations says the campaign has placed as many as 1 million of them -- roughly a tenth of the territory’s population -- in “re-education camps.”

The European Union has condemned the mass detentions and U.S. lawmakers have called for sanctions on Chen and other top Chinese officials, threatening to exacerbate tensions already roiled by an escalating trade war. Senator Marco Rubio described the reports out of Xinjiang as “like a horrible movie.”

But in China, Chen has been a rising star. His actions in Xinjiang, along with demonstrations of loyalty to President Xi Jinping, won him a promotion last year to the Communist Party’s powerful Politburo -- making him one of China’s 25 most powerful officials. In 2023, the 62-year-old Chen may be considered for a spot on its supreme Standing Committee, which has seven members.

Chen’s ascendance is bigger than one man. It’s fueling concern among Western governments about whether Xinjiang is being used to test a new model of authoritarian rule that could transform the way the country is governed, and potentially be exported around the region. It risks a new front to growing U.S.-China tensions that already span trade, cyber-security, and a battle for influence across much of Asia-Pacific as Xi seeks to make his nation a global superpower by 2050.

Any U.S. move to sanction Chen would stoke fears in China of a foreign plot to undercut its sovereignty in a region it has struggled to control, a sensitive subject for a party persistently worried about independence movements in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Tibet. More than any of China’s top leaders currently in power, Chen has been at the forefront of China’s efforts to subdue those restive regions.


The old town of Kashgar in Xinjiang.
Photographer: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

“What we have is a clash of values,” said James Leibold, a senior lecturer at La Trobe University in Melbourne. “The policies that have been enacted under his watch in Xinjiang are the leading edge of a far more heavy-handed coercive form of Chinese governance that some in the West are starting to realize could have big consequences for China’s position in the world, as well as China’s relationship with the liberal West.”
*
Self-Made Man*

Within the Communist Party, Chen amounts to a self-made man. Unlike Xi, whose father was a senior revolutionary under Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, Chen had no known family connections to help him climb through the ranks. Relatively little has been written about him compared with China’s other top leaders, with only scraps of information appearing on party websites in Hebei, Tibet and Xinjiang.


People carry a Communist Party flag past a billboard of Xi Jinping in Kashgar, Xinjiang.
Photographer: Kevin Frayer/Bloomberg

Chen grew up in the inland province of Henan around the time of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, which saw almost one in eight adults in his prefecture die of starvation, beatings or suicide. He joined the military after turning 18, eventually became a Communist Party member and attended college.
Though Chen graduated when China was opening up to the world, his first job out of college saw him join a rural commune in Henan, beginning a nearly four-decade journey from lowly apparatchik to Politburo member. While rising through the ranks, he served at one point under Li Keqiang, China’s current premier.
*
‘Darkness to Light’*

Chen received his big break in 2011, when he was appointed as the party’s top official in Tibet -- one of the only places in China where foreign diplomats and journalists need permission to travel. It was a prestigious appointment: Hu Jintao had headed the region about a decade before he became president.
At the time Tibet was still reeling from an outbreak of violence against Beijing’s rule. Chen gave speeches celebrating the Communist Party’s “peaceful liberation” of Tibet, saying its leadership had taken the region “from darkness to light.”

Chen then rolled out a set of policies that would establish him as Beijing’s point man for quelling ethnic unrest. He told the cadres that social stability was their “first responsibility,” instructed them to live in Tibetan villages and assigned party officials to Buddhist temples. Buddhism in Tibet, Chen said, should be adapted to “socialist civilization.” Temples were ordered to display Chinese flags and images of Communist Party leaders.



A Chinese flag flies in a village in Tibet.
Photographer: Wang He/Getty Images

By 2015, Chen stationed some 100,000 cadres in Tibetan villages and more than 1,700 temples had established party organizations, according to state media. Between 2011 and 2016, the Tibetan government advertised for 12,313 police-related positions -- more than four times as many positions as the preceding five years combined, according to research by Leibold and scholar Adrian Zenz.
Meng Jianzhu, head of China’s security apparatus during Chen’s time in Tibet, described it as a “leading example for the whole country” in “stability maintenance.”

Chen also kept a close eye on power shifts in Beijing. In February 2016, he publicly hailed Xi as China’s “core” leader months before his title was made official, and has described Xi as a “wise leader” with a “magnificent plan” for China. Members of Chen’s delegation to China’s national legislative sessions that year wore lapel pins emblazoned with Xi’s portrait -- the type of adulation common during Mao’s reign of personality.


Delegates wear lapel pins with Xi’s portrait in Beijing on March 3, 2016.
Photographer: Andy Wong/AP

As Chen clamped down on dissent in Tibet, Xi had a problem in Xinjiang -- a region with some 10 million Turkic-speaking Uighurs where Beijing has long struggled to enforce its rule. They have chafed under Chinese authority, seen by a rise in terrorist attacks and ethnic violence beginning in 2009.

Xinjiang also sits at the center of Xi’s signature Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, which has promised more than $100 billion to reconstruct ancient trading routes from China to Eurasia. Xi needed it under firm control, and in August 2016 he put Chen in charge of the region to implement a policy to “strike first” against domestic terrorism and unrest.

Chen immediately set about replicating the system that brought him success in Tibet. He sent Communist Party officials to Uighur villages, created a network of checkpoints and facial-recognition cameras, and shuttered mosques in an effort to “Sinify” Islam in the region. According to one Chinese-language profile, Chen drilled Xinjiang’s security forces using a technique perfected in Tibet: timing police to the second on responding to emergency calls.


Police patrol a night market in Kashgar, Xinjiang.
Photographer: Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images

Most controversially, Chen set up the mass re-education camps that have sparked outcry in the U.S. and Europe, as well as barbs from U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. A fax to Xinjiang’s publicity department asking about the camps wasn’t immediately answered.

Chen is the only person ever to have served as both party boss of both Xinjiang and Tibet, according to domestic media reports. His dual strategy of tough security measures and reeducation are designed to “take the ethnicity out of the people and lock them down,” said James Millward, a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

In Xinjiang Chen “came in and he was highly positioned in the party and was given a mandate to do what he wanted to do and tons of funding to do it,” Millward said. “He clearly has Xi’s support to a remarkable degree.”

— With assistance by Peter Martin

----------


## OhOh

QUOTE=Neo;3831024]Unproven doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Proven, that a peer concensus agrees that an action happened.

The overwhelming opinion at this time, based on news reports and first  hand accounts, is that there is inhumane repression going on in the  Xinjiang region, you can keep saying unproven until you are blue in the  face, but unless you have a counter argument showing the opposite is  true, based on news reports and first hand accounts then really you are  simply talking out of your arse. [/QUOTE]

My understanding of basic legal rights is that the accuser has to prove and gain acceptance by their peers, in a court of law, of their allegations. 

Possible scenarios are tested, juries are requested to deliver a considered verdict based on the proffered evidence.

If they fail the accused is released and their reputation is unsullied.  If they succeed the accused is sentenced by the judge according to the  severity of the crime as laid down in a tariff.

You "overwhelming opinion" has not been proven anywhere. Are you suggesting that if one does a search of the number of "articles" available on the internet, place the articles into piles - those that support a viewpoint and those that don't and the pile with the most articles, ,it becomes a internet fact and hence "overwhelming opinion" leading to a legal ruling?

As I have already posted even if I do present alternate "articles" that doesn't necessarily make them facts. By your definition that by posting "articles based on news reports and first hand accounts" one, from whichever viewpoint, is "talking out one's arse".




> Let’s get Putin involved!


What has the Russian President to do with Chinese citizens being allegedly arrested by Chinese authorities in China? 

Have your ameristani government purveyors of propaganda,  inquired with the Chinese authorities to ascertain what they are accused of, what was the results of their trial was and where they are being held?

As many here seem to hold, just except your unproven allegations once again.

 ::chitown::

----------


## tomcat

...^serpentine diversion alert!...

----------


## harrybarracuda

> My understanding of basic legal rights is that the accuser has to prove and gain acceptance by their peers, in a court of law, of their allegations. 
> 
> Possible scenarios are tested, juries are requested to deliver a considered verdict based on the proffered evidence.
> 
> If they fail the accused is released and their reputation is unsullied.  If they succeed the accused is sentenced by the judge according to the  severity of the crime as laid down in a tariff.
> 
> You "overwhelming opinion" has not been proven anywhere. Are you suggesting that if one does a search of the number of "articles" available on the internet, place the articles into piles - those that support a viewpoint and those that don't and the pile with the most articles, ,it becomes a internet fact and hence "overwhelming opinion" leading to a legal ruling?
> 
> As I have already posted even if I do present alternate "articles" that doesn't necessarily make them facts. By your definition that by posting "articles based on news reports and first hand accounts" one, from whichever viewpoint, is "talking out one's arse".
> ...


Translation:

You must only believe Big Brother.

China only tells the truth.

Although in reality, OhOh is a gullible moron.

----------


## Neo

FFS even China is admitting the use of these 're-education' camps.

----------


## harrybarracuda

> FFS even China is admitting the use of these 're-education' camps.


That will have him scrabbling for the China Daily editorials.

 :Smile:

----------


## OhOh

> That will have him scrabbling for the China Daily editorials.


Here are links to two articles. One from Reuters and the second from The print, an Indian publisher. Both express the view that Tibet has florished un the Chinese but lament the passing of the idylic Buddhist state of sprirtual leaders, slavery, poor health, education and opportunity. They also mention of the changes in the last decades.

It depends what you wish for the citizens of China, rural, destitute, uneducated, slaves or progress on so many levels. As we are all aware the intrusion in private affairs are being expanded worldwide. It is the way of life for many.

Modernising Tibet masks deep contradictions

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-c...6652KU20100708

Time has come to acknowledge that Tibet has vastly improved under Chinese rule

https://theprint.in/opinion/time-has-come-to-acknowledge-that-tibet-has-vastly-improved-under-chinese-rule/97172/

Lastly for 'arry a recent article:

*Tibet expo yields fruitful achievements*

Tibet expo yields fruitful achievements - EUROPE - Chinadaily.com.cn

----------


## uncle junior

^yeah, so how is the the Han practicing cultural genocide in Tibet and Xinjiang better than the US doing it across  North America?

Same game different players.




> The influx of Hans, however, is one of the great sources of tension in Tibet. Many Tibetans resent their presence, saying they do not bother to learn the language and dominate the region’s economy at the expense of the native population.
> That is a familiar story to one unemployed graduate of a traditional medicine school. While fashionably dressed and able to speak the fluent Mandarin he learned at school, China’s largesse in Tibet has not been enough to win him a job.

----------


## tomcat

> That will have him scrabbling for the China Daily editorials.





> Tibet expo yields fruitful achievements - EUROPE - Chinadaily.com.cn


... :rofl: ...

----------


## harrybarracuda

The link from Reuters does more than "lament the passing of Buddhist state", etc.

You really should try and read past the first line, and get a dictionary for the big words.

You look like a fucking spoon fed chinky stooge, you idiot.




> *The unrest sparked waves of protest across Tibetan areas, which more than two years on has failed to subside despite a heavy military and police presence and harsh punishment for those who question Beijing’s authority.*
> The security belies China’s claims to have won over Tibetans.
> “To this day, two years later,* they still need to use military and police forces to control the situation. Does it sound like they’ve won the hearts of the people?”* asked prominent Tibetan blogger Woeser.




As for the opinion piece from the senile wobbly, it isn't worth the paper it's written on.

----------


## misskit

*Xinjiang Authorities Secretly Transferring Uyghur Detainees to Jails Throughout China*Authorities in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) are secretly transferring Uyghur detainees to prisons in Heilongjiang province and other areas throughout the country to address an “overflow” in the region’s overcrowded political “re-education camps,” according to officials.

Beginning in April 2017, Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas have been jailed or detained in re-education camps throughout the XUAR, where members of the ethnic group have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.

Sources say detainees face rough treatment at the hands of their overseers in the camps and endure poor diets and unhygienic conditions in the often overcrowded facilities.

While investigating claims from members of the Uyghur exile community, official sources in Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) prefecture’s Kona Sheher (Shufu) county confirmed to RFA’s Uyghur Service that authorities have been moving Uyghurs from detention centers in the XUAR to prisons in other parts of China.

“Based on the seriousness of their crime, inmates are being transferred to other major prisons in the region and also to inner China,” an officer at the police department in Kona Sheher’s Tashmiliq township told RFA, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“I think they are being transferred to inner China because they can be educated better there, and another reason is that since there are too many prisoners here and we are experiencing an overflow of inmates.”

The officer said that authorities began relocating Uyghur inmates to other parts of China at “the beginning of this year.”

“We have a political officer named Najmidin Bedelhaji who took some inmates to a Chinese city last month, but most of the time a unit of the Public Security Bureau escorts them there,” he said.

“Yasin Abla, the deputy chief of the county police department, and the local head of the Public Security Bureau, is the person in charge of carrying out the transfers.”

The prisoner transfers add another layer of opacity to extrajudicial detention in the XUAR, where family members are rarely provided with information about why their loved ones are arrested and where they are held.


Tailai Prison

Among the facilities that Uyghur detainees have been taken to is a prison with a maximum capacity of 4,300 inmates in northeast China’s Heilongjiang province’s Tailai county, where officials confirmed a transfer had occurred in recent weeks.

When asked how many detainees were transferred to Tailai Prison, an official with the county Political Consultative Conference told RFA, “I don’t know the exact number,” but said they had been sent there “around one month ago,” citing information he had received from local residents.

A secretary at the Tailai County Government office, who gave his name as Zhao, also said he was aware that Uyghur detainees had been sent to the county prison, but was unsure of how many.

“A part of the group came in a week ago,” he said, before referring further questions to Tailai Prison officials.

A Han Chinese resident of Tailai county told RFA the Uyghur detainees were sent to the local prison as part of a “prisoner exchange.”

“The prisoners from Xinjiang were transferred to our county prison, and the prisoners in our prison were sent to Xinjiang,” said the resident, who asked to remain unnamed.

“It seems the Uyghur prisoners were removed to prevent unrest in Xinjiang. As a result, the prison guards [here] are demanding a pay raise, citing the risks they now face at their work.”

According to the resident, Tailai Prison normally interns prisoners who have been sentenced to 15 years or more in jail for serious offenses.

“I believe the prisoner swap has been completed,” she said, adding that she had learned about the transfer from the family members of guards at Tailai Prison.

“The People's Armed Police chartered trains and delivered the prisoners for the swap.”


Train ticket moratorium

Information about the prisoner swap came amid a Sept. 26 report by the Urumqi Evening News that sales of train tickets will be suspended indefinitely from Oct. 22.

"The Xinjiang railway administrative departments will stop selling tickets on all passenger services leaving Xinjiang, and also for intraregional services, from Oct. 22, 2018," the newspaper reported.

"A separate announcement will be made regarding when ticket sales will be resumed," it said.

Meanwhile, several anonymous sources in the XUAR gave anecdotal evidence to RFA suggesting that the authorities are preparing to move large numbers of prisoners in and out of the region in the coming weeks, estimating that as many as 300,000 inmates could be transported across Xinjiang’s road and rail networks.

"The prisons are overflowing all across Xinjiang, that's one reason [for the ticket sales ban]," an anonymous source told RFA. "The other reason is secrecy; because a lot of the people in the camps, such as the police, the administrators or the workers ... have connections with the local population."

"Some of the staff in the jails have close relatives who have been locked up there, and they leak information to the outside world," the source said.

The same source said the authorities are stepping up efforts to impose an information blackout around the camps, many of which have been identified by online researchers using satellite imagery.

"There was a directive about strengthening management of the re-education camps," the source said. "There are a lot of tangled relationships in the camps, with the friends, relatives and former colleagues of camp staff locked up in there."

"They are now bringing in administrators from outside the local areas, and at the same time they are transporting the prisoners outside of their local area," the source said.


Thousands transported

An overseas source who asked to be identified only as a Muslim, said several thousand ethnic Muslims were transported from Ili Kazakh (Yili Hasaake) Autonomous Prefecture’s Ghulja (Yining) city near the border with Kazakhstan, to Altay, in the same prefecture, while the inmates at Altay were sent to detention facilities in Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture.

The source said Uyghurs from Kashgar and Aksu in the south of the region were meanwhile being transferred to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, or bingtuan, prison facilities in Ili.

The authorities have also begun recruiting large numbers of personnel from the western region of Gansu in a bid to replace local staff and guards in the camps, the source said.

In Ili's Kunes (Xinyuan) county, several hundred army and police personnel were dispatched to escort several thousand inmates of a "re-education camp for extremists" to Yining railway station, where they were put on a train for an unknown destination.

Passers-by were banned from taking photos, private vehicles were banned from the streets and businesses along the route were ordered to close during the operation, a source in the region said.

And a separate source said that large numbers of people had been converging on the regional capital, Urumqi, in recent days aboard buses with the windows blacked out.

"It's because there are so many of them locked up; they are being taken to other parts of China, one busload at a time," she said.



Route closure

Meanwhile, the Aksu Highway Administration shut down the Tielimaiti tunnel along with a large section of nearby highway, citing a large snowfall in the area, according to a notice of closure shown to RFA.

"Owing to recent weather conditions, the section of highway near the Tielimaiti Tunnel has seen a large snowfall over a wide area ... and are unsuitable for traffic," the notice said.

National highway G217, an arterial and, in parts, a former military restricted road linking the northern and southern parts of Xinjiang across the Tianshan mountains and the Taklamakan Desert, was therefore announced closed until the end of April 2019, it said.

"Traffic is prohibited to all vehicles," the notice, signed by Kucha and Aksu county highway agencies and traffic police, said. "We apologize for any inconvenience caused."

A source in Xinjiang said the Duku section of the highway linking Dushanzi and Kucha could have been ordered closed to enable the secret transportation of prisoners across the region, or their transfer to railway stations for transportation to other parts of China.

Another source said it may be needed to send armed police reinforcements to Ili and Kashgar, or to send detainees to other provinces.

An official who answered the phone at the Xinjiang regional government press office in Urumqi on Monday declined to comment when contacted by RFA, saying it was the wrong number.

Repeated calls to the police department, local police stations and guesthouses in Guma county (in Chinese, Pishan) in Xinjiang's Hotan prefecture rang unanswered during office hours on Monday.



Camp network

Western governments have increasingly drawn attention to re-education camps in the XUAR in recent months as media reports detail the stories of Uyghurs who have been detained in the facilities.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert recently said the U.S. government was "deeply troubled" by the crackdown on Uyghurs in Xinjiang, adding that “credible reports indicate that individuals sent by Chinese authorities to detention centers since April 2017 number at least in the hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions.”

The official warned that “indiscriminate and disproportionate controls on ethnic minorities’ expressions of their cultural and religious identities have the potential to incite radicalization and recruitment to violence.”

A group of U.S. lawmakers, in a recent letter, asked President Donald Trump’s administration to “swiftly act” to sanction Chinese government officials and entities complicit in or directing the “ongoing human rights crisis” in Xinjiang.

The position of China's central government authorities has evolved from denying that large numbers of Uyghurs have been incarcerated in camps to disputing that the facilities are political re-education camps. Beijing now describes the camps as educational centers.

Adrian Zenz, a lecturer in social research methods at the Germany-based European School of Culture and Theology, has said that some 1.1 million people are or have been detained in the re-education camps, which equates to 10 to 11 percent of the adult Muslim population of the region.

Dolkun Isa, president of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, called the reported prisoner transfers “China's attempt to eliminate the Uyghur detainees through cultural genocide coupled with ethnic cleansing.”

China’s treatment of Uyghurs in the XUAR amounts to “crimes against humanity,” he said, urging the international community to “urgently respond” to the situation there.

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018171100.html

----------


## Latindancer

Ten or 11 percent ?
They may not be killing them, but they are almost literally decimating them.

*Decimate :*

verb: *decimate* kill, destroy, or remove a large proportion of.



drastically reduce the strength or effectiveness of (something). 
historical

kill one in every ten of (a group of people, originally a mutinous Roman legion) as a punishment for the whole group.

----------


## tomcat

...I understand their prison gruel is porridge-based...

----------


## misskit

*Growing Evidence Forced China to Acknowledge Xinjiang Political ‘Re-education Camps’: Researcher*After more than a year of denying the existence of political “re-education camps” in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), a vast buildout of a system housing as many as a million Uyghurs has forced Beijing to acknowledge the facilities and justify them to the international community, according to a camp researcher based in Canada.

Beginning in April 2017, Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas have been jailed or detained in re-education camps throughout the XUAR, where members of the ethnic group have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.

While Beijing initially denied the existence of such camps, the Uyghur chairman of Xinjiang’s provincial government, Shohrat Zakir, told China’s official Xinhua news agency earlier this month that the facilities are an effective tool to protect the country from terrorism and provide vocational training for Uyghurs.

According to Zakir, Uyghurs and other ethnic Muslims in the region are taught Mandarin at the camps, as well as important vocational skills and lessons on Chinese law, all while being provided with free meals in comfortable living conditions, and that they are free to come and go as they like.

Reporting by RFA and other media organizations, however, has shown that those in the camps are detained against their will, routinely face rough treatment at the hands of their overseers, and endure poor diets and unhygienic conditions in the often overcrowded facilities.

Shawn Zhang, a law student at the University of British Columbia, has compiled a blog list of 59 re-education camps he confirmed the existence of by researching government tenders and using information found in the documents to locate the facilities through satellite imagery on Google Maps. He has also identified 16 sites he believes to be camps, but is seeking additional documentation that confirms them as such.

Speaking to RFA’s Uyghur Service, Zhang said that growing evidence of the camps, which are believed to hold or have held more than 1 million people, have made Chinese authorities “see that they can’t hide it” from the international community, and led Beijing to change its tune in mid-October.

“It’s different than 30 or 40 years ago when there was no internet and no satellite images, whereas now you have so many satellite images and the Chinese government also published so many documents that have descriptions of these camps,” he said.

“They see that it is very difficult to hide all this information now, so I think they find that denying it maybe makes them look even more suspicious because they [appear to] want to hide the facts. For the Chinese government, maybe it is more effective to admit to these camps but to use some excuses such as counter-terrorism to justify it.”

Tracking camps

Zhang told RFA that he became interested in tracking down re-education camps in late April, after reading about Uyghurs living overseas whose family members had gone missing back in the XUAR, but said he was initially skeptical.

“So I did some research myself, searching for keywords through Google, and I found some tender notices about this kind of camp,” he said.

“Some of [the notices] had locations, so I followed the information and I found some of the camps … Usually in Xinjiang’s rural areas, there aren’t very large construction sites, so when you see that you can tell it is a camp. In most of them there are wire fences inside the camps in front of buildings. It’s very rare in Xinjiang that these kinds of buildings will have wire fences surrounding … the entrances.”

Zhang noted that according to China’s official explanation, there are only re-education camps at the county level and above in the XUAR, but he said that through his research he had found that “even villages and small towns” have detention and political indoctrination centers.

“You need to pay good attention to detail, because there isn’t much information in government documents,” he said, adding that the camps can be difficult to locate.

“The Chinese government often builds the camps in the suburbs. These suburbs are often newly built, so the streets have no names on Google Maps … You need to find the names of the streets from the government documents.”

But while Zhang has located dozens of camps since he began documenting them earlier this year, he said the facilities are becoming much more difficult to find.

“The problem is that the Chinese government is deleting all information about the re-education camps from the internet, so I haven’t been able to find a tender notice since at least August or so,” he explained.

Growing scrutiny

Western governments have increasingly drawn attention to the camp network, where Adrian Zenz, a lecturer in social research methods at the Germany-based European School of Culture and Theology, has said that some 1.1 million people are or have been detained—equating to 10 to 11 percent of the adult Muslim population of the XUAR.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert recently said the U.S. government was “deeply troubled” by the crackdown on Uyghurs, while U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley described it earlier this month as “the largest internment of civilians in the world today” and “straight out of George Orwell,” during a speech at the Chiefs of Defense Conference Dinner in Washington.

Next week in Geneva, China is likely to face a grilling on the Uyghur camps from some Western countries at the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of its human rights record.

According to Zhang, by acknowledging the existence of the camps, but portraying them in a way that suggests they have been established to help improve the lives of ethnic Uyghurs in the XUAR, the government is putting on a “performance to convince outsiders.”

But Zhang said that according to what he has uncovered in his research, “it is almost impossible to provide such activities” as vocational training, because the camps lack the infrastructure to do so.

Instead, he said, the camps serve as indoctrination centers that the Chinese government is using to achieve its “ultimate goal” of “fully assimilating Uyghurs into the Chinese identity.”

“The Chinese government thinks that separatism in Xinjiang is a result of Uyghurs’ own identity,” he said.

“When one [minority] group keeps their own identity apart from the Chinese people, the Chinese government may think it is very dangerous. They think it will lead to separatism. So I think their ultimate goal is to transform Uyghur people into ordinary Chinese.”

But Zhang cautioned against the approach of forcing Uyghurs to conform to Chinese culture.

“In my opinion, this kind of coercion hasn’t succeeded in the past, because it is impossible to convince a group of people when they aren’t voluntarily taking part,” he said.

“It may lead to more instability or even more violence because when so many people suffer this kind of tragedy, some become more extremist.”

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018173222.html

----------


## harrybarracuda

Only telling us what we already know, which is that the chinkies are lying.

----------


## OhOh

> housing as many as a million Uyghurs


Still peddling unsubstantiated hearsay I see.

----------


## harrybarracuda

> Still peddling unsubstantiated hearsay I see.


You are the only one peddling propaganda, you simpering sycophant.

All you can do is peddle the bullshit chinky line.

----------


## OhOh

> You are the only one peddling propaganda, you simpering sycophant.
> 
> All you can do is peddle the bullshit chinky line.


Any facts to enlighten us with? 

Thought not just retching up MK's ameristani, RFA propaganda..

----------


## harrybarracuda

Have the chinkies fessed up about their arrested spy yet?

He must be due in court soon.

Can't you find *anything* in your state propaganda? Like he was an innocent tourist going to see famous Belgian waffles?

----------


## OhOh

You know the Chinese, they take a while to answer. They have laws and courts procedures, such things as we know may take their own ways.

Better than tweeting something and immediately having to ridicule oneself with a denial. Although some use the "miss spoke"excuse and many actually believe them.

----------


## harrybarracuda

Funny that, normally you can't stop posting chinky propaganda but they don't want their own people to know they're a bunch of thieving bastards.

----------


## misskit

*Hundreds of Children of Detained Uyghurs Held in ‘Closed School’ in Kashgar Prefecture*As many as 500 children of detained Uyghurs have been placed in a “closed school” in Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) prefecture, in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), according to a source in exile, who said his two younger brothers are among those held.

A young Uyghur man named Jesur left his home in Kashgar’s Yarkand (Shache) county for Turkey in 2014 and shortly afterwards, in July of that year, Chinese authorities fired on residents of the county’s Elishku township who were protesting the detention of a dozen Uyghur women for praying overnight at a local mosque, killing what Uyghur exile groups say was as many as 2,000 people.

A crackdown by police in the county following the incident led to mass jailings of Uyghurs and a lockdown on communication in and out of the area, and Jesur lost contact with his family.

Jesur, now 23, told RFA’s Uyghur Service that he recently received a video in which his eight- and 10-year-old brothers tearfully informed him that several members of their family had been jailed or sent to political “re-education camps,” where authorities have detained Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas since April 2017.

His brothers said that they had been placed in a “closed school” for children of Uyghur detainees in their home township of Kachung and appealed to him to help free them.

“I learned that my two younger brothers are in a closed school in Kachung township,” he said, adding that there are “approximately 500 children” held in the facility.

“The children are not allowed to have any contact with outside. If relatives want to see them, they must obtain an approval letter from the local police.”

Additionally, Jesur said, his 45-year-old father Mahmut Sayim, 43-year-old mother Buhelchem Tursun, 25-year-old sister Buranem Mahmut, 20-year-old brother Nureli Mahmut, and uncles Qasim Sayim, Hekim Sayim, and Ablimit Sayim, as well as their wives, are among some 30 members of his extended family who have been sent to prison or re-education camps.

Jesur said his father was given a lengthy prison sentence for having two children outside of the allotted family planning allowance of two to each ethnic minority family and failing to pay a fine of 100,000 yuan (U.S. $14,420) for each child over the limit. His uncles also received long jail terms, he said, although it was unclear what they had been sentenced for.

“I learned my father was arrested … after [the Islamic holy month of] Ramadan [which ended on June 14] last year, and my mother was taken away in March of this year, though I don’t know the reason for her arrest,” he said.

“It is not clear if the rest of my family are in prison or not, but our house is padlocked from the outside.”

According to Jesur, his brothers appeared “afraid and longing for their parents,” and he told RFA that he is now haunted by the video.

“I watched the video in which my younger brothers spoke out to me in tears and now the scene constantly appears in my mind,” he said.

“It makes me so sad and distracted that I keep misplacing things all the time … It has come to the point that I can’t even remember what I’ve been doing all day, or what I should be doing next.”

Repeated calls to the police station in Kachung and relevant government departments to verify Jesur’s claims went unanswered, or staff members hung up when informed that they were being contacted by RFA.

But after discovering a fundraising post online by the Kachung Township Party Propaganda Department that sought to raise money for “students facing financial difficulty,” RFA’s reporters were able to contact a Chinese staff member there who confirmed the existence of the school, which he said housed “more than 300 children … [from] Kachung and surrounding areas.”

“We collected all these children and placed them in the school to help them,” the staffer said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“They are all primary school pupils from years one through six. They are all housed in the school, as their parents are in re-education camps.”

The staff member said that the children need “various forms of support,” including basic educational study kits and second-hand clothing—particularly warm clothing for the winter.

When asked about conditions at the school, the staff member was unable to provide additional information, but said that “there is the possibility that some orphans have been relocated to similar facilities” in other parts of China, due to overcrowding.


Children left behind

While Beijing initially denied the existence of re-education camps, the Uyghur chairman of Xinjiang’s provincial government, Shohrat Zakir, told China’s official Xinhua news agency last month that the facilities are an effective tool to protect the country from terrorism and provide vocational training for Uyghurs.

Reporting by RFA’s Uyghur Service and other media organizations, however, has shown 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.

An Oct. 21 report by the official Global Times promoting the camps as “training centers” also included photos of children in the XUAR’s Hotan (Hetian) prefecture whose parents had been placed in camps, and claimed that they are warmly cared for at special “schools,” where they engage in educational courses and other activities.

But sources have told RFA that Uyghur children whose parents have been sent to camps are regularly sent to orphanages that are seriously overcrowded, calling the conditions “terrible,” with children “locked up like farm animals in a shed.”

Others say that while the orphanages received substantial cash donations from the public, “only a very little is spent on the children,” and that the facilities save money by giving the kids meat only once a week, while the rest of the time they are provided with “rice soup.”

Jesur told RFA that his worst fear is that he may never learn what becomes of his younger brothers. 

“I think about my brothers constantly, as they don’t have my parents to look after them and the authorities may send them to eastern China, where they will be brought up like Han Chinese,” he said.

“That is my biggest worry. I know it is impossible for me to return, but I … wish that I was able to take care of them as a big brother should. As my anger towards the Chinese authorities has grown … I decided to tell the world the tragic story of how the government has treated my family.”



https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018162416.html

----------


## misskit

*US Lawmakers Unveil Bill Calling For Release of Uyghurs From China’s Detention Camps*U.S. lawmakers introduced legislation on Wednesday calling for the release of over a million ethnic Uyghurs detained by China in re-education camps and urging Washington to study the scope of Beijing’s crackdown on the Muslim minority group.

In a press release announcing the launch of the bipartisan bill, in which Republican Representative Chris Smith was joined by Democrat Thomas Suozzi and eight other members of Congress, Smith said the internment of Uyghurs in camps in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region “should be treated by the international community as a crime against humanity.”

“The Chinese government’s creation of a vast system of what can only be called concentration camps cannot be tolerated in the 21st century,” said Smith, co-chair of the Congressional Executive Commission on China.

“The brutal, religious based persecution of the Uyghurs in China is alarming,” Congressman Suozzi added in prepared remarks on Wednesday. “Xinjiang province has become nothing short of a police state.”

Among other recommendations, the proposed legislation calls on the U.S. Secretary of State to create a special position at the State Department to coordinate the U.S. response to China’s abuses in Xinjiang and to sanction Chinese officials responsible for the crackdown. 

The U.S. established a Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues in 2002 in response to repression in that Chinese-ruled region.

The bill also calls on the FBI to track and report on the harassment by China of Uyghurs and other Chinese nationals studying or working in the United States.

'Historic significance'

Speaking on Wednesday to RFA’s Uyghur Service, Dolkun Isa—president of the Germany-based exile World Uyghur Congress—called the introduction of the bill a measure of “historic significance at a time when the Chinese government is committing ethnic cleansing against the Uyghur people.”

“This is a powerful step taken by the U.S. to address the crimes against humanity that are taking place in East Turkestan,” Isa said, using a name preferred by many Uyghurs to refer to their historic homeland.

“I hope this bill will become legislation soon with the support of both Houses of Congress,” Isa said.

Also speaking to RFA on Wednesday, Uyghur human rights advocate and lawyer Nury Turkel—board chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based Uyghur Human Rights Project—called the bill’s introduction “the first time in history a Western government is deliberating a legislative mandate to protect Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims in China.”

“On the occasion of this historic day, I call on the other liberal democracies to put in place similar legislative mandates to protect the Uyghur people who are facing an existential threat in China,” Turkel said, adding,  “I also urge the other members of Congress to support this bill in the remainder of this legislative session.”

The proposed legislation was introduced a week after the United States, France, Germany, and 10 other Western countries used a session of the United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of China’s human rights record to issue a call on Beijing to close down the political re-education camps.

“We are alarmed by the government of China’s worsening crackdown on Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslims in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region," U.S. charge d'affaires Mark Cassayre was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying at the Geneva meeting.

The United States urged China to "abolish all forms of arbitrary detention, including internment camps in Xinjiang, and immediately release the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of individuals detained in these camps,” he said.

In late August, Smith led a bipartisan group of nearly 20 U.S. lawmakers in writing a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, urging them to level sanctions against officials and entities in China deemed responsible for abusing the rights of ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the XUAR.

Harsh policies

The lawmakers identified for sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act—created to address human rights abuses by the Putin regime in Russia—XUAR Communist Party secretary Chen Quanguo, who has implemented a litany of harsh policies attacking the rights and freedoms of ethnic Uyghur Muslim residents of Xinjiang since he was appointed to run the region in August 2016.

Beginning in April 2017, Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas have been jailed or detained in re-education camps throughout Xinjiang, where members of the ethnic group have long complained of pervasive discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression under Chinese rule.

While Beijing initially denied the existence of re-education camps, the Uyghur chairman of Xinjiang’s provincial government, Shohrat Zakir, told China’s official Xinhua news agency last month that the facilities are an effective tool to protect the country from terrorism and provide vocational training for Uyghurs. 

China’s state media have followed Zakir’s remarks with a massive propaganda campaign promoting the camps, while foreign reporters investigating Xinjiang have reported constant harassment by authorities. Uyghur activists called on China to prove the facilities are for vocational training by opening then up to visitors.

Reporting by RFA’s Uyghur Service and other media organizations has shown that those held in the camps are detained against their will, are subjected to political indoctrination and rough treatment at the hands of their overseers, and endure poor diets and unhygienic conditions in the often overcrowded facilities.

Adrian Zenz, a lecturer in social research methods at the Germany-based European School of Culture and Theology, has said that some 1.1 million people are or have been detained in the camps—equating to 10 to 11 percent of the adult Muslim population of Xinjiang.



https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018152204.html

----------


## OhOh

The Chinese Government release a white paper on the subject of:
*Cultural Protection and Development in Xinjiang*

Available here (8 pages):

Full Text: Cultural Protection and Development in Xinjiang- China.org.cn

A Chinese paper's report.

White paper sets Xinjiang facts straight, cites successes

_"Amid ongoing Western accusations against human rights in Northwest  China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China released a white paper  on Thursday to explain efforts and achievements in the region's  languages, customs, religions and cultural heritage in the past half  century.

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in  1949, the Chinese central government has attached great importance to  documenting and protecting the excellent traditional ethnic cultures in  Xinjiang, and ensuring that they are passed on to succeeding  generations, the white paper said.

Released by the State Council -  China's cabinet, the white paper stressed that ethnic cultures in  Xinjiang are an inseparable part of Chinese culture.

Since  ancient times, Xinjiang has been home to various ethnic groups, where  different ethnic cultures coexist and integrate, it said. 

The  white paper is a "timely and necessary" move to "correct  misunderstandings and ongoing rumors" from foreign media and politicians  on the development of Xinjiang, Zhu Weiqun, former head of the Ethnic  and Religious Affairs Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese  People's Political Consultative Conference, China's top political  advisory body, told the Global Times on Thursday. 

A group of 15  Western ambassadors in Beijing, spearheaded by Canada, is seeking a  meeting with the top Xinjiang official for an "explanation" of alleged  rights abuses against Uyghurs, Reuters reported Thursday.

Calling  the request "rude and unacceptable," Chinese Foreign Ministry  spokesperson Hua Chunying said on Thursday that China hopes the  ambassadors fulfill their responsibility of offering a faithful and  comprehensive understanding of China instead of making "unreasonable"  request based on hearsay. 

"Xinjiang is an open region and we  welcome the ambassadors to visit for goodwill reasons," Hua said at the  daily briefing on Thursday. 

"However, if they are coming with  prejudice and vicious motives to interfere in China's domestic affairs,  the answer is a resolute no," she said.

Battleground sector

The cultural sector has been a battleground to enhance ethnic identity and unity in the region, Zhu noted. 

For  a long time, some domestic and foreign forces have been plotting to  separate Xinjiang from China, and while they see little chance of  succeeding through political or military means, the forces are targeting  the cultural sector, said Zhu.

The separatists are spreading two  kinds of rumors: Xinjiang's culture is a separate part of Chinese  culture, an argument that is contradictory to common sense, and that the  Chinese central government is "suppressing or eradicating" cultures in  Xinjiang, a narrative that contradicts reality, Zhu said. 

The  latest accusation comes from a CNN report on Thursday, which said  Xinjiang is undergoing "cultural genocide" as Uyghur culture and  identity are "altered."

"The 'cultural genocide' accusation is  complete nonsense and contradicts reality," Xiong Kunxin, a professor of  ethnic studies at Beijing-based Minzu University of China, told the  Global Times on Thursday. 

Turning a blind eye to the prospering  economy and cultures in the region, some Western media and politicians  are hyping religious and ethnic issues to gain attention for their  political agenda, Xiong said. 

China has always believed that  religions should make adjustments in a socialist society and play a  positive role in society, Xiong noted. 

"Religious doctrines and  ethnic cultures that fail to comply with the social development will be  outdated. It's a natural rule," Xiong stressed. 

The white paper,  "Cultural Protection and Development in Xinjiang," also offers facts  about the preservation of cultural and religious heritage in the region,  as well as efforts to improve public services and international  exchanges. 

At major meetings of China's top legislature and  political advisory bodies, interpreting services and transcripts of  languages used by ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang are provided. The  languages are also used during local elections, in local courts and in  the gaokao, or the national college entrance examinations, the white  paper said. 

Since 2009, Xinjiang has held seven China  International Youth Arts festivals, inviting more than 119 art troupes  from countries and regions like Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia,  Mongolia, Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Thailand and Azerbaijan. 

In recent years, Xinjiang has been active in building the core area along the Silk Road  Economic Belt, strengthening cultural and scientific and technological  exchanges with countries along the Belt, according to the white paper.

From 1985 to 2017, colleges and universities in Xinjiang enrolled 50,000 foreign students, the white paper said. 

"Faced  with the rude and groundless accusations, China should continue to send  a clear voice to prevent rumors and lies from succeeding," Zhu said. 

The  country should be confident in the region's hard-fought achievements  and should always take the initiative in telling the facts of Xinjiang,  instead of allowing separatists to set the narrative, Zhu told the  Global Times."_

White paper sets Xinjiang facts straight, cites successes - Global Times

----------


## harrybarracuda

> White paper makes up loads of bollocks to cover up Chinese atrocities and OhOh swallows it whole



FTFY.

----------


## OhOh

But no views on the contents of the white paper.

Not that I expected anything else from you but your puerile posts.

----------


## harrybarracuda

> But no views on the contents of the white paper.
> 
> Not that I expected anything else from you but your puerile posts.


Come back when you have a proper news source and not state-sponsored propaganda.

----------


## OhOh

Do you mean the government funded/limited to access unless they toe the government line, MSM, who only print what their masters want.

The Chinese Government produced white paper is direct from the government, no twisting of words by partisan bought and paid for partisan "analysts/experts".

A group, the Chinese government who is and can be held responsible for their actions or here today gone tomorrow scribes of no stature or responsibility except in their, for sale, pen strokes.

Believe who you will, I will continue with my choices of sources whilst ever China delivers on it's promises.  There ain't many around who do that these days.

----------


## tomcat

> There ain't many around who do that these days.


...for good reason...

----------


## harrybarracuda

> Do you mean the government funded/limited to access unless they toe the government line, MSM, who only print what their masters want.
> 
> The Chinese Government produced white paper is direct from the government, no twisting of words by partisan bought and paid for partisan "analysts/experts".
> 
> A group, the Chinese government who is and can be held responsible for their actions or here today gone tomorrow scribes of no stature or responsibility except in their, for sale, pen strokes.
> 
> Believe who you will, I will continue with my choices of sources whilst ever China delivers on it's promises.  There ain't many around who do that these days.


You're using the word "partisan" wrong.

State controlled propaganda could not be more partisan, you muppet.

 :rofl:

----------


## OhOh

> ...for good reason...


Care to illustrate why delivering on beneficial promises is not a good reason?

----------


## harrybarracuda

> Care to illustrate why delivering on beneficial promises is not a good reason?


What is beneficial about detention camps and torture?

By the way, any of your chinky sites spoken about the arrested spy yet?

----------


## OhOh

> What is beneficial about detention camps and torture?


Care to share your sources on this rumour?

----------


## Latindancer

How about all those detailed satellite photos of the camps ? And the first-hand accounts of people who have been tortured ?

----------


## OhOh

> How about all those detailed satellite photos of the camps ? And the first-hand accounts of people who have been tortured ?


There have been close up photographs showing people sitting in classes, playing sports, eating food.........

There have been "reports" of "friends of friends", there has been an accusation by one of eighteen unofficial UN investigators - however the other 17 reported nothing . Looks a little weak.

 MK has a lot of VOA/RFA unproven accusations. But both organisations are proven mouth pieces for ameristan government agencies. Even weaker.

There has also been reports from named government official sources which repudiate the accusations.

I suppose we could grade them by the number of retweets/likes/smily faces...... but then it may be the Russian bot farms we here so much about, or the French/British/amerisstani bots.

Who knows why this topic has gained such interest, YOU?

----------


## OhOh

My words:




> no twisting of words by partisan bought and paid for partisan "analysts/experts".





> You're using the word "partisan" wrong.





> State controlled propaganda could not be more partisan, you muppet


You are being selective as to who can have partisan inclinations or who may or may not be a supporter of a partisan's viewpoint.
*adjective*Prejudiced in favour of a particular cause.

----------


## harrybarracuda

> My words:Prejudiced in favour of a particular cause.


The cause being the Chinky State progaganda machine, you fucking dumbass.

----------


## OhOh

> The cause being the ameristani propaganda machine, you fucking dumbass.


FIFYFF.

----------


## harrybarracuda

> FIFYFF.


So the chinky government wrote a white paper to promote chinky lies and you call it "ameristani propaganda".

Ooohhhhhh Kkkkkkkkkkkkkk.

----------


## Latindancer

OhOh....Google the words "Uyghur camps" and educate yourself by clicking on a few of the very reputable links, and stop being your usual contrarian self.....as Harry has been telling you for so long : you just look idiotic.

----------


## OhOh

> Google the words "Uyghur camps"


Ah, I see you use the proven ameristani propaganda search engine to serve up your facts. Very noble of you.




> So the chinky government wrote a white paper to promote chinky lies and you call it "ameristani propaganda".


As I pointed out to LD, if you are selective of your sources you will obtain tainted "facts". Look beyond your "approved" sources and form your own opinion as to who is presenting facts as fiction and vice versa.

----------


## harrybarracuda

> Ah, I see you use the proven ameristani propaganda search engine to serve up your facts. Very noble of you.
> 
> 
> 
> As I pointed out to LD, if you are selective of your sources you will obtain tainted "facts". Look beyond your "approved" sources and form your own opinion as to who is presenting facts as fiction and vice versa.


Translation:  BWAAAAAAHHHH! YOU MUST BELIEVE CHINKY PROPAGANDA!".

 :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic):

----------


## harrybarracuda

Nobody pretends the People’s Republic of China is an entirely benign power, least of all its leaders in Beijing. Yet, even by the standards of what continues to be a remarkably repressive state, the stories that are emerging from behind the Great Firewall about the crackdown on Xinjiang’s Uighur Muslim population are deeply disturbing and deserve more of the world’s attention.

The one country on earth which should best understand the danger and futility of such efforts has reportedly set up “reeducation centres” across the length and breadth of its largest province, where political prisoners are instructed to repeat mantras about the greatness of the Chinese state and of President Xi Jinping. They write self-criticisms late into the night. Observant Muslims are forced to drink alcohol.

Persistent dissenters are allegedly subject to torture, including in a terrifying device known as a “tiger chair.” One recent academic study warnsthat anything between several hundred thousand and over a million residents of Xinjiang may have been sent to the camps. The Chinese government has repeatedly denied the existence of any reeducation camps, saying that the people of Xinjiang "live and work in peace and enjoy development and tranquillity.” It has also argued in the past that the “tiger chair” is “padded for comfort.”

Now, you could be outraged by these stories and demand, as some countries have done, that Chinese leaders respect the human rights of all their citizens. But fewer and fewer governments want to take the risk of offending China. And, after all, more than half the people of Xinjiang are Muslims – and who today would really go out on a limb and speak out against the “reeducation” of faithful Muslims? So in Xinjiang, as in Tibet, the world is likely to give China a pass.

But there’s another question that Chinese leaders, and the rest of us, should be asking. And that is: What does this repression mean for China’s ambitions in Central Asia and beyond?

After all, Xinjiang may today be a distant border province. But it occupies a very different position on the map of the world as Xi would remake it. The Silk Roads of the past went through what is now Xinjiang and, if the Belt and Road Initiative ever takes off, it is Xinjiang that will be its hub and heart. The province is intended to connect Central Asia, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and Siberia to the densely industrialized Chinese heartland.

China’s crackdown is meant at least in part to pacify the region, which has seen fluctuating waves of resentment and separatist sentiment over the years. But can a province so tightly controlled by the authorities become the crossroads of a continent’s trade?

Uighurs are now largely forbidden to travel abroad – and even those who leave the province for other parts of China are suspect. Visa requirements for visitors from places like Pakistan have been tightened. Fewer will visit; others have found that wives and children across the border have vanishedinto camps.

Trade is more than a few sealed trucks rolling up to a checkpoint set amid walls and barbed wire. Trade cannot happen without people – without the coming and going of traders, without bustling border cities and entrepots where deals are made and demand is weighed.

Perhaps China’s planners imagine that Xinjiang need be nothing but usefully located real estate, a barren land through which trains will thunder, shipping their products west. That is, however, unlikely to happen. For one, Xinjiang does not stand in isolation. Many of its people are part of a larger Central Asian cultural network. The case of an ethnically Kazakh Chinese woman who fled after working in one of the camps, for instance, has become a cause célèbre in Kazakhstan.

The government in Astana is already having to deal with increasing popular anger about the Xinjiang crackdown and is quietly complaining to China. The louder the discontent at home, the less polite its complaints will be. Do Chinese leaders imagine that the Belt and Road can be laid down without the cooperation of Central Asia’s governments or of its people?

Perhaps China imagines instead that continued mass settlement of the province by ethnically Han Chinese migrants from elsewhere in the country will solve the problem. The government has, after all, ensured that the province’s residency rules are the most liberal in China. But that will merely create a social tinderbox that no “smart” police state, such as is being piloted in Xinjiang’s cities, can truly control.

It’s not yet too late for China to realize its errors and to seek reconciliation with Xinjiang’s Uighurs. If the land-based economic corridors of Xi’s imagination are to become a reality, then China will need to build a peaceful and secure Xinjiang that’s integrated effectively with its neighbors. A police state full of brutal reeducation camps will merely provoke a terrifying backlash – and the Belt and Road will be among the casualties.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/ar...-and-road-plan

----------


## OhOh

> Translation: BWAAAAAAHHHH! YOU MUST BELIEVE ameristani PROPAGANDA!".


FIFY.




> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/ar...-and-road-plan


Well we all trust your source for a factual opinion.

 :rofl:

----------


## harrybarracuda

> FIFY.
> 
> 
> 
> Well we all trust your source for a factual opinion.


Who is "we"?

You're the only snivelling chinky sychophant I see here.

----------


## OhOh

> You're the only snivelling chinky sychophant I see here.


Do I get a red star medal to wear? How about an "Honorable Gentleman" prefix?

----------


## harrybarracuda

> Do I get a red star medal to wear? How about an "Honorable Gentleman" prefix?


How about "snivelling chinky sycophant"?

----------


## OhOh

> How about "snivelling chinky sycophant"?


FIFY, "Honorable snivelling chinky sycophantic gentleman". I'll allow you to decide when the addition of "The Right" prefix use is warranted.

OK?

----------


## harrybarracuda

> FIFY, "Honorable snivelling chinky sycophantic gentleman". I'll allow you to decide when the addition of "The Right" prefix use is warranted.
> 
> OK?


The only word I'd use with 'right' is 'tosspot'.

----------


## tomcat

...^555...

----------


## misskit

*Xinjiang Authorities Sentence Uyghur Philanthropist to Death For Unsanctioned Hajj*
Abdughapar Abdurusul in an undated photo. Photo courtesy of Abdusattar Abdurusul








Authorities in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have sentenced a prominent Uyghur businessman and philanthropist to death for taking an unsanctioned Muslim holy pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, according to his brother.

Abdughapar Abdurusul, of Bakyol district in Ili Kazakh (in Chinese, Yili Hasake) Autonomous Prefecture’s Ghulja (Yining) city, “was arrested in July or August,” his brother Abdusattar Abdurusul recently told RFA’s Uyghur Service, citing Abdughapar’s Kazakh business partners living in Kazakhstan’s Almaty city.

“The latest I heard is that my brother has been given a death sentence and he is waiting for his execution to be carried out … The reason is that he went to perform hajj on his own [instead of joining a state-sanctioned tour group],” he added, referring to the annual Muslim holy pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

According to Abdusattar Abdurusul, his brother was provided with “no lawyer” during a “group trial,” suggesting he had been illegally sentenced to death. All death sentences should be reviewed by China’s Supreme Court in Beijing, but it is unclear whether Abdughapar Abdurusul's case has been examined.

Abdughapar Abdurusul, a 42-year-old father of four, owns several shops and businesses, and multiple properties, his brother said, and had used some of the money he earned to build a mosque for the local community in recent years.

Abdughapar Abdurusul had also sold an old family home for around 1 million yuan (U.S. $144,000) in April or May, and was living comfortably before he was arrested and all of his family’s assets—totaling around 100 million yuan (U.S. $14.4 million)—were seized, he said.

“He is a philanthropist who enjoyed helping society … [but] now the government has taken away everything and destroyed his family’s lives completely,” Abdusattar Abdurusul said.

Abdughapar Abdurusul’s eldest son Awzer was detained in 2017 after returning home from studying in Turkey, and his wife Merhaba Hajim was taken into custody in April this year, he added.

Abdusattar Abdurusul said his sister Sayipjamal has been missing for “a long time” and is thought to also have been detained, while several of Abdughapar Abdurusul’s friends “have been sentenced to more than 18 years in prison.”


Death in custody

Staff members at the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture’s Public Security Bureau and local police stations in Ghulja city refused to answer questions or hung up the phone when contacted by RFA about Abdughapar Abdurusul’s case.

But a long-time associate who worked with Abdughapar Abdurusul in Ili Kazakh’s Qorghas (Huocheng) county and is now living in exile told RFA he had also heard of the businessman’s sentence from local sources, and that his wife had died in custody.

“A friend of mine called me, saying that our mutual friend Abdughapar Hajim had been sentenced to death,” the associate said, speaking on condition of anonymity and using an honorific title to denote that Abdughapar Abdurusul had completed a pilgrimage to Mecca.

“[I also heard] that his wife had already died in prison,” he added.

The associate said that “more than 50” people in Abdughapar Abdurusul’s circle of friends—including several police officers—had been arrested and imprisoned before him, but that he was the only to have been sentenced to death.

When asked why Abdughapar Abdurusul might have been given such a harsh sentence, the associate said he was unsure, “but the Chinese government is killing Uyghurs for no particular reason.”

A former close neighbor of Abdughapar Abdurusul’s named Turghunay, who is now living in exile in Turkey, also told RFA she had heard of his sentence and that Merhaba Hajim had died in detention.

“I heard that Abdughapar Hajim was arrested in May or June and, prior to that, his eldest son Awzer had been arrested, followed by his wife, Merhaba Hajim,” she said.

“I don’t know if he was arrested because of his wealth or having gone on hajj, but when I heard the news about his death sentence … I was devastated.”

Turghunay said that Merhaba Hajim had “died in a [political] re-education camp,” where authorities have detained Uyghurs accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas throughout the XUAR since April 2017.

“The death certificate was given to the family by the authorities,” she said, adding that “no one knows what has happened to their young children.”


Camp network

While Beijing initially denied the existence of re-education camps, the Uyghur chairman of Xinjiang’s provincial government, Shohrat Zakir, told China’s official Xinhua news agency last month that the facilities are an effective tool to protect the country from terrorism and provide vocational training for Uyghurs.

Reporting by RFA’s Uyghur Service and other media organizations, however, has shown 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.

Adrian Zenz, a lecturer in social research methods at the Germany-based European School of Culture and Theology, has said that some 1.1 million people are or have been detained in the camps—equating to 10 to 11 percent of the adult Muslim population of the XUAR.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert recently said the U.S. government was “deeply troubled” by the crackdown on Uyghurs, while U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley described it last month as “the largest internment of civilians in the world today” and “straight out of George Orwell,” during a speech at the Chiefs of Defense Conference Dinner in Washington.




https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018131511.html

----------


## OhOh

Such a factually complete post. -10/10




> according to his brother.





> his brother Abdusattar Abdurusul recently told RFA’s





> The latest I heard is that


 


> is unclear whether Abdughapar Abdurusul's case has been examined.





> local police stations in Ghulja city refused to answer questions or hung up the phone when contacted by RFA


Somebody with some intelligence at last.




> But a long-time associate who worked with Abdughapar Abdurusul in Ili Kazakh’s Qorghas (Huocheng) county and is now living in exile told RFA he had also heard of





> A friend of mine called me





> [I also heard] that his





> might have been given such a harsh sentence, the associate said he was unsure, “but the Chinese government is killing Uyghurs for no particular reason.”

----------


## harrybarracuda

> Such a factually complete post. -10/10


Of course your beloved chinkies are sure to reveal the truth aren't they?

Snivelling sycophant.

----------


## tomcat

*China is creating concentration camps in Xinjiang. Heres how we hold it accountable.*


Uighur security personnel patrol near the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar in western China's Xinjiang region. (Ng Han Guan/AP)
By Editorial Board November 24 (WaPo)

CHINA CONTINUES to see the uproar over its creation of concentration camps holding as many as 1 million ethnic Uighurs and others as a public-relations problem. In recent days, the government issued another white paperclaiming it is protecting religious freedom and culture in the autonomous northwestern province of Xinjiang, despite evidence that it has corralled much of the Muslim population into spartan camps for forced brainwashing. When Western nations repeatedly brought up the camps on Nov. 6 at Chinas five-year United Nations human rights review in Geneva, a top Chinese official dismissed the claims as seriously far from the truth.

That is why recently introduced bipartisan legislation in Congress is vitally important. Chinas leaders have dissembled for a year and cannot be allowed to escape accountability for the massive indoctrination and internment drive. Exposure of the camps  by witnesses, scholars, nongovernmental organizations and Western governments  has been extremely important. But Chinas leaders are not shamed. They are old hands at repression, having built the system known as laojiao, or reeducation through labor, that existed outside the regular prison system and was widely used for punishing dissidents and petty criminals until it was closed down in 2013. Now it has been resurrected for use against the ethnic Uighurs, big time.

The Uighur Human Rights Policy Act of 2018  introduced with bipartisan sponsors, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.); Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee; and Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) in the House  calls for creating a U.S. special coordinator for Xinjiang to respond to the crisis, as well as paving the way for applying Global Magnitsky Act sanctions on specific Chinese officials responsible for the human rights violations. That includes Chen Quanguo, the party secretary overseeing the imprisonment.

The legislation, if enacted, would mandate a report to Congress identifying Chinese firms contributing to the camps and ubiquitous surveillance systems in Xinjiang, perhaps leading to the sanctioning of these companies, and would empower the FBI to track down Chinese officials responsible for harassing Uighurs in the United States. When Uighurs outside China have protested what is happening, their relatives in Xinjiang have been hauled off to camps and other locations, as happened to relatives of six U.S.-based journalists for Radio Free Asia.

Congress needs to act to fill a vacuum left by the Trump administration, which has said and done little about the Xinjiang repression. In Beijing, in an initiative led by Canada, 15 Western ambassadors have sought a meeting with Mr. Chen to express concern, but the United States did not join. It should. Most of the worlds majority-Muslim nations have been unconscionably muteabout the repression; the United States should stand with other liberal democracies.

China has justified its actions as counterterrorism and preventing extremism, but it hardly makes sense to imprison 11.5 percent of the Muslim population of Xinjiang between the ages of 20 and 79, as has been estimated by some experts. Forcing tens of thousands of people into jails and then trying to wipe away their language and culture are crimes against an entire people. No amount of spin can conceal it.

----------


## misskit

*Exclusive: China will retaliate 'in proportion' to any U.S. sanction over Muslim Uighurs – ambassador*WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China will retaliate “in proportion” if the United States sanctions its top official in the restive region of Xinjiang over alleged human rights abuses, China’s ambassador to the United States said on Tuesday, adding that Beijing’s policies in the region are to “re-educate” terrorists. 


Chinese Ambassador to Washington Cui Tiankai told Reuters in an interview that China’s efforts to combat international terrorism are held to a double standard, comparing Chinese actions in Xinjiang to U.S. troops battling Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. 


“Can you imagine (if) some American officials in charge of the fight against ISIS would be sanctioned?” Cui said, adding “if such actions are taken, we have to retaliate.” 


Cui did not elaborate on specific actions China might take. 


Beijing has faced an outcry from activists, academics, foreign governments and U.N. rights experts over mass detentions and strict surveillance of the mostly Muslim Uighur minority and other Muslim groups in Xinjiang.


In August, a United Nations human rights panel said it had received many credible reports that a million or more Uighurs in China are being held in what resembles a “massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy”. 

U.S. officials have said the Trump administration is considering sanctions targeting companies and officials linked to China’s crackdown on minority Muslims, including Xinjiang Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, who, as a member of the powerful politburo, is in the upper echelons of China’s leadership.   




Cui said that while the United States was using missiles and drones to kill terrorists, “we are trying to re-educate most of them, trying to turn them into normal persons (who) can go back to normal life,” Cui said. 


“We’ll see what will happen. We will do everything in proportion,” he said, responding to a question on how China would retaliate to possible U.S. sanctions on Chen. 


Cui’s comments are the strongest response yet to U.S. threats on the issue. 


Any such U.S. sanctions decision against so senior an official as Chen would be a rare move on human rights grounds by the Trump administration, which is engaged in a trade war with China while also seeking Beijing’s help to resolve a standoff over North Korea’s nuclear weapons. 


U.S. sanctions could be imposed under the Global Magnitsky Act, a federal law that allows the U.S. government to target human rights violators around the world with freezes on any U.S. assets, U.S. travel bans, and prohibitions on Americans doing business with them, U.S. officials have said. 

Chinese authorities routinely deny any ethnic or religious repression in Xinjiang. They say strict security measures – likened by critics to near martial law conditions, with police checkpoints, the detention centers, and mass DNA collection – are needed to combat the influence of extremist groups. 





After initial blanket denials of the detention facilities, officials have said that some citizens guilty of “minor offences” were sent to vocational centers to improve employment opportunities. 


At a briefing in Washington on Monday, a Uighur woman, Mihrigul Tursun, 29, told reporters she had experienced physical and psychological torture, including electrocution while strapped to a chair, during 10 months in Xinjiang detention centers. 


Tursun, who wept and shook as a translator read her prepared statement, said her three children were taken from her while she was in detention and that her four-month-old son had died without explanation in government custody. 


Rejecting Chinese government claims that the detention facilities serve vocational purposes, she said many of the dozens of other women in her cell were “well-educated professionals, such as teachers and doctors.” 


Tursun said she witnessed nine women die during one three-month period she spent in detention, including from sickness after being denied medical treatment. 


Reuters could not independently verify her account, though numerous former detainees have begun to share similar first-hand details with media. China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tursun’s statement. 


Independent assessments of the conditions in Xinjiang are nearly impossible given restrictions on journalists from openly reporting from the region. 


U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet has called on China to allow monitors in Xinjiang, though Beijing has responded by telling her to respect China’s sovereignty.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKCN1NW2PA

----------


## harrybarracuda

Looks like the chinkies are doing everything they can to try and stop the truth leaking out.




> An award-winning Chinese photographer has disappeared while visiting China's Xinjiang region, says his wife.
> 
> 
> Lu Guang, who lives in New York, was invited to Xinjiang for a talk in October. His wife Xu Xiaoli says she last heard from him on 3 November.
> 
> Officials later told her that national security officers in the heavily-controlled region had taken Mr Lu away.
> 
> Ms Xu told the BBC that she did not know whether Mr Lu had done anything to provoke government anger.
> 
> ...


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-46356119

----------


## OhOh

He's been around for 15years, why now?

----------


## harrybarracuda

> He's been around for 15years, why now?


Oh FFS, that's extraordinarily dim even for you.

Look at the thread title.

----------


## Latindancer

This is from May this year....I haven't noticed it announced on this thread previously, but it's worth repeating :


More than a million Chinese  Communist officials are being dispatched to live with local families in  the Western region of Xinjiang, a move seen as a sign of the  government's increasingly tightened grip over the area's predominantly  Uyghur Muslim population. 

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/14/a...ntl/index.html

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018153305.html

----------


## uncle junior

*China is Surveilling and Threatening Uighurs in the U.S.*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtYyAP67k60&list=WL&index=5

----------


## OhOh

> China is Surveilling and Threatening Uighurs in the U.S.


As your "reporter"uses the unproven 1,000,000 figure in his first sentence I stopped there.

----------


## uncle junior

> As your "reporter"uses the unproven 1,000,000 figure in his first sentence I stopped there.


He also uses 'alleged' before using the 1,000,000 figure......wasn't really about the 1 million anyway.

----------


## harrybarracuda

It's OK the chinkies are just teaching them how to play the recorder and crochet.

All harmless fun.

 :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic):

----------


## misskit

*Xinjiang Authorities ‘Preparing’ Re-education Camps Ahead of Expected International Monitors*Authorities in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) are making “preparations” in advance of international monitors who might start investigating reports of mass incarcerations of ethnic Uyghurs by improving the appearance of political re-education camps and warning residents against speaking out about the facilities, according to sources.

Beginning in April 2017, Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas have been jailed or detained in re-education camps throughout the XUAR, and some 1.1 million people are believed to have been held in the network—equating to 10 to 11 percent of the adult Muslim population of the region.

The mass detentions have drawn significant attention from the international community, and particularly from the U.S., where lawmakers have called for access to the camps and proposed sanctions against officials and entities in China deemed responsible for abusing the rights of ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the XUAR.

While Beijing initially denied the existence of re-education camps, the chairman of the XUAR government, Shohrat Zakir, told China’s official Xinhua news agency in October that the facilities are an effective tool to protect the country from terrorism and provide vocational training for Uyghurs.

But reporting by RFA’s Uyghur Service and other media organizations has shown that those held in the camps are detained against their will, are subjected to political indoctrination and rough treatment at the hands of their overseers, and endure poor diets and unhygienic conditions in the often overcrowded facilities. The atmosphere is more like a prison than any kind of school, multiple sources say. 

A source recently told RFA that residents of Awat (in Chinese, Awati) county, in the XUAR’s Aksu (Akesu) prefecture, had been informed that an “inspection team” would soon be visiting the area, which is home to three re-education camps.

Of the 5,700 detainees at No. 2 Re-education Camp, 2,700 had been transferred to No. 1 and No. 3 camps, the source said, speaking to RFA on condition of anonymity, and authorities are removing all barbed wire from the perimeter of the camp walls, as well as other security measures, such as metal bars on the doors and windows.

If anyone is asked by the inspection team how many camps exist in Awat, residents should say only one, the source added.

The source provided RFA with a copy of a "confidentiality agreement" authorities in Awat are requiring re-education camp detainees to sign, which states that they will not discuss the workings of the camps, accept any interviews, or use communication channels such as social media or SMS messaging to disseminate information about the camp system.

Those who violate the agreement are subject to "accountability according to related national laws," it reads.

Officers at police stations in Awat were unable to confirm the preparations and referred additional questions to their superiors.

However, officers at police stations in Kashgar (Kashi) prefecture’s Kargilik (Yecheng) county recently told RFA that an inspection team is believed to be arriving there within weeks, and said preparations were underway for its arrival.

When asked about the team, an officer from the Janggilieski Township Police Station told RFA that “we have done all of the preparation work,” and referred further questions to his superiors.

An officer at the Tazghun Township Police Station said “work at the local level has increased dramatically due to the forthcoming inspection,” and that he and others had been “attending to the preparation tasks.”

He referred additional questions to a team that includes public security officers, the local Communist Party secretary, and assistant police officers, which is preparing for the inspection, adding that “I can’t afford to say anything wrong.”

However, the officer confirmed that authorities had been coaching residents to refrain from saying negative things about the local government or mentioning the re-education camps, and that they had been removing barbed wire and CCTV cameras from the camps.



A copy of the 'confidentiality agreement' authorities in Awat county are requiring re-education camp detainees to sign. Credit: RFA listener




Ghulja preparations

A businessman from Ghulja (Yining) city, in Ili Kazakh (Yili Hasake) Autonomous Prefecture, who is trading in neighboring Kazakhstan, recently told RFA of a similar situation in his hometown.

“I have heard that officials are visiting households door to door, informing people that there is an inspection team coming soon,” he said.

“People are taught what to say, and they were warned not to mention the difficulties they are facing.”

According to the businessman, who also declined to provide his name, residents were told to “praise the [Communist] Party’s policies” and to “say only good things about the government.”

They were also warned that there “may be foreigners among them,” so they should refrain from mentioning anything about re-education camps.

“If you are asked about them, you must say that after attending the program they will become good people,” the businessman said.

Authorities threatened residents that any negative comments could lead to imprisonment or detention in the re-education camps, he added, while those who complain about the situation in the region will have “three generations of their family blacklisted,” and the government “will not leave them alone.”

The businessman said that his colleagues who had been to Ghulja in recent weeks had seen national flags, which are hung every 50-100 meters (165-330 feet) along streets in the city, replaced with “decorative reproductions of Uyghur musical instruments.”

“I also heard that people are being trained to sing and dance, and were repeatedly told that they must look happy and enthusiastic when visited by the inspection team,” he said.

“Authorities tell them, ‘to show your contentment with life, you must dance happily, and everyone must smile joyfully. No one may look sad, otherwise there will be consequences.’”

Meanwhile, the businessman said, police vans can regularly be seen driving about on area roads, and are believed to be transporting detainees from one camp to another.

“The scene gives people the impression that [the authorities] are preparing for a very important event,” he said.

“There used to be barbed wire on the walls of all the camps, but now it has all been removed. No one knows what is happening inside the walled compounds, or why the police vans are so busy.”


Call for access

Dolkun Isa, president of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) exile group, and other Uyghur exile leaders have long said Zakir’s claims that Uyghurs are benefiting from free job training centers in the XUAR are “aimed at deceiving the international community” and suggested that if he is telling the truth, Beijing should grant the U.N. and Western governments unfettered access to the region to investigate the camp network.

Washington-based lawyer and Uyghur activist Nury Turkel recently said that international pressure has forced China to “deny its brutal treatment and criminalization of the Uyghur people based on their race, religion, culture and traditions,” and create a narrative to suggest that Beijing “is doing a favor for the Uyghurs.”

He has urged the international community “to be extremely cautious of China’s calculated propaganda campaigns to mislead the world while continuing its onslaught on the Uyghur people.”

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018152245.html

----------


## uncle junior

> and some 1.1 million people are believed to have been held in the network


hoho just quit reading.....

----------


## OhOh

I imagine many organisations "clean up" if forewarned of an inspection. SOP. But MK appears to think it newsworthy. 


Hi ho, it's off to work she goes.

----------


## tomcat

> I imagine


...your imagination is a many-splendored pit of silliness...

----------


## uncle junior

Imagistan

----------


## SKkin

I suppose Engdahl is just as silly...

*"Beijing and the Turkic Uyghur Threat - A Holy War Against China"*

excerpts from my post here:
https://teakdoor.com/speakers-corner/...ml#post3864946




> In this issue of my periodic newsletter I want to go into the deep background to
> a little-known role of US intelligence, the CIA to be more precise, in infiltrating
> Chinas Uyghur Muslim population over a period of decades. Recent Western
> mainstream media and US Congress members have made allegations that
> Beijing has created internment camps in Chinas western Xinjiang Province
> where an estimated 11 million Muslim Uyghurs live. While Beijing vehemently
> denies interring one million Uyghurs, the charges are serving to increasingly
> demonize China as an enemy regime, along with Russia, in Western media.
> 
> ...





> CIA and Xinjiangs Uyghur Islamist Unrest
> 
> One of the major architects of Brzezinskis Islamic Arc of Crisis strategy in 1979
> and after was a career senior CIA Middle East specialist, Graham E. Fuller, a
> specialist in Islamic extremism, also known as political Islamic Jihadism. In 1999,
> Fuller wrote a policy paper for the RAND Corporation, a Pentagon-linked think
> tank, in which he stated, The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of
> helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan
> against the Russians. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what
> ...





> In September 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping made a major tour of Central
> Asian countries to announce Chinese plans to build a New Silk Road across Central
> Asia.
> 
> The plans included more natural gas for Chinese industry from
> Turkmenistan, requiring construction of a new branch line for the Central Asia-
> China gas pipeline, which will also include Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Xi Jinping
> spoke of building an economic belt along the Silk Road, a trans-Eurasian project
> spanning from the Pacific Ocean to the Baltic Sea. It would, he said in a speech in
> ...

----------


## harrybarracuda

> I suppose Engdahl is just as silly...
> 
> *"Beijing and the Turkic Uyghur Threat - A “Holy War” Against China"*
> 
> excerpts from my post here:
> https://teakdoor.com/speakers-corner/...ml#post3864946


Whoever wrote all that crap conveniently ignores (or is too stupid to understand) that China's real issue with what is a key part of Winnie's "Belt and Road" farce is that its inhabitants bow to Allah, not him. He's the sort of egotistical fucking prick that would take that personally.

----------


## Little Chuchok

The best thing that has happened to China, is Trumps sanctions. The USA is currently the ONLY country that has stood up to them. The problem with Trump, though is that he is so unpredictable.



There is one thing for sure though...The very one thing that the Chin do not want, is a public back lash in the west. They know the power of people (They do it all the time) and how it will hurt them.

----------


## misskit

*Czech and Slovak Scholars, Public Figures Call on China to Close Political Re-education Camps in Xinjiang*A group of 115 Czech and Slovak scholars and public figures have appealed to China’s government to shut down political re-education camps in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and commit to the protection of human rights in the country.

In a statement marking the 70th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on Monday, the 115 representatives of academia, public life, nongovernmental organizations, and think tanks expressed concerns over the repression of ethnic Uyghurs, Tibetans and other ethnic and religious minorities, as well as civil society the media and other social groups in China.

The group said it was “particularly alarmed by the repression of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and condemn the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of people in political reeducation camps.”

Beginning in April 2017, Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas have been jailed or detained in re-education camps throughout the XUAR, and some 1.1 million people are believed to have been held in the network—equating to 10 to 11 percent of the adult Muslim population of the region.

On Monday, the group called on China to “immediately release all persons detained in the political reeducation camps, to end the repressive policy in Xinjiang, Tibet and other minority regions, and to uphold political, religious and cultural rights.”

They also noted that Beijing is “using ever more assertive methods” to advance its claims in disputed border areas, including supporting non-democratic regimes and working to weaken the political systems and societies of democratic countries, adding that these tactics “compromise liberal values in international relations and pose a security threat to the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic.”

They urged Czech and Slovak state authorities to join an international call for the observance of universal human rights in China, to end cooperation with state and non-state actors within and outside of China which are involved in the repression of Uyghurs and other Chinese people, to fast-track political asylum applications from Chinese nationals, and to strengthen support for human rights and democracy.

‘We cannot stay silent’

Speaking to RFA’s Uyghur Service, Martin Slobodnik, a professor of Chinese and Tibetan Studies at Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia, said he and other signatories felt the need to “raise awareness about this ugly face of the Chinese regime” on the anniversary of the UDHR, which was enacted by the U.N. and established, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected.

“We also call on the authorities in the Czech Republic and Slovakia to include the issue of human rights and especially the persecution of ethnic groups in Xinjiang into their bilateral agenda with China,” he said.

“We cannot stay silent and just watch when hundreds of thousands of innocent people have to endure imprisonment and brainwashing just because they are Uyghurs or they are Muslims.”

Slobodnik said that the growing global role of China in international politics and economy had left governments more reluctant to voice concerns about rights abuses in China, and suggested that it was the responsibility of scholars and civil society to do so.

He highlighted Slovakia and the Czech Republic’s own history of Communist persecution between the years of 1948 and 1988, when they were united as the Soviet-aligned state of Czechoslovakia, which he said had created “a heightened sensitivity towards authoritarian control and Communism in general” amongst the population—especially among intellectuals and academics.


Universal rights

Ondrej Klimes, a researcher at the Czech Academy of Sciences’ Oriental Institute, who spearheaded Monday’s statement, told RFA that it was time for scholars and academics throughout the world to inform the public and state institutions about the issue of human rights violations in China.

“It’s good for the Chinese authorities to know that the number of people throughout the world who are concerned about the situation in China is quite high … and the negative reaction to China’s policies is rising,” he said.

“This message actually implies that the number of people who think that human rights and civil rights and cultural rights and religious rights and all other rights which are being violated today within [the XUAR] or within the other regions of China … are universal, so it actually is a common problem of mankind and human rights are universal, regardless of what a national government that is elected or self-appointed says.”

Klimes said that while the appeal is partly aimed at China, it also called on the governments of Slovakia and the Czech Republic to only take part in Chinese-led trade initiatives “on the condition that human rights are observed within the People’s Republic of China.”

“We think that in a democratic society, citizens or academics or media can actually initiate a conversation and cooperation with their [own] governments, which will hopefully lead to action from these national governments towards the government of the People’s Republic of China,” he said.


Mass detentions

Monday’s statement joined that of 21 rights groups—including Munich-based World Uyghur Congress and U.S.-based International Tibet Network—who called on the international community to “stand up to the Chinese government” over rights violations against Uyghurs, Tibetans and other ethnic minorities.

Mass detentions in the XUAR have drawn significant attention from the international community, and particularly from the U.S., where lawmakers have called for access to the camps and proposed sanctions against officials and entities in China deemed responsible for abusing the rights of ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.

While Beijing initially denied the existence of re-education camps, the chairman of the XUAR government, Shohrat Zakir, told China’s official Xinhua news agency in October that the facilities are an effective tool to protect the country from terrorism and provide vocational training for Uyghurs.

But reporting by RFA’s Uyghur Service and other media organizations has shown that those held in the camps are detained against their will, are subjected to political indoctrination and rough treatment at the hands of their overseers, and endure poor diets and unhygienic conditions in the often overcrowded facilities. The atmosphere is more like a prison than any kind of school, multiple sources say.

The statements marking the 70th anniversary of the UDHR came as RFA learned that authorities in the XUAR capital Urumqi had arrested well-known poet, writer, film director and producer Muhter Bughra, who worked for the Xinjiang People’s TV Station.

The timing and reason for his arrest was not immediately clear, and sources were unable to confirm whether he had been imprisoned or sent to a re-education camp.



https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...018162357.html

----------


## uncle junior

*In locked compound, minorities in China make clothes for US*


HOTAN, CHINA Barbed wire and hundreds of cameras ring a massive compound of more than 30 dormitories, schools, warehouses and workshops in China's far west. Dozens of armed officers and a growling Doberman stand guard outside.
Behind locked gates, men and women are sewing sportswear that can end up on U.S. college campuses and sports teams.

This is one of a growing number of internment camps in the Xinjiang region, where by some estimates 1 million Muslims are detained, forced to give up their language and their religion and subject to political indoctrination. Now, the Chinese government is also forcing some detainees to work in manufacturing and food industries. Some of them are within the internment camps; others are privately owned, state-subsidized factories where detainees are sent once they are released.

The Associated Press has tracked recent, ongoing shipments from one such factory inside an internment camp to Badger Sportswear, a leading supplier in Statesville, North Carolina. The shipments show how difficult it is to stop products made with forced labor from getting into the global supply chain, even though such imports are illegal in the U.S. Badger CEO John Anton said Sunday that the company would source sportswear elsewhere while it investigates.

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/bu...ylink=readnext

----------


## tomcat

*China Targets Prominent Uighur Intellectuals to Erase an Ethnic Identity*

Rahile Dawut, below with camera, is an anthropologist at Xinjiang University who studied Islamic shrines, traditional songs and folklore. She was detained in December 2017 and has not been heard from since.CreditLisa Ross


By Austin Ramzy (NYT)

ISTANBUL — As a writer and magazine editor, Qurban Mamut promoted the culture and history of his people, the Uighurs, and that of other Turkic minority groups who live in far western China. He did so within the strict confines of censorship imposed by the Chinese authorities, who are ever wary of ethnic separatism and Islamic extremism among the predominantly Muslim peoples of the region.

It was a line that Mr. Mamut navigated successfully for 26 years, eventually rising to become editor in chief of the Communist Party-controlled magazine Xinjiang Civilization before retiring in 2011.
“My father is very smart; he knows what is the red line, and if you cross it you are taken to jail,” said his son, Bahram Sintash, who now lives in Virginia. “You work very close to the red line to teach people the culture. You have to be smart and careful with your words.”
Then last year, the red line moved. Suddenly, Mr. Mamut and more than a hundred other Uighur intellectuals who had successfully navigated the worlds of academia, art and journalism became the latest targets of a sweeping crackdown in the region of Xinjiang that has ensnared as many as one million Muslims in indoctrination camps.

The mass detention of some of China’s most accomplished Uighurs has become an alarming symbol of the Communist Party’s most intense social-engineering drive in decades, according to scholars, human rights advocates and exiled Uighurs.
As the guardians of Uighur traditions, chroniclers of their history and creators of their art, the intellectuals were building the Central Asian, Turkic-speaking society’s reservoir of collective memory within the narrow limits of authoritarian rule. Their detention underscores the party’s attempts to decimate Uighur identity in order to remold the group into a people who are largely secular, integrated into mainstream Chinese culture and compliant with the Communist Party, observers say.
The Chinese government has described the detentions as a job training program aimed at providing employment opportunities for some of the country’s poorest people. But a list of more than 100 detained Uighur scholars compiled by exiles includes many prominent poets and writers, university heads and professors of everything from anthropology to Uighur history.
“The fact that highly educated intellectuals and academics and scientists and software engineers are being held in these facilities is one of the best counterarguments to authorities’ claims that this is some kind of educational program meant to benefit Uighurs,” said Maya Wang, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watch.

The removal of high-profile Uighur scholars familiar with the Chinese government, and the country’s education and legal systems, is aimed at erasing not only the group’s unique ethnic identity but also its ability to defend such traditions, said a Uighur professor now living in Istanbul who asked not to be identified because of possible risks to family in Xinjiang.

Qurban Mamut, a magazine editor in Xinjiang who has been detained. “My father is very smart; he knows what is the red line,” his son said. 


Qurban Mamut, a magazine editor in Xinjiang who has been detained. “My father is very smart; he knows what is the red line,” his son said.

Many scholars trace the assault on intellectuals to the imprisonment of Ilham Tohti, a Uighur economist, in 2014. Mr. Tohti, who was an outspoken critic of the discrimination Uighurs face in China, was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of separatism.
More detentions came in 2017. Many of those targeted worked on preserving Uighur culture.

Rahile Dawut, one of the most well known of the disappeared Uighur academics, is an anthropologist at Xinjiang University who studied Islamic shrines, traditional songs and folklore. Ms. Dawut was detained in December 2017 and hasn’t been heard from since.

Before the crackdown, the Uighur intellectual elite offered a bridge between the body of Uighur society, who number about 11 million and are largely poor farmers, and the much wealthier Han Chinese, who dominate economic and political power. The scholars also worked carefully to try to improve the lot of a group that complained of widespread discrimination and draconian restrictions on religious activity.
These scholars offered a moderate path, where Uighurs could maintain religious and cultural practices without turning to extreme and isolationist ideas, said Rune Steenberg, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen.
“This is the really big tragedy about the clampdown,” Dr. Steenberg said. “They were actually bridge builders of integration of broader Uighur society into modern Chinese society and economy.”
Many young Uighurs have been inspired by the scholars’ accomplishments, said Erkin Sidick, a Uighur engineer who went to the United States for graduate school in 1988 and now works on telescopes for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Mr. Sidick said hundreds would attend informal talks he gave on pursuing graduate degrees and many closely studied a book he published that compiled biographies of Uighur academics.
“Uighur people value education very much,” he said.

Now, Uighurs keep a grimmer list of Uighur intellectuals — those who have disappeared in the current campaign.

Tahir Hamut, a Uighur poet who lives in Virginia, began working with other Uighur exiles to collect the names of those detained over the past year based on news reports and information from families and classmates. The list has now grown to 159 Uighurs and five others from other minority groups.
“These people are all the most prestigious in Xinjiang,” Mr. Hamut said. “They are models who all study diligently and raise themselves up. Their arrest is a great injury, a great attack to all Uighurs.”

The Chinese authorities have accused Uighurs in official positions of being “two-faced,” or mouthing the official line in public but resisting the crackdown in private. Such labels have surrounded the removal of several top administrators at universities in Xinjiang.

The Xinjiang government propaganda department and the news office for the State Council, China’s cabinet, did not respond to faxed requests for comment. But officials in Xinjiang have clearly stated their resolve to pursue people they see as hindering efforts to rewire Uighurs and steer them from what authorities have called religious extremism.
“Break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections and break their origins,” wrote Maisumujiang Maimuer, a religious affairs official, in a commentary in the state news media. “Completely shovel up the roots of ‘two-faced people,’ dig them out, and vow to fight these two-faced people until the end.”

The campaign has not spared scholars who expressed support for the party, such as Abdulqadir Jalaleddin, a scholar of medieval Central Asian poetry at Xinjiang Normal University who worked to preserve Uighur culture and identity.
“He was a very moderate man who always tried to give a balanced view, so much so that a lot of Uyghur nationalists accused him of selling out to the regime,” Rachel Harris, who studies Uighur music at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and has known Mr. Jalaleddin for more than a decade, said in an email. (Uyghur is an alternative spelling of Uighur.)



The Xinjiang government propaganda department and the news office for the State Council, China’s cabinet, did not respond to faxed requests for comment. But officials in Xinjiang have clearly stated their resolve to pursue people they see as hindering efforts to rewire Uighurs and steer them from what authorities have called religious extremism.
“Break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections and break their origins,” wrote Maisumujiang Maimuer, a religious affairs official, in a commentary in the state news media. “Completely shovel up the roots of ‘two-faced people,’ dig them out, and vow to fight these two-faced people until the end.”

The campaign has not spared scholars who expressed support for the party, such as Abdulqadir Jalaleddin, a scholar of medieval Central Asian poetry at Xinjiang Normal University who worked to preserve Uighur culture and identity.
“He was a very moderate man who always tried to give a balanced view, so much so that a lot of Uyghur nationalists accused him of selling out to the regime,” Rachel Harris, who studies Uighur music at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and has known Mr. Jalaleddin for more than a decade, said in an email. (Uyghur is an alternative spelling of Uighur.)

Last year, Mr. Jalaleddin joined a government-led campaign for prominent Uighurs to write open letters declaring their allegiance to the state.
Despite that declaration, he was detained in January 2018, according to overseas Uighur organizations.
“So many moderate intellectuals have been detained now,” Dr. Harris said. “I don’t know how else to understand this, except as a deliberate policy to deprive Uyghurs of their cultural memory.”

It is a pattern that has repeated itself in the far western region. The authorities targeted Uighur intellectuals after the People’s Liberation Army occupied Xinjiang in 1949, and even before in the late 1930s, when Xinjiang was ruled by a Soviet-backed warlord, said Ondrej Klimes, a researcher with the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences who studies Xinjiang and the Uighurs.
“It makes the community easier to be subjugated, more cooperative, more docile,” Dr. Klimes said. “You have this whenever an authoritarian regime comes, they first target intellectuals.”

By detaining so many influential figures, the government appears to be acknowledging that its efforts to woo Uighurs to accept the primacy of the Chinese state have failed, and that it must use more forceful methods, Dr. Steenberg said.
“The government has lost,” he said, “and now like a chess player about to lose, it swipes the board.”

----------


## David48atTD

China's mass surveillance of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjian province revealed in data security flaw



A map showing the density of trackers connected to the SenseNets database.


China is closely monitoring 2.5 million people in what  has been called a "Muslim tracker", exposing millions of records  containing sensitive personal information on an unprotected online  database, according to a Dutch cyber expert.

*Key points:*


The database was unprotected online for almost seven monthsMany names appear to be typically Muslim and located in Xinjiang provinceExperts say it reveals China's widespread surveillance of the Uyghur minority group 

 Victor Gevers, a researcher with GDI.foundation, found  names, identification card numbers, birth dates, employers and locations  were all exposed for almost seven months on an insecure database run by  SenseNets, a company contracted by Chinese police that uses artificial  intelligence for facial recognition, crowd analysis and personal  verification.

----------


## OhOh

^

But China "monitors all of it's 1,418,160,025 citizens 9,000 out of 1,418,160,025 citizens. 

0.00063%  hardly mass observation. 

What % of world citizens have mobile phones, what % have  internet accounts. But of course none of these are "monitored" by government agencies, software providers or hardware vendors.  :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic):

----------


## Cujo

> ^
> 
> But China "monitors all of it's 1,418,160,025 citizens 9,000 out of 1,418,160,025 citizens. 
> 
> 0.00063%  hardly mass observation. 
> 
> What % of world citizens have mobile phones, what % have  internet accounts. But of course none of these are "monitored" by government agencies, software providers or hardware vendors.


 :Pat:

----------


## uncle junior

> Experts say it reveals China's widespread surveillance of the Uyghur minority group






> But China "monitors all of it's 1,418,160,025 citizens 9,000 out of 1,418,160,025 citizens.


they don't surveil 1.4 billion though do they...nor are they locking up the 1.4 bil in re-education detainment camps

----------


## tomcat

> they don't surveil 1.4 billion though do they...nor are they locking up the 1.4 bil in re-education detainment camps


...yet...

----------


## harrybarracuda

> they don't surveil 1.4 billion though do they...nor are they locking up the 1.4 bil in re-education detainment camps


For damned fucking sure they're working on it.

----------


## uncle junior

> For damned fucking sure they're working on it.


1.4 billion in re-ed camps.....should keep these guys busy for awhile


*US military contractor to build Muslim Uyghur 'internment camp' in China*
https://www.yenisafak.com/en/world/u...-china-3473394

----------


## harrybarracuda

> 1.4 billion in re-ed camps.....should keep these guys busy for awhile
> 
> 
> *US military contractor to build Muslim Uyghur 'internment camp' in China*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.yenisafak.com/en/world/u...-china-3473394


It makes a rather big difference when you actually elucidate.

I think the phrase is "disgraced former US military contractor and brother of bimbo who bought a seat in baldy orange cunto's cabinet"....

----------


## misskit

*China Spiriting Uyghur Detainees Away From Xinjiang to Prisons in Inner Mongolia, Sichuan*Ethnic Uyghurs held in political “re-education camps” in northwest China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region (XUAR) are being sent to prisons in Inner Mongolia and Sichuan province, officials have confirmed, adding to the growing list of locations detainees are being secretly transferred to.

In October last year, RFA’s Uyghur Service reported that authorities in the XUAR had begun covertly sending detainees to prisons in Heilongjiang province and other parts of China to address an “overflow” in overcrowded camps, where up to 1.1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas have been held since April 2017.

And earlier this month, RFA spoke to officials in both Shaanxi province and neighboring Gansu province, who confirmed that Uyghur and other Muslim detainees from the XUAR had been sent to prisons there, although they were unable to provide specific numbers or dates for when they had been transferred.

The first report, which was based on statements by officials in both the XUAR and Heilongjiang, came in the same month that XUAR chairman Shohrat Zakir confirmed to China’s official Xinhua news agency the existence of the camps, calling them an effective tool to protect the country from terrorism and provide vocational training for Uyghurs.

As global condemnation over the camp network has grown, including calls for international observers to be allowed into the XUAR to investigate the situation there, reports suggest that authorities may be transferring detainees to other parts of China as part of a bid to obfuscate the scale of detentions of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the region.

RFA recently spoke to an official at the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Women’s Prison who said that detainees from the XUAR had been transferred to detention facilities in the region, but was unable to provide details without obtaining authorization from higher-level officials.

“There are two prisons that hold prisoners from Xinjiang—they are Wutaqi [in Hinggan (in Chinese, Xing'an) League’s Jalaid Banner] Prison and Salaqi [in Bogot (Baotou) city’s Tumd Right Banner] Prison,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

When asked how many Uyghur detainees are held in the prisons, the official said she could not disclose the number “because it is strictly confidential.”

The official said she had attended a meeting on transfers of detainees from the XUAR and that prior to the meeting attendees had received notices informing them that “we are not allowed to disclose any information regarding the transportation program.”

“Regardless of who is making inquiries, we cannot disclose any information unless we first obtain permission from our superiors,” she said.

An official at the Wutaqi Prison Command Center also told RFA that detainees from the XUAR are being held at Wutaqi, as well as a second one in Inner Mongolia, without specifying which one.

The official, who also declined to provide his name, said the detainees had been transferred to the two prisons as early as August last year, but was unsure whether they were being permanently relocated to the two prisons or being held there temporarily before they are transferred elsewhere.

“The prisoners are placed in two prisons, but [the officials at the facilities] don’t report to us about what is happening inside,” he said, before referring further inquiries to his supervisor.

“Regarding the number and the exact location of where they are held [in the prisons], I am unable to say,” he said.

The official said he was unsure of whether any detainees from the XUAR had been sent to Inner Mongolia recently, as information about the transfers is closely guarded.

“It is impossible for me to tell you how many prisoners have been transferred here this month or last month,” he said.

“The authorities are keeping all the information very secret—even we don’t know the details.”


Sichuan transfers

Reports of detainee transfers from the XUAR to Inner Mongolia followed indications from officials in Sichuan province that prisons there are also accepting those held in XUAR re-education camps.

When asked which prisons XUAR detainees are being sent to in Sichuan, an official who answered the phone at the Sichuan Provincial Prison Administration told an RFA reporter that if he was calling to “visit them,” he would first have to make an official request.

One official at a prison believed to hold detainees from the XUAR in Yibin, a prefectural-level city in southeast Sichuan, told RFA that he “can’t discuss this issue over the phone” and suggested that the reporter file an official request for information.

But when asked about whether there had been any “ideological changes” to procedures at the facility, a fellow official who answered the phone said “these detentions are connected to terrorism, so I can’t answer such questions.”

“The transfer of Xinjiang detainees is a secretive part of our work at the prison, so I can’t tell you anything about it,” she added.

The statements from officials in Inner Mongolia and Sichuan province followed recent reports by Bitter Winter, a website launched by the Italian research center CESNUR that focuses on religious in China, which cited “informed sources” as confirming that detainees from the XUAR are being sent to prison facilities in other parts of the country.

The website, which routinely publishes photos and video documenting human rights violations submitted by citizen journalists from inside China, cited “CCP (Chinese Communist Party) insiders” as saying that more than 200 elderly Uyghurs in their sixties and seventies have been transferred to Ordos Prison in Inner Mongolia.

Bitter Winter also cited another source in Inner Mongolia who said one detainee was “beaten to death by the police” during his transfer, and expressed concern that the victim’s body “might already have been cremated.”

The website has previously said that authorities plan to disperse and detain “an estimated 500,000 Uyghur Muslims” throughout China, although this report could not be independently confirmed by RFA.


Call to action

Dolkun Isa, president of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress exile group, told RFA he was “deeply troubled” by the reports of secret transfers of detainees from the XUAR to prisons in other parts of China, saying the move signalled a “very dark intent” by authorities.

“We simply cannot imagine what kind of treatment they are enduring at the hands of Chinese guards in these prisons, as this is shrouded in complete secrecy,” he said, adding that he was concerned for the well-being of the detainees.

Isa called on the international community to turn its attention to the transfers and demanded that the Chinese government disclose the total number of detainees who had been moved, as well as the location of the prisons they had been sent to.

“If the United Nations, U.S., EU, Turkey and other Muslims nations do not voice their concerns over this troubling development in a timely manner, I fear these innocent Uyghurs will perish in Chinese prisons without a trace,” he said.

China recently organized two visits to monitor re-education camps in the XUAR—one for a small group of foreign journalists, and another for diplomats from non-Western countries, including Russia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan and Thailand—during which officials dismissed claims about mistreatment and poor conditions in the facilities as “slanderous lies.”

Reporting by RFA’s Uyghur Service and other media organizations, however, has shown 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.

Adrian Zenz, a lecturer in social research methods at the Germany-based European School of Culture and Theology, has said that some 1.1 million people are or have been detained in the camps—equating to 10 to 11 percent of the adult Muslim population of the XUAR.

In November 2018, Scott Busby, the deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the U.S. Department of State, said there are "at least 800,000 and possibly up to a couple of million" Uyghurs and others detained at re-education camps in the XUAR without charges, citing U.S. intelligence assessments.

Citing credible reports, U.S. lawmakers Marco Rubio and Chris Smith, who head the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China, recently called the situation in the XUAR "the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today."



https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...019162142.html

----------


## harrybarracuda

Out of sight, out of mind. Also allows them to move loyal chinky drones into their place.

----------


## tomcat

*China’s expanding war on Islam: Now they’re coming for the Kazakhs.*
*
It’s not just Uighurs. Muslims across the border are also caught in the crackdown.
*By *Reid Standish (WaPo)*

ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN

Sometimes Zharqynbek Otan can be found in the middle of the night, standing stiffly at attention beside the bed he shares with his wife, Shynar Kylysheva. She says his memory fails him, and he periodically wanders off into the streets of Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city. When his family manages to find him, he has 

 for his release from a camp in Zhaosu County, but when he came home in late 2018, he brought the trauma of his ordeal back across the border with him: Otan is not the man he was.

Cases like his are common in this part of the country. And they represent a significant shift in Beijing’s repressive approach to Muslim minorities. For decades, China has suppressed the language and faith of its Muslim citizens. But until recently, the effort has been contained largely within China’s own borders. Now the sweep has come to include the fluid region where Chinese nationals and Kazakh citizens have long moved freely back and forth between their countries, with those on opposite sides of the border mingling and marrying and working among one another.

Like thousands of other ethnic Kazakhs caught up in the crackdown, Otan is a Chinese national married to a Kazakh citizen and living in Kazakhstan as a legal resident. He traveled to China in late 2016 to obtain documents necessary for taking Kazakh citizenship. Instead, officials arrested him, seized his passport and sent him to a camp in January 2017, Otan says, where he lived alongside people whose ethnic identities, distinct from the Han majority that controls China, seem to scare Beijing. Prisoners at these places are taught to abandon their Turkic-based mother tongues and renounce outward displays of Islam. And while the targets have for years been supposed domestic enemies, China now pursues some Kazakhs with the same zeal — cleaving families and even violating Kazakhstan’s sovereignty to send them for reeducation in the expanding camp system.
_
[New evidence emerges of China forcing Muslims into ‘reeducation’ camps]_
_
A board in the Atajurt Eriktileri office with information about Kazakhs detained in China. Atajurt is a grass-roots organization in Almaty helping families with missing relatives in neighboring Xinjiang. (Izturgan Aldauyev/For The Washington Post)_
_
It’s unclear exactly how many people are in some sort of detention in Xinjiang, but the State Department estimates that between 800,000 and 2 million people have been detained since 2017. After initially denying the existence of the reeducation camps, Beijing has since switched to defending them as necessary to combat Islamist extremism and terrorism. The state primarily targets Uighurs, the Turkic group that makes up the largest share of Muslims in China, but other Muslim minorities, like Kyrgyz, Hui and, increasingly, Kazakhs — both citizens of Kazakhstan and ethnic Kazakh Chinese nationals — have been caught in the broadening dragnet._

Rian Thum, a senior research fellow at the University of Nottingham and an expert on Xinjiang, told me he was surprised to see Kazakhs swept up in the camps along with Uighurs, since Kazakhs had long been viewed by the Chinese state as a model Muslim group that accepted Communist Party rule. There are nearly 1.5 million ethnic Kazakhs living in Xinjiang, making them the second-largest Muslim group in the region after Uighurs. Thum says the new hard line against Kazakhs is motivated by the same “blend of Islamophobia and racism” toward Muslim minorities that has led Uighurs to be viewed as dangerous.


A tourism slogan and a map of Xinjiang decorated a wall in front of a residential compound in Kashgar, Xinjiang, last year. (Bloomberg News)

“Distrust has spread to any ethnic group that has cultural similarity to the Uighurs,” he said. “If you are non-Chinese and majority Muslim, your group is viewed as a threat by the Communist Party.”

Detailed information about what is transpiring in Xinjiang itself is hard to find. The region has become a dystopian police state, complete with public video surveillance, regular scans of digital devices and coded ID cards used to track the movements of their holders. Those who have managed to escape detention and leave Xinjiang report being told to stay silent about their ordeal, lest their relatives in China be imprisoned in their place. But after conducting 60 interviews in Kazakhstan with former detainees and people with relatives missing in Xinjiang, I see a grim picture emerging from inside the region.

There’s no single reason for China’s crackdown in Xinjiang or for its spread. Things took a turn in 2009 after riots in Xinjiang claimed 200 mostly Han lives. Terrorist attacks by Uighurs in the following years escalated the security situation, culminating in swift retaliation by Beijing in the name of fighting extremism.
But the current “people’s war” on terrorism is less about that than about the strategic importance of Xinjiang and a rising strain of Han nationalism.Xinjiang’s western location makes it a vital launching spot for Beijing’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road global infrastructure project, and the Chinese government has taken to stamping out any form of perceived unrest or lawlessness that could hamper its economic prospects. Meanwhile, nationalism has led to more aggressive attempts at coerced cultural assimilation for minorities and a deep suspicion of all religions, especially Islam. The reeducation camp system is in part an effort to make Muslim minorities adopt a pan-Chinese identity, forcing them to learn Mandarin, memorize Communist Party songs and eat pork. Religion, particularly Islam, is seen as contradictory to this Chinese identity, and officials have spoken openlyabout the need to “Sinicize” Islam and make it “compatible with socialism.” These efforts, however, have taken the form of an extreme human engineering project.


“They said that I was a traitor because I lived in Kazakhstan,” said Gulzira Auelkhankyzy, an ethnic Kazakh Chinese national who spent 15 months in a reeducation camp in Xinjiang. Auelkhankyzy had been working as a seamstress and living in Kazakhstan as a legal resident with her husband, who abandoned his Chinese passport for Kazakh citizenship. Their two children, who are Chinese citizens, stayed in Xinjiang with their grandparents, and Auelkhankyzy was detained in China while fetching them to live in Kazakhstan. During her detention, Auelkhankyzy says, she was interrogated about her ties abroad and accused of espionage because of her time in Kazakhstan. After her release from the camp, where she was forced to learn Chinese and live in squalor, Chinese officials demanded that Auelkhankyzy sign a contract to work at a Xinjiang factory sewing gloves for $88 a month. She labored for three months there before being allowed to return to Kazakhstan in January. She is now reunited with her husband, although their children remain in Xinjiang.

Auelkhankyzy says she still thinks about the women with whom she was interned. “Lots of us were mothers, but we couldn’t see our children and often wondered who was taking care of them,” she said. “Xinjiang has become a land of orphans.”

Ethnic Kazakhs previously moved with ease between China and Kazakhstan, which positioned itself as the ancestral homeland for the Kazakh diaspora spread across Eurasia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Roughly 200,000 Chinese nationals became citizens of Kazakhstan so they could live there after the country of 18 million gained independence in 1991. But cross-border ties have become a liability for those inside China and caused them to be viewed with suspicion. According to a report by Human Rights Watch, foreign connections are now considered a punishable offense, with the authorities in Xinjiang targeting people who have ties to 26 “sensitive countries,” Kazakhstan among them. “So many Kazakhs [in China] have strong links abroad,” said Gene Bunin, a Russian American writer and translator who runs the Xinjiang Victims Database, a project documenting the testimonies of detainees and their families. “You can’t do a crackdown in Xinjiang without also targeting the Kazakhs, otherwise information would reach the world even more than it has.”


An exact accounting of the ethnic breakdown of the camp system is unavailable, and the diverging sets of available figures highlight the difficulties and competing interests in gleaning the full scope of what is happening to Kazakhs in Xinjiang. Atajurt Eriktileri, a grass-roots organization in Almaty helping families with missing relatives in Xinjiang, told me it has documented more than 10,000 cases of ethnic Kazakhs interned in China. The victims database headed by Bunin has collected nearly 3,000 testimonies in the past year, about half from ethnic Kazakhs, but that figure represents only a small fraction of the estimated total. The Kazakh government has spoken publicly only about the cases pertaining to its own citizens, saying that 29 have been detained in recent years in China, of whom 15 have been released, but it has framed the issue as a bureaucratic error rather than extrajudicial detention. For the thousands of ethnic Kazakhs sent to the camps who are Chinese nationals — even those who were permanent residents of Kazakhstan — there are few avenues for recourse, and cases like Otan’s and Auelkhankyzy’s are the exceptions.

While the camps are the most extreme form of detention, other Kazakhs have been jailed or placed under house arrest, or simply had their passports seized upon entering China and are now unable to leave. Oral Zhanabil told me that his father, Turan Mukhametkan, a Chinese citizen living in Kazakhstan, was detained while traveling to Xinjiang to collect his pension money in September 2017. Zhanabil doesn’t know the official reason for his father’s detention, but after spending nearly a year in a camp, Mukhametkan was released under house arrest in January; he has still not been able to leave China.



Other cases are more politically sensitive for Kazakhstan’s autocratic government, which prizes its relationship with Beijing. Askar Azatbek, a former Xinjiang official who became a Kazakh citizen, was apparently taken in December 2017 while on the Kazakh side of Khorgos, a free-trade zone on the border. Azatbek was with a friend when two cars came from the Chinese side and detained them. The friend was released, but Azatbek was taken to China, and his relatives have not had contact with him since.

Sayragul Sauytbay, an ethnic Kazakh Chinese national who worked in a camp and crossed illegally into Kazakhstan in April 2018 after finding out that she herself would be detained in one, is another diplomatic headache for the Kazakh government. Sauytbay is trying to claim asylum and says she knows the inner workings of the camps, but her application has been denied by the Kazakh government twice. When I interviewed her in January for Foreign Policy magazine, she said Chinese officials had tried to keep her silent by threatening her relatives still in Xinjiang. She feared that Kazakhstan would soon bend to growing pressure from Beijing for her extradition and send her back to China.

These cases present a diplomatic minefield for the Kazakh government. China is one of Kazakhstan’s main investors and a strategic partner in the Belt and Road initiative. In the past, Kazakh authorities have sent Uighur asylum seekers back to China, and the Kazakh government’s poor human rights record shows that it has few reservations about mistreating its own people. But Sauytbay’s case and the plight of ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang have shifted public opinion to their side, and the Kazakh government has consequently engaged in behind-the-scenes negotiations with the Chinese to secure the release of some Kazakhs in the camps.


Zharqynbek Otan, at home in Almaty with his young son on Feb. 26, looks over his permit for permanent residency in Kazakhstan. (Izturgan Aldauyev/For The Washington Post)

While this diplomatic activity has been encouraging for families with relatives interned in Xinjiang, there are signs that the Kazakh authorities are unnerved by the outpouring of support at home for the detained Kazakhs. Serikzhan Bilash, the head of Atajurt Eriktileri, was fined in February by an Almaty court for operating an unregistered organization, despite having his previous attempts to register denied by the state. Bilash told me he expects more attempts by Kazakh authorities to use legal means to impede his organization’s work. And Sauytbay fired her lawyer after he became unreachable at key moments in her case and encouraged her to be silent, she said.
The Kazakh government has made clear that it won’t stand up to China as it tries to erase the identities of Muslims in Xinjiang. But with internment camps next door continuing to swell with Kazakhs, Uighurs and other groups, the truth about Xinjiang may become too big to ignore.

----------


## foobar

All China has to do is relabel as ISIS and all will be well.

The US & allies are currently in Syria turning entire towns into car parks and funding detention centres.  While the west tut tuts at China's re-education camps.

----------


## OhOh

Shush, you will cause internal bleeding.  :Smile:

----------


## harrybarracuda

> All China has to do is relabel as ISIS and all will be well.
> 
> The US & allies are currently in Syria turning entire towns into car parks and funding detention centres.  While the west tut tuts at China's re-education camps.


How convenient. It's only a few months ago you whackjobs were crowing about how Putin was sorting out ISIS.

How quickly you forget your own bullshit.

 :rofl:

----------


## OhOh

> How convenient. It's only a few months ago you whackjobs were crowing about how Putin was sorting out ISIS.
> 
> How quickly you forget your own bullshit.


THE LORD and his Foreign Minister have spoken many times about ISIS being moved, by ameristani military transports, to "other places. So no, we do not forget.

----------


## harrybarracuda

> THE LORD and his Foreign Minister have spoken many times about ISIS being moved, by ameristani military transports, to "other places. So no, we do not forget.


Which of course is Putin horseshit.

Maybe you should stick to posting horseshit about reality of the Chinese imprisoning a million of its citizens.

----------


## OhOh

> Chinese imprisoning a million of its citizens


Still relying on the meristani accuser, one out of eighteen investigators, unproven claims.  :Smile:

----------


## foobar

> How convenient. It's *only a few months ago you whackjobs were crowing about how Putin was sorting out ISIS.*
> 
> How quickly you forget your own bullshit.


Quote me or it didn't happen...

----------


## harrybarracuda

> Quote me or it didn't happen...


Shut up junior, if I want any shit from your posts, I'll just find one of OhOh's.

----------


## harrybarracuda

> Still relying on the meristani accuser, one out of eighteen investigators, unproven claims.


Yes, a few more than that.

Lots of pics on Google Earth as well. Bet the chinkies wish they could shut that down.

https://www.xxx.xxx.xx/news/2018-11-...camps/10432924

----------


## OhOh

> Yes, a few more than that.


A few more what, real of fake MSM, more fake exaggerated claims from a minority unofficial source?





> https://www.xxx.xxx.xx/news/2018-11-...camps/10432924


Your link doesn't work.  :Smile: 

Any pics, from anywhere , you can provide links to, any factual reports you can provide links to?

Just fake news as usual.

----------


## harrybarracuda

> A few more what, real of fake MSM, more fake exaggerated claims from a minority unofficial source?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Your link doesn't work. 
> 
> Any pics, from anywhere , you can provide links to, any factual reports you can provide links to?
> 
> Just fake news as usual.



Ah the old abc dot net dot au problem.

Just use that instead of xxx.xxx.xx

If you want to, that is.

Being the sycophant, you'll probably try and wheedle out of it.

----------


## uncle junior

mandatory boarding schools for a million Uighur's........
*

Muslim Detention Camps Are Like ‘Boarding Schools,’ Chinese Official Says*


“Some voices internationally have said Xinjiang has concentration camps or re-education camps. These claims are pure lies,” Mr. Zakir said at the gathering of Xinjiang delegates of the Communist Party-controlled legislature, the National People’s Congress, which was opened to journalists.

“In fact, our centers are like boarding schools where the students eat and live for free,” Mr. Zakir said, using their official name, 
“educational training centers.”

He indicated that the camps could eventually be phased out, but did not say how long that might take.


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/w...At1F4rD4xpmUvM

----------


## harrybarracuda

> mandatory boarding schools for a million Uighur's........
> *
> 
> Muslim Detention Camps Are Like ‘Boarding Schools,’ Chinese Official Says*
> 
> 
> “Some voices internationally have said Xinjiang has concentration camps or re-education camps. These claims are pure lies,” Mr. Zakir said at the gathering of Xinjiang delegates of the Communist Party-controlled legislature, the National People’s Congress, which was opened to journalists.
> 
> “In fact, our centers are like boarding schools where the students eat and live for free,” Mr. Zakir said, using their official name, 
> ...


They would probably describe Auschwitz as a "family-friendly holiday resort".

----------


## foobar

Still sounds much better than Gitmo and the US funded detention centres in Syria.

----------


## tomcat

> Still sounds much better than Gitmo and the US funded detention centres in Syria


...certainly does...particularly if you believe Chinese propaganda...

----------


## foobar

^Given western media will leap on any chance to demonise the Chinese, I  doubt they are getting water boarded, forced into stress positions or tortured by sensory or sleep depravation, I think we would have heard about it by now.  

Especially if we are to believe the #cough# western propaganda that numbers are in the millions.

----------


## tomcat

> I think we would have heard about it by now.


...we  have heard about it by now...take a look at the previous 11 pages in this thread...

----------


## foobar

^I just searched all 11 pages for "water" and "stress" and not a single hit.

----------


## harrybarracuda

> ^Given western media will leap on any chance to demonise the Chinese


Awwwww poor widdle chinkies being picked on by the nasty wasty "western media".

You really are "OhOh Lite".

 :rofl:

----------


## tomcat

> I just searched all 11 pages for "water" and "stress" and not a single hit


...555: made you look!...

----------


## OhOh

> ...555: made you look!...


Reinforcing your reputation of being a liar, how quaint.




> You really are "OhOh Lite".


Our distillation tower has many outlets enabling a full delivery of useful "products from all crude types, light, heavy, sweet or sour. Ultimately a very full market offering and saturation to suit our global customers needs.

And we make a decent profit. One g here, one g there, the kg bars are stacking higher and higher. :Smile:

----------


## misskit

*Uyghur Detainees from Xinjiang ‘Placed in Nearly Every Prison’ in Shandong Province*Ethnic Uyghurs held in political “re-education camps” in northwest China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region (XUAR) are being sent to jail in Shandong province, prison officials have confirmed, as new details emerge of the system authorities use to transfer detainees out of the region.

In October last year, RFA’s Uyghur Service reported that authorities in the XUAR had begun covertly sending detainees to prisons in Heilongjiang province and other parts of China to address an “overflow” in overcrowded camps, where up to 1.5 million Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas have been held since April 2017.

And last month, RFA spoke to officials in both Shaanxi province and neighboring Gansu province, who confirmed that Uyghur and other Muslim detainees from the XUAR had been sent to prisons there, although they were unable to provide specific numbers or dates for when they had been transferred.

As global condemnation over the camp network has grown, including calls for international observers to be allowed into the XUAR to investigate the situation there, reports suggest that authorities may be transferring detainees to other parts of China as part of a bid to obfuscate the scale of detentions of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the region.

After receiving information from an RFA listener who said that Uyghurs were also being relocated from the XUAR to detention centers in Shandong province on China’s eastern coast, RFA contacted a provincial prison official who confirmed the claim.

“There are many criminals who have been transferred from Xinjiang,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“They have been placed in almost every prison [in Shandong],” he added, without providing additional details.

RFA was also able to contact an official on duty at the Provincial No. 1 Prison in Shandong’s Jinan city, who confirmed that at least four Uyghurs named “Asimujiang, Aili, Maimaiti and Yiliyar” had been transferred from the XUAR to the facility.

The official, who also requested to remain unnamed, said he was unable to provide an estimate for the number of Uyghurs held at the prison because “it is impossible for me to check,” without providing any further information.

While Beijing has acknowledged the existence of re-education camps in the XUAR, it has never officially admitted to transferring Uyghurs out of the region to other parts of the country.

Bitter Winter, a website launched by the Italian research center CESNUR that focuses on religious in China, last month cited “informed sources” as confirming for the first time that detainees from the XUAR are being sent to prison facilities in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces.

The website previously cited sources as saying that prisons in Inner Mongolia have also accepted camp detainees from the XUAR, and that authorities plan to disperse and detain “an estimated 500,000 Uyghur Muslims” throughout China, although these reports could not be independently confirmed by RFA.

At the end of last year, a police officer in the XUAR’s Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) prefecture told RFA that he was aware of more than 2,000 Uyghur detainees who had been transferred from his area of the region to other parts of China.

“Those who are considered to be serious offenders or have received long-term prison sentences are being moved to Mainland China,” he said at the time, adding that the deputy commissioner of the prefectural Public Security Bureau had accompanied the detainees during their transfer.

“We tell [the detainees] that they will receive a better education as the facilities there are better and that there is no capacity to hold them in the XUAR because of the very high number of prisoners in the region.”


Camp network

Though Beijing initially denied the existence of re-education camps, Shohrat Zakir, chairman of the XUAR, told China’s official Xinhua news agency in October 2018 that the facilities are an effective tool to protect the country from terrorism and provide vocational training for Uyghurs.

China recently organized two visits to monitor re-education camps in the XUAR—one for a small group of foreign journalists, and another for diplomats from non-Western countries, including Russia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan and Thailand—during which officials dismissed claims about mistreatment and poor conditions in the facilities as “slanderous lies.”

Reporting by RFA’s Uyghur Service and other media organizations, however, has shown 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.

Adrian Zenz, a lecturer in social research methods at the Germany-based European School of Culture and Theology, earlier this month said that some 1.5 million people are or have been detained in the camps—equivalent to just under 1 in 6 members of the adult Muslim population of the XUAR—after initially putting the number at 1.1 million.

Michael Kozak, the head of the State Department's human rights and democracy bureau, in an apparent reference to the policies of Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union, last week said people "haven’t seen things like this since the 1930s" and called the internment of more than a million Uyghurs "one of the most serious human rights violations in the world today."

In November 2018, Scott Busby, the deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the U.S. Department of State, said there are "at least 800,000 and possibly up to a couple of million" Uyghurs and others detained at re-education camps in the XUAR without charges, citing U.S. intelligence assessments.

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...019150438.html

----------


## tomcat

*How China Is Defending Its Detention of Muslims to the World*

Peter Martin (Bloomberg) April 19, 2019

At the Shu Le County Education Center, a sprawling three-story complex in China’s far west region of Xinjiang, the dormitories feature bars on windows and doors that only lock from the outside.

Inside are hundreds of minority Muslim Uighurs who have no way of leaving without an official escort, even though Chinese officials who took a group of foreign journalists around the “transformation through education” camp this week insisted they were there voluntarily. Asked what would happen if a Uighur refused to attend, Shu Le’s principal Mamat Ali became quiet.

“If they don’t want to come, they will have to go through judicial procedures,” Ali said after a pause, adding that many stay for at least seven months.



Sewing machines in a room at the Shu Le County Education Center in Xinjiang.
Photographer: Peter Martin/Bloomberg

Shu Le is one of an unknown number of re-education camps in Xinjiang, a Muslim-majority region at the heart of President Xi Jinping’s Belt-and-Road Initiative to connect Asia with Europe. The U.S. State Department says as many as two million Uighurs are being held in the camps, a number disputed by Chinese officials even though they won’t disclose an official figure.

This week, I participated in a government-sponsored tour along with four other foreign media organizations through three cities in Xinjiang. The schedule was tightly controlled, with events planned from early morning to 11 p.m., and it included stops in many of the same places I visited on an unguided 10-day trip to the region in November.


The Shu Le County Education Center.
Photographer: Peter Martin/Bloomberg

The trip shows that Beijing is becoming more worried about an international backlash that has intensified of late, raising risks for investors already assessing the impact of a more antagonistic U.S.-China relationship. Muslim-majority countries have begun joining the U.S. and European Union in condemning China’s practices, with Turkey’s foreign ministry in February calling the “concentration camps” a “great embarrassment for humanity.”
Xi’s policies to pacify the local population have spawned the biggest challenge to China’s international reputation since soldiers were sent to put down protests in Tiananmen Square three decades ago. After first denying the existence of the camps, China is now doubling down on the need for them, and beginning to defend them as a vital weapon against terrorism.
“You can see the Chinese government basically changed its position over time,” said Maya Wang, a senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “They switched from denial to a full-frontal counter offensive.”

Throughout this visit, Chinese officials said the foreign media had given a false impression of the government’s efforts in Xinjiang. Most of the stops were focused on economic development and new education initiatives. The government’s message was simple: Xi’s policies were helping pacify the region and grow the economy.

Outside the main mosque in Kashgar, where a surveillance camera looks on.
Photographer: Peter Martin/Bloomberg

The exercise reflects Xi’s increased confidence on the world stage, where he’s directly challenged Western-style democracy with a centralized model of government that uses advanced technology to reward, punish and ultimately control the behavior of its citizens. He has a lot at stake in making it work: Backing down risks jeopardizing the Communist Party’s grip on power.
I wasn’t able to speak independently with any residents on the trip, or travel around without being followed. But the group was allowed to ask questions of officials, including repeated follow ups that at times angered our hosts.

The visit to Urumqi, Kashgar and Hotan stood in stark contrast to the trip I took in November. Back then, minders followed close behind, searches occurred repeatedly and officials demanded I delete photos on my mobile phone. I could only glimpse the heavily secured camps from a distance.

My minders when I attempted to walk on my own in Kashgar.
Photographer: Peter Martin/Bloomberg

This time around, government vehicles freely moved through various checkpoints, and metal detectors in public places were removed. Police officers who crowded city streets were gone. Still, my attempts to walk around unescorted were repeatedly unsuccessful.

After seeing the first camp, we were taken for a lamb lunch where women in colorful dresses danced to a song called “Happy Xinjiang.” An official ran after me as I walked away from the scene.
“I think you must be lost looking for the toilet,” he said. “Please let me show you.”

In Urumqi, we visited a graphic anti-terror exhibition featuring photos of decapitated and dismembered bodies. Later on at the main mosque in Kashgar, where a painting of Xi that earlier hung at the front had been removed, the imam said his father had been killed in a Uighur attack, leading him to “hate the terrorists.”

China’s crackdown on the region began after a series of Uighur strikes on civilians starting in 2013, including a flaming car attack in Tiananmen Square. The escalation alarmed authorities who had repeatedly attempted to pacify Xinjiang, most recently after 2009 riots in Urumqi killed some 200 people. Most of the dead were ethnic Han, who make up more than 90 percent of China’s population and the vast majority of the Communist Party’s leadership.

In Kashgar, I asked one guide if a single cadre in Xinjiang believed in Islam, which would be against rules in the officially atheist Communist Party.


Visitors walk with shoe covers, alongside a Uighur man, at the main mosque in Kashgar.
Photographer: Peter Martin/Bloomberg

“We haven’t discovered one yet,” said Wang Quibin, a local party leader in the city. “If we did, they would need to be punished severely.”

Once, he said, he asked a European official how their country controlled terrorism. “They said, ‘We take measures to control it as long as human rights are protected.’ I thought to myself, ‘Then how can you control it?’”

There’s no call to prayer anymore, he added, because everyone has watches. He said young Uighurs who grew beards were challenging local authorities in a similar way to anti-government protesters wearing yellow vests in 
France.


Copies of "The Governance of China," right, at a hotel in Hotan.
Photographer: Peter Martin/Bloomberg

Another mosque in Hotan displayed copies of Xi’s book, “The Governance of China,” at the same level as the Koran. Hotels we stayed in featured brochures with Xi’s face along with his book.
“In our country there is no way to put religion above the law,” said Gu Yingsu, head of the propaganda department in Hotan.
*
‘Here Voluntarily’*

At a second re-education camp, the Moyu County Vocational Training Center in Hotan, Uighurs wearing ethnic clothes greeted us as we arrived. A staircase featured a large mural of the Great Wall and the words “China Dream.”

We observed a class in which men all painted the same landscape. Others learned practical skills such as Chinese massage techniques, and how to become waiters or nannies. There was even a class on botany.


Uighurs paint landscapes at the Moyu County Vocational Training Center in Hotan.
Photographer: Peter Martin/Bloomberg

We were allowed to speak to detainees only with minders present. None appeared to be physically harmed. Bloomberg isn’t identifying Uighurs in the camps, or using pictures of their faces, because it was unclear whether they were participating willingly in the events.

Each time we asked them what crimes they had committed, and each time we received similar answers with the same key phrases. They had been infected by “extremist thought” and sought to “infect” others before realizing the error of their ways in the camps. Many included the phrase: “I want to say that I am here voluntarily.”

Even more striking, the same detainees could repeat their answers word for word when asked.


A weekly meal plan, and a surveillance camera, on a wall at the Shu Le County Education Center.
Photographer: Peter Martin/Bloomberg

I asked our minders why the answers were so similar. Gu, the official from Hotan, kept silent. One of her colleagues said the answers weren’t memorized. Xu Guixiang, deputy head of Xinjiang’s publicity department, said it was only natural they gave the same answers because they were asked about committing crimes.
“Perhaps it’s because they are nervous speaking to a foreigner,” he said. “It is difficult for them to express what they want to say in Chinese.”

----------


## Klondyke

Chinkeys again:

*China helping to construct Great Mosque of Algiers*



ALGIERS - Algeria is going to have one of the largest mosques in the world, as China State Construction Engineering Corporation is doubling efforts to finish this mega project in 2018.

The 265-meter-high minaret of the Great Mosque of Algiers, or Djamaa El Djazair, can be seen from all places in Algiers. It is the highest minaret in the world, and stands as a symbol of Muslim Algeria.

Present in Algeria for 30 years, CSCEC has already been taken part in the construction of mega projects, including housing, roads, highways, bridges, schools and hospitals.

Around 2,300 workers, engineers and construction managers are working hard for the timely delivery of the project despite its complexity, its numerous stakeholders, and the financial crisis that hit Algeria in recent years.

"By the end of the year, you will notice from the outside that all work will be accomplished," said project manager Wang Liangxue, adding that "for the sake of meeting deadlines, the workers have been subjected to an accelerated pace".

"They are working 24-hour shifts, and only bad weather could prevent them from working outside," he said.

Atop the minaret, reached after a climb of 37 floors, the Bay of Algiers can be seen in a breathtaking - some might say dizzying - view, looking down to the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean and the ships loaded with goods awaiting for their turn to dock at the port.

On the far south side, the fertile Mitidja plain spreads over tens of kilometers before running into the majestic mountain ranges of the Blida Atlas.

Despite the rapid urbanization experienced by Algeria since independence, particularly in large cities such as Algiers, one can still distinguish the green orchards that are the pride of the country, since fruits are among the few products that this oil-rich nation does not import.

On the west, east and south sides, Algiers neighborhoods offer an alternating show of ancient architecture and modern buildings.

For those standing atop the minaret, everything is within reach of the eye, including famous places and monuments of the capital such as the ancient city of the Casbah, the Cathedral of Notre Dame d'Afrique, and El Aurassi Hotel.

While the Xinhua team went from one corner of the minaret to another, seeking out the best angles for photographs, the workers remained concentrated on the project before them, without even looking up.

"They are dedicated to their tasks; they do not have a minute to lose," said Cao Qi, deputy director of the planning department of CSCEC. Cao added that currently, a team is finalizing coating work of the dome.

That task requires the installation of a suspended platform of 33.6 meters high, demonstrating the firm's technical prowess in the field of construction and civil engineering, Cao said.

On the roof of the prayer hall, 40 meters from the ground level, Ali Djema, a young Algerian architect, is in charge of monitoring the implementation of the facades.

Djema said it is for him "a dream comes true" to work on such a giant, innovative and ingenious project. He showed how it is possible to shed daylight on the prayer hall through a system of reflectors installed between the inner and outer part of the dome.

Meanwhile, a rainwater drainage system is also being integrated in this project; rainwater will be collected in a huge tank, then used for gardens that adorn the mosque.

Once completed, Djamaa El Djazair will be the largest in Africa and the third largest in the world, after the Masjid al-Haram in Makkah and Masjid al-Nabawi in Medina, both in Saudi Arabia.

Also, the mosque will include several independent buildings totaling more than 20 hectares, with a built-up area of more than 400,000 square meters.

Djamaa El Djazair will also be equipped with a conference room, a museum for Islamic art and history, a research center on the history of Algeria, the Koran House center, commercial buildings, a restaurant, a library, an amphitheater, a plaza, an underground parking with a capacity of 7,000 cars, and outbuildings dedicated to the security and maintenance of the building and its occupants.

China helping to construct Great Mosque of Algiers - Chinadaily.com.cn

----------


## harrybarracuda

> “Perhaps it’s because they are nervous speaking to a foreigner,” he said.


No shit.

----------


## Klondyke

(no strings attached?)*

Africa’s largest mosque has been completed with thanks to China



*After seven years of construction and over $1 billion in expenses, a new mosque in Algeria is set to break new global records.

The Great Mosque of Algiers, or Djamaa El Djazair, sits on an area of 400,000 square meters and has a 265 meter (870 feet) minaret that houses observation decks. The compound’s domed sanctuary and outside courtyard overlooking the Bay of Algiers can house up to 120,000 worshippers and has an underground parking space with a capacity of 7,000 cars.

The mosque’s complex includes a Koranic school, a library, a restaurant, an amphitheater, along with a research center dedicated to the history of Algeria.

With its completion, the mosque will now be the world’s third biggest by area and the largest in Africa. The two largest mosques are The Sacred Mosque of Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina: both considered the holiest sites in Islam and accustomed by millions of Muslim worshippers and pilgrims every year.

The Algiers mosque also takes the lead as having Africa’s tallest minaret, relegating the 670-feet tower of the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca, Morocco to a second place.

The Algiers mosque constitutes a new feat for the China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC), a huge multinational that is involved in building heavy industry and infrastructure in Africa and across the world. The company won the bid for the project of the Great Mosque in 2011, considered at the time among the largest of its overseas projects.

https://qz.com/africa/1606739/china-...ue-in-algeria/

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## Cujo

> ^Given western media will leap on any chance to demonise the Chinese, I  doubt they are getting water boarded, forced into stress positions or tortured by sensory or sleep depravation, I think we would have heard about it by now.


Why should we have heard about it by now?
Did you get paid wu mao shi bing ren?

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## Cujo

^^ 'won the bid'  :rofl:

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## misskit

*Rights Group Presses Islamic World Over Xinjiang Camps Ahead of UN Session*The U.S.-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) launched a campaign on Friday aimed at persuading Islamic countries to end their silence over the more than a million Muslim Uyghurs languishing in Chinese detention camps in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).


The “Close the Camps” social media campaign has opened during the Islamic world’s celebration of Ramadan and is focusing on getting the Xinjiang camps on the agenda of the United Nations Human Rights Council's 41st session, which opens June 24.


“All Muslims in Xinjiang face pervasive restrictions on their religious practices and endure other rights violations, including collective punishment, restricted movement, and invasive surveillance,” said HRW.


“We're asking the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), its member countries, and other concerned governments to speak up for Xinjiang’s Muslims,” HRW said.


Up to 1.5 million Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas have been held since April 2017.


Reporting by RFA’s Uyghur Service and other media outlets has shown that those in the camps routinely face rough treatment at the hands of their overseers, and endure poor diets and unhygienic conditions.


China has come under strong criticism, and calls for sanctions against officials responsible for the camps, from the United States and other Western countries. The Muslim world, with a few exceptions has remained silent.


The HRW campaign uses tweets and Facebook posts to prod the OIC into action, asking its members to help call out China and support efforts to monitor the treatment of Uyghurs at the UN rights meeting next month.


“It’s Ramadan. Will the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation stay silent as the Chinese government effectively outlaws the practice of Islam in #Xinjiang? Or will its members have the courage to condemn these outrageous abuses against 13 million Muslims at the UN Human Rights Council?” reads one tweet in the campaign.


“China is systematically violating the rights of Muslims in #Xinjiang. Will the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation stand up for Muslims facing political indoctrination, collective punishment, restrictions on movement, communications, religion, and surveillance at the UN Human Rights Council?” says another.


A third tweet asks “why does the OIC express concern about Islamophobia and attacks on Muslims in New Zealand, Sri Lanka, India, and Myanmar—but not in China?”


Though Beijing initially denied the existence of re-education camps, China has tried to change the discussion, describing the facilities as “boarding schools” that provide vocational training for Uyghurs, discourage radicalization and help protect the country from terrorism.


China recently organized two visits to monitor re-education camps in the XUAR—one for a small group of foreign journalists, and another for diplomats from non-Western countries, including Russia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan and Thailand—during which officials dismissed claims about mistreatment and poor conditions in the facilities as “slanderous lies.”


Samira Alim, a researcher at the Washington-based Freedom House, in December published an essay in The Diplomat, an online foreign policy journal, on why the Islamic world has been vocal on the Palestinian issue and on Danish cartoons accused of insulting their faith, but silent on Uyghurs.


“Why haven’t the 49 Muslim-majority countries been equally vocal on the situation in Xinjiang? Part of the reason may be that the region and its people are on the periphery of the global Muslim community, isolated and far removed from most Muslims’ awareness,” he wrote.


Beyond remoteness, he said, “China’s enormous economic influence across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia surely plays a critical role in Muslim leaders’ calculations.”


“Moreover, the governments of many Muslim-majority countries may fear that challenging China on its human rights abuses will cast a spotlight on their own violations,” wrote Alim.


https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...019154531.html

----------


## HermantheGerman

*China orders Arabic, Muslim symbols taken down in Beijing*BEIJING: Authorities in the Chinese capital have ordered halal  restaurants and food stalls to remove Arabic script and symbols  associated with Islam from their signs, part of an expanding national  effort to "Sinicize" its Muslim population.

https://www.nst.com.my/world/2019/07...n-down-beijing

Maybe the Thais should do same same.

----------


## AntRobertson

> Maybe the Thais should do same same.


Sure, because if there's one proven way to combat hatred and intolerance it's with hatred and intolerance.

----------


## misskit

*Police, Uyghur Twitter Campaign Contradict China’s Claim to Have Emptied Camps*China’s assertion that it has released 90 percent of the million-plus Uyghurs held in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) internment camps was refuted by police in the region and by members of the Uyghur community living in exile who launched a twitter campaign challenging the claim.


China presented the two top ethnic Uyghur officials in the XUAR at a news conference in Beijing on Tuesday to deliver a surprising claim that the vast majority of Uyghurs had completed training in re-education camps and rejoined their families.


“The majority of people who have undergone education and training have returned to society and returned to their families,” Erkin Tuniyaz, the vice chairman of the XUAR government, told the news conference.


“Most have already successfully achieved employment,” he said. “Over 90 percent of the students have returned to society and returned to their families and are living happily,” said Tuniyaz, who was flanked by Shohrat Zakir, the XUAR government chairman.


The two Uyghur men work under XUAR Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, the architect of the system that has incarcerated up to 1.5 million Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas since April 2017.


The claims, which were presented without evidence, were met with dismissal and derision by leading human rights experts and Uyghur diaspora groups, who described the statements as the latest in a long history of Chinese disinformation about Xinjiang. One expert warned that released detainees could be drafted for forced labor in factories.

“China is making deceptive and unverifiable statements in a vain attempt to allay worldwide concern for the mass detentions of Uyghurs and members of other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang,” said Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International’s regional director for East and South-East Asia.


“Given China’s record of heavy censorship, outright falsehoods and systematic obfuscation about the situation in Xinjiang, it remains imperative that UN human rights investigators, independent observers and the media be given unrestricted access to the region as a matter of urgency,” he added.


The Germany-based World Uyghur Congress while slamming the Chinese claim noted that Zakir’s own sister and several other relatives have received political asylum in Western countries after fleeing Chinese repression.



#prove90% hits Twitter


In a view consistent with other human rights and Uyghur groups, Bequelin said Amnesty had “received no reports about large scale releases – in fact, families and friends of people who are being detained tell us they are still not able to contact them.”


In an effort to verify the XUAR officials’ assertions RFA’s Uyghur Service, conducted telephone interviews with police in the region.


“I did not hear that anybody was released from the education. We would have been informed if anybody had been released,” said a policeman at a village police station in Hotan (Hetian in Chinese).


“There are 1700 people in the village, and about 250 of them are in the education camps, and so far we have only one person, aged between 40- 50, who was released,” said the policeman, who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity due to the risk of punishment for talking to foreign media.


A Uyghur woman in Hotan City told RFA that seven of the 12 houses on her street have been left “empty and padlocked” by the re-education campaign.


“All of them were sent to the education camps for about two years,” she said, describing the detained Uyghurs as all business people from Karakax (Moyu, in Chinese) county in Hotan.

“There are fewer people everywhere, even in the city. Stores are open, but there are very few people who are shopping and there is a money shortage,” added the woman.


In Kumul (in Chinese, Hami) prefecture, one official in the Kumul city neighborhood committee said he didn’t know that any inmates had been released. Asked about the XUAR government figure presented in Beijing, he then stated: “maybe 90 percent.”


Another person from the Kumul city neighborhood committee told RFA, however, that: “We have about 100 people undergoing ‘education’ from our district and three of them were released so far.”


Meanwhile, the Uyghurs living in exile with relatives incarcerated in the XUAR have conducted a Twitter campaign with the hashtag #prove90%.


“China show me my parents, my cousin Ilzat and my other relatives. #prove90 % (of) concentration camp detainees (are) being released as you stated. It’s been years since I last heard my parents’ voice,” wrote a man calling himself Alfred Uyghur.



‘Where the hell is my father-in-law?’


Another Uyghur man on Twitter, Arslan Hidayat, wrote “#China says they’ve released 90% of #Uyghurs from “Re-Education” camps, then where the hell is my father-in-law, prominent actor and comedian ‘Adil Mijit’?”
Adil Mijit, a well-loved Uyghur comedian, went missing in late 2018, and social media sources as well as anonymous reports shared with RFA confirmed he was now serving a three-year prison term for making a trip to the Muslim holy city of Mecca without authorities’ permission.


The latest campaign follows a similar one in February, when after China showed a video of a Uyghur mistakenly thought to have died, the Uyghur exile community had launched a social media campaign under the hashtag #MeTooUyghur, calling on Chinese authorities to release video of their relatives who were missing and believed detained in the vast camp network.


Beijing initially denied the existence of internment camps, but changed tack earlier this year and started describing the facilities as “boarding schools” that provide vocational training for Uyghurs, discourage radicalization and help protect the country from terrorism.


Reporting by RFA’s Uyghur Service and other media outlets 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.


RFA has also discovered repeatedly that many of the Uyghurs forced to go through vocational training were already highly educated, accomplished professionals in various fields.


The mass incarcerations of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Kirgiz have prompted increasing calls by the international community to hold Beijing accountable for its actions in the region, and Tuesday’s claim that many Uyghurs were released was seen as an effort to blunt that criticism.


The Global Times, a tabloid published by the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily, doubled down on the “vocational education” propaganda on Thursday in an editorial praising the purported release of “trainees.”


“This time, the autonomous region released a great amount of crucial information on the vocational education and training centers. Information received by the Global Times through other channels also shows that a great number of trainees have indeed graduated and returned to the society,” it said.

“Although officials have yet to publish detailed figures, the improving situation of Xinjiang is expanding to all spheres. As a powerful interim measure, the vocational education and training centers play a pivotal role in making these achievements possible,” said the daily.


https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...019163200.html

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## harrybarracuda

Stupid chinkies and their bullshit.

The only way they are back with their families is if they've arrested all of them as well.

----------


## Latindancer

Plausible deniability....unfortunately it works on many.

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## harrybarracuda

> Plausible deniability....unfortunately it works on many.


It does when you control everything your people see and read.

The rest of the world knows what's going on, but there doesn't appear to be much appetite to do anything about it other than whinge.

----------


## misskit

*Chinese Authorities Detain Highest-Ranking Uyghur Police Officer in Xinjiang Capital Urumqi*Authorities in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have detained the highest-ranking Uyghur police officer in the regional capital, who was reviled for ruthlessly implementing Beijing’s repressive policies against members of his ethnic community, according to sources.

Kadir Memet, the deputy chief of the Urumqi police department, is believed to have been detained in recent months, fellow officers and Uyghurs living in exile told RFA’s Uyghur Service, although the reason for his arrest remains unclear.

A report by state media had referred to Memet as deputy chief of the Urumqi police department in April 2017, saying at the time that he had “expressed solidarity with the government’s fight against two-faced officials and other evil forces.” It was not immediately clear, however, whether Memet was still serving in the position at the time of his arrest, or whether he had retired.

RFA was first alerted to Memet’s arrest by a Uyghur source based in Turkey, who said he had been detained “three months ago,” without providing further details.

When asked about Memet’s case, officers who answered the phone at a unit of Urumqi’s State Security forces, known as the Guobao, and the Tengritagh (in Chinese, Tianshan) district police station told RFA to either make the request for information in person or to speak with higher level authorities.

But an officer at Urumqi’s Saybagh district police station, where Memet was formerly the deputy chief, told RFA that information about him amounted to “a state secret,” which prevented him from revealing “any details regarding when, where or how he was detained.”

“There is no one who doesn’t know about his case, but only high-ranking officials can provide answers,” he added.

A worker at the Urumqi Municipal Police Department’s Disciplinary Commission said that Memet is currently in detention, but suggested he had been arrested in late July.

“He has not been released yet,” he said, adding that he “cannot say whether he was detained in connection with being a two-faced official.”

Authorities in the XUAR regularly detain those they accuse of being “two-faced officials”—a term applied by the government to ethnic minority cadres or other officials who pay lip service to Communist Party rule, but secretly chafe against state policies repressing members of their ethnic group.

Uyghur sources in exile say cases of “two-faced officials” in the XUAR show that not even those Uyghurs who pledge allegiance to the state, and often are reviled for doing so, are safe from its policies against their ethnic group.

Exile response

Sources outside of the XUAR told RFA that members of the Uyghur exile community were ecstatic over the news of Memet’s detention, which they said had “spread like wildfire.”

A Uyghur living in Istanbul, who declined to provide his real name for fear of reprisals against family members back in the XUAR, said that “everyone who heard the news welcomed his detention with joy.”

“Even those who were saddened by Nur Bekri’s detention were happy when it came to Memet’s detention,” Tursun said, referring to the Uyghur former Communist Party chairman of the XUAR who national prosecutors said had been arrested for graft in a statement released in April.

“I can say [Memet’s] hands were stained with Uyghur blood,” he added.

Omerjan Jamal, a police officer who once served under Memet, but now lives in exile in Sweden, called his former boss “irascible and ill-tempered,” but said he was “competent at his work and able to stand up to high-ranking Han Chinese officers.”

“Nevertheless, he used his strengths for the Chinese regime, not in defense of Uyghurs,” Jamal said.

“He was heartless in cracking down on Muslims and was promoted for such cruelty.”

A former colleague of Memet’s named Exmet Rozi, who now lives in Washington, said that Memet hadn’t climbed the ranks as the result of competency.

“He gained the trust of the Chinese by killing Uyghurs for them and bullying Uyghurs with the power he was given by the Chinese,” Rozi said.

“The Chinese first arrested Uyghur religious scholars, then Uyghur intellectuals and businessmen. Now they are arresting their own lackeys. From this, we can say that if there are Uyghurs who have not been detained, it’s simply because their time hasn’t come yet.”

According to Rozi, Memet was likely arrested “because he was on the wrong side of a power struggle, or because he had abused someone [important] who was promoted to higher position.”

Reports of Memet’s arrest came as the United Nations marked International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances calling the use by states of counter-terrorist activities as an excuse for breaching their obligations of particular concern.

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...019154154.html

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## harrybarracuda

Obviously not being repressive enough for chinky tastes.

----------


## misskit

*Video Purportedly Shows Transfer of Uyghur Detainees in China’s Xinjiang Region*Video footage has emerged of what appears to be authorities in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) taking hundreds of ethnic Uyghur inmates off of a train in preparation for their transfer to a detention center in a remote part of the region.

The video, published on Sept. 17 by newly created YouTube account “War on Fear,” whose stated mission is to expose the ramifications of high-tech state surveillance, contains footage purportedly taken last year by a drone camera located in the XUAR’s Bayin’gholin Mongol (in Chinese, Bayinguoleng Menggu) Autonomous Prefecture.

Authorities can be seen leading lines of blindfolded and handcuffed inmates—who have had their heads shaved and are wearing either blue or yellow uniforms—off of a train to a heavily guarded waiting area, where they are sat down in columns before being led off to waiting buses.

British media outlet Sky News on Sunday cited a “European Security source” as saying the video is believed to be authentic because it is “typical of the way the Chinese move this type of prisoner,” and that the footage is likely to have been taken earlier this year.

Nathan Ruser, a researcher with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s international cyber policy center who has previously identified detention sites in the XUAR, said in a series of posts on Twitter over the weekend that he used landmarks and other clues in the footage to verify the video, and believes it was taken northwest of the city of Korla (Kuerle) in August 2018.

If verified, the footage may shed new light on reports by RFA’s Uyghur Service that authorities in the XUAR have been covertly sending detainees to prisons in remote parts of the region and other areas of China to address an “overflow” in overcrowded internment camps, where up to 1.5 million Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas have been held since April 2017.

As global condemnation over the camp network has grown, including calls for international observers to be allowed into the XUAR to investigate the situation there, reports suggest that the transfers may be part of a bid to obfuscate the scale of detentions of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the region.

On Monday, Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne told news.com.au that she found the video “deeply disturbing” and noted that she had previously raised her country’s concerns over reports of mass detentions in the XUAR.

“We have consistently called for China to cease the arbitrary detention of Uyghurs and other Muslim groups,” she said, adding that Australia will continue to raise its concerns “both bilaterally and in relevant international meetings.”

Speaking to RFA on Monday, Dolkun Isa, the president of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) exile group, called the video “hard evidence of China transferring Uyghur detainees en mass” and likened it to Nazi Germany’s detention of Jews in concentration camps during World War II.

“It’s clear that ‘Never Again’ is happening again in the 21st century, under the watch of the international community, despite promises to prevent such tragedies,” he said, urging world leaders to speak out against China’s policies in the XUAR at the Sept. 17-30 United Nations General Assembly in New York.

“I call on the United Nations, United States, European Union, and Turkic and Muslim countries to take a strong stand at the U.N. General Assembly and condemn China’s crimes against humanity in East Turkestan, table urgent resolutions in order to close all Chinese concentration camps, and release all Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims,” he added, using the Uyghurs' name for the XUAR.

UN General Assembly

The posting of the video footage came as U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday addressed world leaders—including from China—at an event on global religious freedom on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, during which he called on all nations to end religious persecution.

“Stop the crimes against people of faith. Release prisoners of conscience. Repeal laws restricting freedom of religion and belief. Protect the vulnerable, the defenseless, and the oppressed,” Trump said.

A statement released by the office of the White House Press Secretary after his speech said that “the Trump Administration is deeply concerned for the more than 1 million Uighurs interned in Chinese internment camps.”

Vice President Mike Pence told the religious freedom meeting that “the Communist Party in China has arrested Christian pastors, banned the sale of Bibles, demolished churches, and imprisoned more than a million Uighurs in the Muslim population.”

Jewher Ilham, the daughter of jailed Uyghur academic Ilham Tohti, also spoke to assembled dignitaries during the event on global religious freedom, saying "it has become a crime to be Uyghur in China."

"[My father] never advocated for separatism, but is now serving life in prison because he chose to speak out about the right to believe what you choose to believe, the right to worship the way you want to worship, and the right to think the way you want to think—the only thing he was guilty of was publicly calling for peaceful dialogue and reconciliation," she said.

"We are witnessing the systematic eradication of ethnic and religious minority identities in China."

The video was also published days before U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on Central Asian nations to reject Chinese demands to repatriate Uyghurs to China, where they face repression, saying Beijing’s detention of members of the ethnic group has nothing to do with terrorism, but is an attempt “to erase” minority cultures and religions.

Pompeo made the comments on Sunday during a meeting with the foreign ministers of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, and urged all countries “to resist” China’s demands that Uyghurs who have fled the XUAR be sent back home.


China responds

On Monday, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Geng Shuang told a regular press briefing in Beijing that Pompeo “has tried to smear and vilify China's policy in Xinjiang time and again in a gross attempt to interfere in China's internal affairs,” calling his statement revealing of “the double standard the U.S. applies in counter-terrorism.”

While Beijing initially denied the existence of the camps, China this year changed tack and began describing the facilities as “boarding schools” that provide vocational training for Uyghurs, discourage radicalization, and help protect the country from terrorism.

China recently organized two visits to monitor internment camps in the XUAR—one for a small group of foreign journalists, and another for diplomats from non-Western countries, including Russia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, and Thailand—during which officials dismissed claims about mistreatment and poor conditions in the facilities as “slanderous lies.”

But reporting by RFA’s Uyghur Service and other media outlets suggest 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.

During the press briefing on Monday, Geng said that policies in the XUAR “have produced visible outcomes” and that “people of all ethnic groups there support the government's measures to fight terrorism and safeguard stability,” while reiterating that U.S. officials should “stop making irresponsible remarks on Xinjiang and condoning the violent terrorist forces” that he said seek to split China.


Mass incarcerations

Mass incarcerations in the XUAR, as well as other policies seen to violate the rights of Uyghurs and other Muslims, have led to increasing calls by the international community to hold Beijing accountable for its actions in the region.

At the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom in Washington in July, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the internment camps in the XUAR “one of the worst human rights crises of our time” and “truly the stain of the century.”

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence also slammed the camps “where [Uyghurs] endure around-the-clock brainwashing” and survivors have described their experience as “a deliberate attempt by Beijing to strangle Uyghur culture and stamp out the Muslim faith.”

U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback recently told RFA in an interview that countries around the world must speak out on the Uyghur camps, or risk emboldening China and other authoritarian regimes.

The U.S. Senate earlier this month unanimously passed the first legislation by any nation in response to human rights abuses against ethnic Uyghurs in the XUAR, which would authorize regular monitoring of the situation by various government bodies.

The bipartisan Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, introduced by Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Bob Menendez of New Jersey, would appoint a special State Department coordinator on the XUAR and require regular reports on the region’s internment camps, surveillance network and security threats posed by an ongoing crackdown on the Uyghur people—if ratified by the House of Representatives.

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...019131644.html

----------


## harrybarracuda

Moving members of a religious minority to remote locations by train.

Where have I heard that before?

----------


## misskit

Video on this site. https://uhrp.org/news-commentary/dee...ation-xinjiang

----------


## Latindancer

> Moving members of a religious minority to remote locations by train.
> 
> Where have I heard that before?




Well, hey....not *ALL* of them. 

They stop along the way and take the more problematic ones into the forest to shoot them.

----------


## misskit

*Malaysia Slams News Article on China’s Uyghur Camps*Malaysia expressed “serious displeasure” Wednesday over a foreign news report quoting a diplomat from the country as criticizing internment camps for ethnic Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region.


Malaysia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was referring to a New York Times article last week that published quotes from a “private account” by the Malaysian diplomat who had visited some of the camps in two Xinjiang cities.


China has come under fire for placing more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslims minorities in a vast network of internment camps since April 2017, accusing them of harboring “strong religious views” and politically incorrect ideas.
Beijing has been calling these camps boarding schools and vocational centers.


“Delegates could actually sense fear and frustration from the students,” the Malaysian diplomat wrote after his December visit with a dozen other diplomats from mostly Muslim nations, the New York Times reported.


“China may have legitimate reasons to implement policies intended to eliminate the threat of terrorism, especially in Xinjiang. However, judging by its approach, it is addressing the issue wrongly and illegitimately, e.g. preventing Muslim minors from learning the Quran,” the diplomat was quoted saying in his report.


The diplomat referred to the once-bustling Kashgar and Hotan cities in Xinjiang as “zombie towns,” saying the streets were virtually empty and that China was probably “using the threat of terrorism as an excuse to ‘sanitize’ Uighur Muslims until they become acceptable Chinese citizens.”


The Malaysian foreign ministry said in a statement that the New York Times report “appears to carry malicious intent,” adding that it “expresses serious displeasure at and disapproves” of the article.


“The ministry does not comment on the specifics of its internal communications, which are a matter of strict confidentiality,” the statement said, underscoring close ties between Malaysia and China. “Those communications are not meant to be made public.”


In its report titled “China wants the world to stay silent on Muslim camps,” the Times raised questions on China’s claim that its state-mandated detention camps, surrounded by high walls and watchtowers, are central to its fight against Muslim extremism.


Beijing has described them as boarding schools, explaining that detainees are in the camps voluntarily, the Times report said, as it explained how China would generally handpick visitors, including journalists from friendly countries who are then often quoted in the state-run Chinese news media offering flattering comments.


But such trips “do not always go as planned,” the Times article said. It quoted two reports – one from European Union officials and another from a Malaysian diplomat who visited Kashgar and Hotan cities in Xinjian last year with a dozen other diplomats from mostly Muslim nations.


The report quoted the Malaysian as saying that delegates in the trip “could actually sense fear and frustration from the ‘students’” in the internment camps.


In July, Malaysia’s Islamic Affairs minister came under sharp criticism after describing a Uyghur internment camp that he visited in China as a “training and vocational center,” contradicting U.S. officials and rights groups that have likened such facilities to concentration camps.


“The Center is running industrial training activities with various skills such as sewing, legislation, art, flower arrangement and et cetera,” said a caption for one of the photos posted on June 26 on Minister Mujahid Yusof Rawa’s Facebook page. The official declined to disclose the location of the Uyghur camp that he had visited in China.


Chinese authorities label the camps as centers for “transformation-through-education” but most people refer to them simply as “re-education camps,” according to Amnesty International.



Prime minister questioned about Uyghurs

The statement issued by Malaysia’s foreign office on Wednesday came days after Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad told BenarNews, during an interview in New York, that China’s diplomatic and economic power may have prevented Muslim nations from criticizing its repression of the ethnic Uyghur minority.


Mahathir, a champion of issues affecting the Muslim community, has been relatively quiet on Beijing’s repression in Xinjiang, where it has been accused of holding more than 1.5 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a vast network of internment camps and systematic surveillance since April 2017.


Asked about the apparent contradiction and the Muslim world’s general reluctance to criticize Beijing over the Uyghur issue, Mahathir cited what he described as the power wielded by China.


“Because China is a very powerful nation,” the 94-year-old leader told BenarNews. “You don’t just try and do something which would anyway fail, so it is better to find some other less violent ways not to antagonize China too much, because China is beneficial for us.”


But China’s sweeping confinement of Uyghurs has spurred criticisms from human rights groups, which have criticized Mahathir and the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) for not speaking up for the Uyghurs when countries such as the United States had described Beijing’s actions in Xinjiang as “the stain of the century.”

https://www.benarnews.org/english/ne...019163056.html

----------


## harrybarracuda

Don't want to interrupt the money train, do we.

----------


## Latindancer

“The Center is running industrial training activities with various  skills such as sewing, legislation, art, flower arrangement and et  cetera,” 

Beijing has described them as boarding schools, explaining that detainees are in the camps voluntarily.

Jesus bloody Keriiist....

What happens when people prove claims like this are absolute bullshit ?  legislation? art ? flower arrangement ?

Is it like trying to pin down a Thai person into admitting wrongdoing ? (ie, virtually impossible ? )

They are in Gulags : forced labour camps, and the Chinese government is most likely making a lot of money out of selling the goods they produce to Western countries.

----------


## HermantheGerman

> The Center is running industrial training activities with various  skills such as sewing, legislation, art, flower arrangement and et  cetera, 
> 
> Beijing has described them as boarding schools, explaining that detainees are in the camps voluntarily.
> 
> Jesus bloody Keriiist....
> 
> What happens when people prove claims like this are absolute bullshit ?  legislation? art ? flower arrangement ?
> 
> Is it like trying to pin down a Thai person into admitting wrongdoing ? (ie, virtually impossible ? )
> ...


 ......making a lot of money out of selling the goods they produce to Western countries

and Muslim countries supporting it.  :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic): 

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/15/a...hnk/index.html

I guess defending human rights is very un-islamic

----------


## OhOh

The legal remedies to reduce terrorism in Xinjiang.

*The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang*

IV. Striking at Terrorism and Extremism

_"Counterterrorism and de-radicalization in Xinjiang has always been  conducted in accordance with the law. 

Currently, China’s anti-terrorism  law system is composed of :

The Constitution of the People’s Republic of  China, 

The Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China, 

The Criminal  Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China, 

The National Security  Law of the People’s Republic of China, 

The Counterterrorism Law of the  People’s Republic of China, 

The Regulations on Religious Affairs,

The Opinions on Certain Issues Concerning the Application of Law in  Handling Criminal Cases Involving Terrorism and Extremism jointly issued  by the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the  Ministry of Public Security, and the Ministry of Justice.

With facts as the basis and the law as the criterion, judicial organs in  Xinjiang adopt a policy that strikes the right balance between  compassion and severity; 

1 Ringleaders, core members, and major offenders  who are held accountable for organizing, planning and implementing  violent, terrorist and religious extremist crimes are severely punished  in accordance with the law;

2. Repeat offenders – those who have previously  received administrative and criminal punishment or have been exempt  from criminal punishment after committing violent, terrorist and  religious extremist crimes are found committing the same crimes again –  are severely punished in accordance with the law;

3. Minor offenders who  have pled guilty are sentenced leniently in accordance with the law;  

4. Juvenile offenders, deluded offenders and coerced offenders are  sentenced leniently in accordance with the law; 

5. Offenders who have  voluntarily surrendered themselves or who have helped in cracking the  cases are sentenced leniently or have their prison terms reduced in  accordance with the law. 

Punishment is used effectively to reform the  offenders and prevent crimes. While they make sure real criminals are  punished, judicial organs in Xinjiang protect the defendants’ right to  defense and the right to use their own language in litigation to  guarantee procedural justice and protect basic civil rights."

Full text: The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang - People's Daily Online
_

One presumes these "western" methods, of defeating terrorism; 

Rubbleization of foreign lands, illegal military attacks on civilians, illegal imprisonment, illegal torture, illegal sanctions, illegal corrupt deals, illegal supply of weapons, illegal supply of aid, illegal supply of military assistance, illegal stealing of foreign countries financial assets/resources, illegal occupation of foreign countries land .... 

are acceptable to TD posters, here on this thread.

I don't see other remedies mentioned as alternatives.

*Chinese Strategy for De-radicalization*https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full...3.2017.1330199

----------


## harrybarracuda

Snivelling chinky sycophant thinks ethnic cleansing is OK because it's the law in China.

----------


## OhOh

> ethnic cleansing is OK because it's the law in China.


Most countries, around the world, have anti terrorism laws. Their "security forces" mostly enforce them with deadly force.

Some foreign "security forces", if requested by the countries elected governments, are deployed to assist in rooting them out and use deadly force.

There are other countries who of course illegally invade, bomb countries back the stone age or worse send weapons, security forces to assist, train, arm and supply intelligence to the internationally named terrorists groups against the elected government's forces and citizens. They also illegally kidnap, jail them without trial and illegally imprison them for life on Caribbean islands.

China tries to re-educate/re-train them, within China, and encourage them to adopt their home countries laws.

*'Missing' Uygurs found living happy lives*


_"The people alleged to be missing from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous  region have been found to be living peaceful and happy lives, an  official from the region's government said on Tuesday.
_
_One lie after another about Xinjiang has been proved to have  "distorted the truth or be fabricated stories", Xu Guixiang, deputy head  of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Xinjiang  Uygur Autonomous Region Committee, said at a news briefing in Beijing  organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
_
_Xu was referring to the online campaign initiated by some  individuals, overseas organizations and media, who posted photos and  names to "find missing Uygurs in China". The move is aimed at hyping  China's policy in the autonomous region, he said.
_
_The hashtag "StillNoInfo" has been used on social media platforms Twitter and Facebook in the past week._
_Xu cited several examples of Uygurs who were said to be "missing" but  were found to be living better lives after graduating from vocational  education and training centers. Among them is Ruzi Memet Atawulla, 23,  who went to a vocational education and training center in 2017 after  being influenced by extreme thoughts.
_
_Ruzi Memet graduated in April 2018, and now works in a shoe factory  in Hotan, a city in southwestern Xinjiang. "He earns 2,500 yuan ($357)  per month from his work, and doesn't want to be disturbed, especially by  those connected with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement terrorist  forces," Xu said._
_Aziz Niyaz and Meryam Gayit, an old couple in Kuqa county, Aksu  prefecture, were also described as "missing" on overseas social  networks, but actually they are retired and enjoying the life of taking  care of their 3-year-old grandson at home, according to Xu._
_Xu described the building of the vocational education and training  centers in Xinjiang as an effective preventive measure of eradicating  extremism in the region, which was plagued by violent terrorism three  years ago.
_
_He said that there have been no terrorist attacks in Xinjiang since  the centers were established in 2017, and people now live peaceful  lives._
_
Rexiati Musajiang, mayor of Hotan, criticized the United States for  its interference in China's internal affairs by using Xinjiang's human  rights as an excuse. He said at the briefing that the region enjoys  stability and people's livelihoods keep improving._
_
The motives behind US politicians' remarks and acts to smear China's  policy in Xinjiang, particularly the Xinjiang-related act that the US  House of Representatives recently passed, have demonstrated US attempts  at hegemony, he said, and the purpose is to contain China's development  and damage the stability of Xinjiang."

'Missing' Uygurs found living happy lives - Chinadaily.com.cn
_

----------


## Latindancer

You're full of shit, HoHo.

The Communist gangsters (because that is what they are, really) have trotted out about 3 people who have been successfully brainwashed....out of the million or so that have been incarcerated.

"_found to be living peaceful and happy lives" ???  WTF ?


_You mean like how they say the Panchen Lama (who they kidnapped) is now living a peaceful and happy life" ?? Like...in a shallow grave somewhere ? Or "merely" brainwashed ?

----------


## OhOh

> You're full of shit


Which I am able to manage and release in a civilised and appropriate manner. 

Unlike some who prefer resorting to violence, threats of violence or encouraging others to "bend their knee/touch their forelock/look away" to/from their "Emperor".

Unfortunately for you the terrorist attacks are, factually, a thing of the past. Due to the measures taken by the Chinese government. 

If only other troubled countries could say the same. We are reminded daily how "others" still fail to solve their decades long and continuing "war on terrorism". I presume you would rather bomb the Chinese citizens back to the stone age, that does appear to be the only alternative available, utilised by some. Well other than starvation, illegal kidnapping, placing for life illegally in a prison, ....... because to some, "it's worth it".

----------


## Latindancer

"Appropriate" for you is completely inappropriate for most other people, except perhaps Chinese gangsters.

We all know why they are jailing and often killing the Uighurs. And it's not because of terrorist acts.

----------


## OhOh

> We all know why they are jailing and often killing the Uighurs. And it's not because of terrorist acts


Some believe the "estimates", some are inclined to believe they are imaginary. Similar to many topics, including the use of an oatmeal breakfast cereal for settling domestic disputes.




*Uygur mom mystified to be reported as 'missing'*


_"Halnur  Halik, a Uygur mom who is allegedly "missing" on social media platforms  such as Twitter and Facebook, works at a restaurant in Turpan, Xinjiang  Uygur autonomous region. [Photo/CGTN]      _ _Halnur Halik said she was furious after learning her personal  information was used in an online campaign to "find missing Uygurs in  China" while she had been busy working toward a better life in the  Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
_
_Some individuals, overseas organizations and media have been posting  photos and names of allegedly missing Uygurs on social media platforms  including Twitter and Facebook, to smear China's policy in Xinjiang.
_
_Many of the posts have been shown to have "distorted the truth or be  fabricated stories", Xu Guixiang, deputy head of the Publicity  Department of the Communist Party of China Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous  Region Committee, said on Wednesday.
_
_On Dec 12, Twitter user Abdulla Rasul wrote in a post tagged  "StillNoinfo" that Halnur, 24, a mother of two, was among those still  missing, even though Halnur has been working as a waitress at a  restaurant in Turpan since May._
_Abdulla Rasul is her cousin's husband and the couple moved abroad  many years ago, Halnur said. Abdulla's Twitter account says he is based  in Istanbul, Turkey. "I only met Abdulla once, when he and my cousin got  married, and seldom have had contact with them since. I don't  understand why he said I was missing," she said on Wednesday.
_
_Halnur attended a vocational education and training center in 2018  after having been influenced by thoughts of religious extremism since  high school. "I dropped out of my school, although I was a very good  student, because the religious extremists told me that going to school  was useless. Later, I also refused to go to work and focused only on  taking part in religious extremist activities," she said._
_The establishment of the centers in Xinjiang has been an effective  preventive measure to help eradicate extremism in the region, which is  believed to have led in the past to frequent terrorist attacks in  Xinjiang, officials said. The centers provided courses on standard  Chinese language, laws, vocational skills and deradicalization programs._
_People who took part in the courses have all graduated. The centers  will be open to all local residents and officials who wish to improve  their standard Chinese language and vocational skills and legal  knowledge, Shohrat Zakir, regional government chairman, said this month.
_
_"I was worried about whether people would be willing to give me a  second chance after I graduated, but a restaurant owner immediately  recruited me after I graduated from the center in May," said Halnur."
_
Uygur mom mystified to be reported as 'missing' - Chinadaily.com.cn


An article highlighting the example of the "scientific" assumptions attempted by one of the most utilised "sources".

Snippets from this "source":

*More than 1 million Muslims are detained in China—but how did we get that number?*

_"In January 2018, US-funded news organization Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported one of the first estimates: 120,000 Uyghur Muslims detained for showing signs of “extremism,” sourcing a security official from Kashgar city."

"The estimate used most widely for over a year—of a  million Uyghur Muslims held in Chinese camps—was arrived at using  similar methods by a group called China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), and by Zenz.

CHRD,  based in Hong Kong and Washington DC, interviewed dozens of Uyghur  people in Xinjiang._ _Interviewees gave estimates of how many  people—ranging from 8% to 20%—were being detained in their towns. It  averaged out to 12% and CHRD bumped the percentage down to 10% for a  conservative estimate"

"__A media organization run by Uyghur exiles published a document  (link in Japanese) on partial detainee numbers for dozens of Xinjiang  counties, reportedly leaked by someone within the public security  industry in the region. Zenz concluded there was a detention level of 12.3%"

"__Zenz went on to refer to two RFA reports that cited phone interviews the  news organization had with Xinjiang government offices regarding quotas to meet—10% of the local Muslim population"
_
_"The 1 million figure went into wide circulation after it was used by the United Nations in August 2018, citing the work of the CHRD."

"__News organizations ran with it and 1 million quickly became the default number."

"__“Althoughe it seems app__ropriate to estimate that up to  1.5 million ethnic minorities—equivalent to just under 1 in 6 adult  members of a predominantly Muslim minority group in Xinjiang—are or have  been interned in any of these detention, internment and re-education  facilities, excluding formal prisons,” Zenz said in March"

"__This May, the US Defense Department accused China of running “concentration camps” with up to 3 million Muslims imprisoned"

_
https://qz.com/1599393/how-researche...d-in-xinjiang/

Lots of unsourced inflated guesses/estimates from known propaganda entities.

If your do ever return to Thailand take a walk to your local motorcycle repair shop. There you will be able to have that ring extracted from your nose for the sum of THB 200.

----------


## Klondyke

What you read (in MSM), it happened - and please be outraged (about the HK peaceful demonstration, missing Uighurs and similar)

What you do not read (in MSM), it didn't happen. And if it did happen - that's only the democratic process of liberation from brutal dictators and/or cleansing of terrorists...

----------


## HuangLao

> What you read (in MSM), it happened - and please be outraged (about the HK peaceful demonstration, missing Uighurs and similar)
> 
> What you do not read (in MSM), it didn't happen. And if it did happen - that's only the democratic process of liberation from brutal dictators and/or cleansing of terrorists...



The old manner of keeping things manipulated and off balance. 
A very useful technique. As are the continued cycles of use, as very few recognize - 

Especially, when promoting the imagined and base ideals of traditional good guys vs. bad guys, largely fanciful. 
Repeated, over and again, historically - until such becomes real and true [even when it's not].

----------


## misskit

*Chinese Media Campaign to Discredit Movement For Missing Uyghurs Will Fail: #StillNoInfo Founder*A campaign by official Chinese media to discredit a movement by Uyghurs seeking information about missing relatives back home in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) will fail, according to the movement’s organizer, because of Beijing’s intransparency over its policies there.

In recent months, the hashtag #StillNoInfo has gained a following on social media platforms among Uyghurs in exile who say their relatives are likely detained in a network of internment camps where authorities in the XUAR are believed to have held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities accused of harboring “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas since April 2017.

The hashtag became even more widely used after XUAR Chairman Shohret Zakir held a press conference on Dec. 9 claiming that all detainees in the camps, which China refers to as “vocational education and training centers,” had “graduated” and returned to their homes, prompting many exiled Uyghurs to question why they were still unable to contact their relatives and loved ones.

In response, China Global Television Network (CGTN)—the international arm of the official China Central Television (CCTV)—has launched a video propaganda campaign entitled “Crash the #StillNoInfo rumors” in which news anchor Tao Yuan meets with several of the “missing” relatives as part of a bid to challenge the claims made by Uyghurs in exile about China’s policies in the XUAR.

In videos posted to YouTube and Twitter, Tao visits Mahire, Xenimxan Turdi, Eziz Niyaz, and Halinur—all relatives of Uyghurs in exile who have participated in the #StillNoInfo movement—in their homes and purported places of work, portraying them as living “normal” lives outside the camps.

CGTN often refers to those who post to #StillNoInfo as “distant relatives” or suggests that they are mere acquaintances rather than close friends, while the “missing” Uyghurs say in interviews that they have no idea why they have been mentioned in the posts.

Spreading propaganda

Speaking to RFA’s Uyghur Service, Bahram Sintash, a Uyghur American who created #StillNoInfo as part of his efforts to locate his father in the XUAR, said that the CGTN campaign will fail because “the international community and international media doesn’t believe their propaganda.”

“They’re asking why it is that some Uyghurs haven’t been able to contact their families for two, three, and even four years, why are [the Chinese authorities] controlling communication so tightly in the 21st century, and why is there still no free communication for Uyghurs,” he said.

“As long as they’ve cut communication and as long as they only trot out people’s relatives on their own media, which shows that we are still not in contact with them, this ultimately means that they’re just using our relatives as pawns. We’re asking them to connect us to our relatives, but they’re just showing us a little bit of them on video. The world can see that [the authorities] keep using [our relatives] as pawns.”

Sintash said that most members of the exile Uyghur community would be satisfied if China’s government opened up communication channels, which are either actively blocked or heavily monitored by security personnel, and allowed them to see their relatives on their own terms.

“All we want is to see them without obstruction—to know what they have been through … [but China instead is] putting their own [propaganda] channels to work, using ‘examples’ of a few people here and there to continue spreading their lies,” he said.

Sintash cited his own father as an example of how China’s narrative that all Uyghurs have been freed from the camps and are able to freely communicate with their loved ones is false.

“Given that I’m the person who started the #StillNoInfo movement on social media, before doing anything else, they could have shown my father in an attempt to portray me as a liar,” he said.

“The fact that they did not show my parents or the family members of other activists like myself shows that they’re still exacting revenge on some of us, and also that the people they’re showing [in these videos] have been specifically chosen from among a select group of people—people who are completely under the control of the authorities—so as to attempt to deceive the international community.”

Halinur

RFA recently spoke with Abdullah Rasul, the husband of Halinur’s cousin Raziyegul Ablimit, who in mid-December posted a photo of the 23-year-old woman from Turpan (in Chinese, Tulufan) city on social media with the #StillNoInfo hashtag among several photos of other relatives, along with a message asking “Where is my mother-in-law and her family members?”

In a CGTN video from Dec. 25, reporter Tao meets with Halinur—who the network describes as “a former trainee who refutes the false claims by her cousin-in-law, Abdullah Rasul”—at the restaurant where she works in Turpan, and Halinur tells her she was shocked to learn that Rasul had said she was missing.

In the video, Halinur tells CGTN that she hadn’t spoken to Ablimit since she moved abroad in 2016 and didn’t understand why Rasul would lie about looking for her. She acknowledges that she “followed the wrong path” after dropping out of school, illegally wearing a burqa, and allowing herself to be “infected” with radical ideas as a result of her aunt’s teachings, but says a “training center” set her straight.

However Rusul told RFA that Halinur’s husband, Abduqadir, was arrested “for no reason whatsoever” when she was pregnant with their second child in 2015 and sentenced to five or 10 years in prison, and that Halinur was later detained in an internment camp, despite her relatively moderate views on Islam.

“Her [Mandarin] Chinese is really good,” he said, adding that “it’s just not logical to think that someone whose Chinese is already good has to go into a camp to study the language in order to work at a restaurant.”

While Rasul was unsure of when Halinur was able to leave the camp she was held in, he said that her behavior when questioned by the reporter in the CGTN video suggested her answers were given under duress.

“Looking at her, I can see that her face—her color—doesn’t look good … it doesn’t look quite the same as before,” he said.

“Her hands are also shaking when she talks and she has them clenched really tightly.”

China’s domestic broadcaster CCTV has in recent years been caught out staging televised confessions of human rights lawyers and activists. In one case, human rights lawyer Wang Yu said in 2018 that she had agreed to make a forced confession after Chinese authorities threatened to stop her from seeing her son.

Other relatives

Rasul said that while he and his wife were initially troubled by the video, they ultimately found peace in knowing that Halinur has not been harmed.

“If nothing else, we’re seeing the result of our testimonies and our hard work,” he said, adding, “Halinur and her two kids are safe, they’re alive.”

But Rasul said he has little information about his mother-in-law, who he said he had learned was imprisoned in 2016 for “terrorism and also for plotting to split the country.”

“My father-in-law passed away four or five years before we left [China in 2015], so my mother-in-law was alone—a widow and a housewife who didn’t leave the house much,” he said.

“To say that a woman like this was involved in terrorism and splitting up the country, and the fact that they put her in prison, is such great injustice.”

In addition to his mother-in-law, Rasul said that many of his wife’s relatives have also been detained, while he believes some 150 immediate and distant members of his family—which he lost contact with in 2017—have been taken away by authorities, although they were able to learn of the release of some of them since they began posting content as part of the #StillNoInfo movement.

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...020144054.html

----------


## harrybarracuda

> “the international community and international media doesn’t believe their propaganda.”


Except for HoHo and his little puppy.

----------


## OhOh

^
I am surprised you take any notice of MK's RFA etc. sites or other MSM "reports". As for your glorious "international media" one suspects they are as open to bribery as any other grouping.

----------


## Little Chuchok

Say it isn't true...  :33:

----------


## OhOh

Some require more "evidnce" than a 5 minute skype video. If you want to believe it, that's your choice.

----------


## Little Chuchok

^ There are many like that. So you don't believe it?

----------


## Little Chuchok

We could go on and on.


Is everybody corrupt and making this up? That would mean alot of people to pay off. Probably more people on the take than corrupt officials in the CCP. Now there's a thought...

 :Hump:

----------


## OhOh

> So you don't believe it?


Believe what, one man's opinion, displayed in a 5 minute video. Who has no responsibility to solve the problem. No. 

But many are. Our poster in wester ameristan offers a 10-15 minute comedy TV segment to reinforce their existing prejudices. If that's their knowledge base god help them.

Hopefully those in power around the world take the subject more seriously and can improve their methods over time.

I seen and hear of many things, daily. I also see and hear of many fake and selective/unsubstantiated reports. As has the info, the video purports to cover, been around for many years and the passages selectively reported on in the 5 minute video, IMHO, it does not treat the subject in a serious way.

The current facts, allegedly, indicate that many have succeeded in stopping any further terrorist attacks on civilians in China.

The Chinese chose a different route, as they do with many of the innovative solutions to problems, different than the western war on terror, which has failed to stop terrorism around the world. Just the opposite some would say.

The Chinese people I suspect are more grateful that they live their lives untainted. Any suspected terrorists have been duly tried and imprisoned, if found guilty according to Chinese laws. Any dubious or unproven suspects have been placed in the so called camps. Whether they learn anything is up to them.

One could contrast that with the failed countries left behind the western method of mass slaughtering ad hoc. Unfortunately there are always relatives influenced by the western methods and I would suggest the battle has yet to be won.

As we know from past wars it takes generations before any semblance of friendly tolerance of the evil British, French, German, Italian, Japanese .... ordinary citizens, born after any wars to being welcomed.

If the Chinese can continue to stop terrorist attacks, improve all the citizens lives and produce their "relatively prosperous society" it would be a good thing. For sure.

The alternative as we have seen just these past weeks is, IMHO, not the way forward.




> That would mean alot of people to pay off.


Some  have immense fortunes, reinforced/supported by many organisations, governments  and the "easily impressed" to reinforce their own opinions or desires. Sometimes they are successful, sometimes a roadblock occurs. Videos are cheap to produce, willing devotees are available for free or a few 100,000 likes/reputation gifts on lifestyle sites.

----------


## harrybarracuda

Oh shut up Hoho, they could live stream an hour long documentary and you would deny it, you cretinous chinky sycophant.

----------


## misskit

*US State Department Urged to Intervene in Case of Uyghur Jailed After Joining Visitor Program*

The U.S. State Department is facing increasing calls to pressure China to release a Uyghur entrepreneur who was sentenced to 15 years in prison after he visited Washington to take part in the agency’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP).


Ekpar Asat, a 34-year-old businessman who created a successful Uyghur social media platform called Bagdax, traveled to the U.S. in February 2016 to join a three-week journalism training as part of his acceptance to the IVLP, which he had applied to at the encouragement of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.


While engaged with the IVLP, which the State Department says has trained more than 225,000 foreign nationals since it was established in 1940, Asat and eight others met with a number of journalists at several institutions in Washington and five U.S. states.


He also met with his older sister, 36-year-old Reyhan Asat, who was finishing a Master of Laws program at Harvard University—the first Uyghur to study law at the school. She said that he had been inspired by the IVLP and had secured a visa to return with their parents in May of that year to watch her graduate and stay for the summer.


However, weeks after Ekpar Asat returned home to Urumqi, the capital of northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), his family canceled their planned trip to the U.S. and he went missing in April.


It was only in January this year that the Chinese Embassy in Washington acknowledged that Ekpar Asat had been sentenced to 15 years in prison on charges of “inciting ethnic hatred” after Ambassador Cui Tiankai was sent a bipartisan letter from seven U.S. lawmakers on Reyhan Asat’s behalf, urging China to release him.


Reyhan Asat told RFA’s Uyghur Service that while her brother is innocent of the charges against him, even if he had “incited ethnic hatred” a normal sentence would have been three years in prison, while a maximum punishment would carry 10 years.


“This doesn’t even follow their own law … A 15-year sentence doesn’t make sense here,” she said.


Instead, Reyhan Asat believes her brother, who she said regularly worked to improve ties between Uyghurs and majority Han Chinese, was targeted for taking part in the IVLP.


‘Unable to verify’


The State Department must take a more active role in securing Ekpar Asat’s release, she added, suggesting that the agency should be raising the profiles of program participants as added protection for their well-being if they risk persecution back home.


“I hope that the State Department puts my brother’s case on their agenda and that they invite [Cui Tiankai] to discuss his immediate release,” she said.


“What I mean to say is that they must join Congress and we must work quickly to save my brother. The State Department must take immediate responsibility for its own role in this.”


In a recent statement, State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said her agency is “closely tracking” Ekpar Asat’s case, adding that it had “raised his case directly” with the Chinese government and “will continue to do so.”


“Unfortunately, due to tight [People’s Republic of China] controls on information, we have been unable to independently verify his current status and whereabouts, but we consistently press the PRC for this information whenever we raise his case,” she said.


She also urged Beijing to “immediately release all those arbitrarily detained” in the XUAR, including an estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities believed to have been detained in a vast network of some 1,300 internment camps in the region since April 2017.


While Beijing initially denied the existence of the camps, China last year changed tack and began describing the facilities as “boarding schools” that provide vocational training for Uyghurs, discourage radicalization, and help protect the country from terrorism.


But reporting by RFA 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.


While Ortagus did not comment on Ekpar Asat’s participation in the IVLP or whether it could be the reason he was targeted, other State Department officials have made the claim that there is no direct evidence that taking part in the program directly led to his disappearance.


Ekpar Asat is not the first Uyghur to have disappeared after participating in activities organized by the State Department. Ababekri Muhtar, founder of the Misranim website, was also imprisoned in April 2016 after meeting with then-U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke during Locke’s 2014 visit to the XUAR and later visiting the U.S. on a two-week tour set up by the agency.


Urgent action appeal


Last week, London-based rights group Amnesty International issued an “urgent action” appeal to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Ekpar Asat’s behalf, calling for his immediate and unconditional release and, pending his release, urging authorities to allow him access to his family and a lawyer of his choice.


Francisco Bencosme, director for Amnesty’s Asia-Pacific advocacy, told RFA the Uyghur entrepreneur had been “doing what he was supposed to do” and generally displaying loyalty to the Chinese government.


“But it seems like the only thing he did wrong was participate in the State Department International Visitor Leadership Program, which should not be reason enough for him to go missing and for him to be sentenced as unjustly as he did,” he said.


“And obviously, he’s still missing, and it’s heartbreaking to see his family still asking for his release. It’s clear that it’s part of a larger campaign against Uyghurs and other ethnic Muslims by the Chinese government.”


Bencosme said Amnesty is concerned that Ekpar Asat was sentenced secretly and that he was targeted despite being “a model citizen.”


“Given that he is an alumni of the IVLP program, and also that it’s part of a larger serious concern and human rights issue that’s going on in China, his case and all the other cases need to be elevated at the highest levels of the State Department—it should be at the forefront of our U.S.-China policy,” he said.


“It’s not just the State Department—it also needs to be elevated by the White House, all the way to the top. The President of the United States needs to raise this with President Xi, because nobody should be arbitrarily detained or lack justice simply for participating in a cultural exchange program.”


‘Take responsibility’


Washington-based Uyghur attorney Nury Turkel told RFA that if Ekpar Asat’s case goes unresolved, it would amount to a stain on the IVLP, adding that the onus is on the State Department to secure his release.


“Now it’s understood that there’s a relationship between Ekbar Asat’s case and the U.S. State Department, and it’s the first such case for which there is proof,” he said.


“If the U.S. government had not brought this man here, it’s possible to say that he might not have been imprisoned. If the State Department were to take responsibility and try to resolve this, if they were to have the intention to resolve this, if nothing else they should be able to get him out of prison.”


Mass incarcerations in the XUAR, as well as other policies seen to violate the rights of Uyghurs and other Muslims, have led to increasing calls by U.S. officials to hold Beijing accountable for its actions in the region, including from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, and several lawmakers.


Last week, the U.S. Senate passed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 that would sanction Chinese government officials responsible for arbitrary incarceration, forced labor and other abuses in the XUAR and requires regular monitoring of the situation there by U.S. government bodies, once signed into law by President Donald Trump.


U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, the author of the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act in the House of Representatives, said he was seeking quick passage of the bill, which he called “an important bipartisan statement recognizing that the mass surveillance and internment of Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities is unconscionable and we cannot be silent when faced with such horrific atrocities.”


“The situation in the Xinjiang region has become even more dire since the legislation was first introduced, with systematic forced labor now allowing the Chinese government and companies to profit from mass detention. If we are truly committed to stopping these atrocities, passing this legislation has to be a starting point, not our last word or action,” he told RFA.


Reported by Jilil Kashgary and Alim Seytoff for RFA’s Uyghur Service. 

US State Department Urged to Intervene in Case of Uyghur Jailed After Joining Visitor Program

----------


## Klondyke

^How heart-breaking how they care...

----------


## panama hat

> ^How heart-breaking how they care...


More than China . . . your point?

----------


## misskit

*US Congress Passes Uyghur Rights Act Authorizing Sanctions For Abuses in Xinjiang*

The U.S. Congress passed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 on Wednesday, marking the first legislation by any government to target China for its persecution of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), despite threats of retaliation from Beijing.


The passage comes as the U.S. House of Representatives voted 413-1 via proxy to approve the bill that would sanction Chinese government officials—including regional Communist Party secretary Chen Quanguo—responsible for arbitrary incarceration, forced labor and other abuses in the XUAR, home to internment camps holding as many as 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslims.


The bill, which was also passed unanimously by the Senate in mid-May, condemns the Chinese Communist Party for the three-year-old internment camp program and requires regular monitoring of the situation in the region by U.S. government bodies for the application of sanctions once signed into law by President Donald Trump.


It also addresses Chinese government harassment of Uyghurs living inside the United States—an increasing threat from Chinese diplomatic missions and Communist Party-controlled United Front organizations in Western countries.


In a statement following its passage in the Senate, Republican Senator Marco Rubio—who along with Democratic Senator Bob Menendez introduced the legislation—said China’s “systematic, ongoing efforts to wipe out the ethnic and cultural identities of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang is horrific and will be a stain on humanity should we refuse to act.”


While Beijing initially denied the existence of the camps, China last year changed tack and began describing the facilities as “boarding schools” that provide vocational training for Uyghurs, discourage radicalization, and help protect the country from terrorism.


But reporting by RFA’s 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.


China has slammed moves to pass legislation in support of the Uyghurs as interference and warned of retaliation “in proportion” if Chen were targeted.


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.


While President Trump has largely remained silent on the situation in the XUAR, his administration has taken an increasingly tough stance against China amid tense relations over Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and, more recently, its likely rubber stamp passage of a new security law in Hong Kong that observers have warned severely threatens freedom of speech there.


In the unlikely event that Trump vetoes the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, Congress could override him because of the near unanimous support the bill has received in both the House and the Senate.


‘A matter of priority’


On Wednesday, the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) exile group, welcomed the House approval of the bill following the Senate vote earlier this month and called on Trump to “urgently” sign it into law.


“These recent developments have shown a renewed resolve from the U.S. government to take urgent, meaningful and sustained action to address the crisis in East Turkistan, that the act provides for,” the statement said, using the name preferred by Uyghurs for their homeland.


“Once this bill is signed into law, it will constitute the first legislative initiative by a national government to address the Uyghur crisis. The bipartisan support for the act evidences by these recent votes gives hope to the Uyghur people and a mandate for the U.S. to implement the provisions of the act as a matter of priority.”


The WUC noted that for three years, Uyghurs around the world have been calling on the international community to take concrete measures against the Chinese government for its abuses in the XUAR, while friends and family members of those in the diaspora increasingly disappear into the camp system.


“We urge President Trump to sign the Uyghur Human Rights Policy into law as a matter of priority and take immediate steps to implement it,” WUC president Dolkun Isa said.


“Our community needs the U.S. government and governments around the world to take real, meaningful action, as is provided for in this act. After years of suffering and frustration, the Uyghur people need hope.”


The WUC also called on other government to emulate the U.S. in passing legislation that will hold China to account for the situation in the XUAR.


The bill’s passage was also welcomed by the Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP), which said it would “help ensure that the issue is on the global policy agenda.”


“The House and Senate have shown true global leadership,” UHRP director Omer Kanat said in a statement.


“This is a signal to the entire world that now is the time to take action to end the Chinese government’s atrocities in East Turkistan.”


Other actions


Congress may also soon deliberate new legislation would prohibit imports from the XUAR to the U.S. amid growing evidence that internment camps in the region have increasingly transitioned from political indoctrination to forced labor, with detainees being sent to work in cotton and textile factories, many of which are located on the same grounds as the detention facilities.


The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, introduced in March, would block imports from the region unless proof can be shown that they are not linked to forced labor.


Meanwhile, the executive branch has been taking steps to hold entities responsible for enabling the persecution of Uyghurs to account by subjecting them to additional scrutiny.


Last week, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security announced that nine additional parties would be added to its Entity List for their involvement in human rights abuses in the XUAR, including eight companies and the Ministry of Public Security’s Institute of Forensic Science. The new additions mark an expansion from 28 entities placed on the list in October last year.


Earlier this month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection placed a withhold release order on hair products made by Hetian Haolin Hair Accessories in order to ensure that products made with forced labor do not reach U.S. shelves. The company was registered in an industrial park in Hotan (in Chinese, Hetian) prefecture’s Lop (Luopu) county, in the same location as a detention camp.


In a statement Wednesday, the UHRP welcomed U.S. government efforts to prevent the importation of goods made with Uyghur forced labor and encouraged other nations to take similar steps to address the issue.


The organization also applauded House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi for her recent appointment of Washington-based Uyghur attorney Nury Turkel to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an independent body that reviews violations of religious freedom internationally and makes policy recommendations to the White House, State Department, and Congress.


In a statement welcoming the passage of the bill on Wednesday, Turkel said that Congress had sent "a powerful bipartisan message to the world that the Chinese government’s persecution of the Uyghurs is not forgotten."


"The passage of this bill shows the best of this country and the American people to speak out in defense of those oppressed peoples’ rights and dignity," he told RFA.


"USCIRF thanks the Members of Congress who tirelessly worked on this bill for more than a year. We urge President Trump to sign the bill into law soon for it to be enforced to address the ghastly human rights abuses that the Chinese government has committed against the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in China."

US Congress Passes Uyghur Rights Act Authorizing Sanctions For Abuses in Xinjiang

----------


## harrybarracuda

> President Trump has largely remained silent on the situation in the XUAR


That's because he doesn't have a fucking clue what or where it is.

----------


## Klondyke

> President Trump has largely remained silent on the situation in the XUAR
> That's because he doesn't have a fucking clue what or where it is.


How dares he not to know. Surely more important to know than where is Minneapolis...

----------


## panama hat

> How dares he not to know. Surely more important to know than where is Minneapolis...


Why?  Regale us with your brilliance and <insert adjective which shall not be named>

----------


## harrybarracuda

Anyway that's great news, I await HooHoo coming in and painting a portrait of happy Uighurs, spending their days hugging each other and indulging in a variety of peaceful handicrafts before finishing the day with a nice homecooked meal and a singalong.

----------


## harrybarracuda

Ethnic cleansing, chinky style.




> The Uighur community are being forced to undergo sterilisations and abortions.
> 
> The Chinese government is taking draconian measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other minorities as part of a sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population, even as it encourages some of the countrys Han majority to have more children.
> 
> While individual women have spoken out before about forced birth control, the practice is far more widespread and systematic than previously known, according to an AP investigation based on government statistics, state documents and interviews with 30 ex-detainees, family members and a former detention camp instructor.
> 
> The campaign over the past four years in the far west region of Xinjiang is leading to what some experts are calling a form of demographic genocide.
> 
> The state regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilisation and even abortion on hundreds of thousands, the interviews and data show.


China carrying out demographic genocide against Muslim population - LBC News

----------


## panama hat

It seems OhNo's chucked his dummy again and left Klondyke to fight the cause otherwise we'd have an article about Guantanamo Bay as a response

----------


## Klondyke

How heart-breaking the care for the Uighurs. Wondering what percentage of the "caring" population would mistaken it for swear-word...

----------


## Latindancer

> Anyway that's great news, I await HooHoo coming in and painting a portrait of happy Uighurs, spending their days hugging each other and indulging in a variety of peaceful handicrafts before finishing the day with a nice homecooked meal and a singalong.



 :smiley laughing: 

Strangely enough, that it more or less the picture being painted by the Chinese .......and about the Tibetans too.

----------


## harrybarracuda

> It seems OhNo's chucked his dummy again and left Klondyke to fight the cause otherwise we'd have an article about Guantanamo Bay as a response


As I already opined, one hopes he isn't stricken with the Wuhan virus. That would be bad.

----------


## panama hat

> Wondering what percentage of the "caring" population would mistaken it for swear-word...


Well, there's you for a start . . .





> As I already opined, one hopes he isn't stricken with the Wuhan virus. That would be bad.


You mean the Helsinki virus, as it is now known in China

----------


## harrybarracuda

> You mean the Helsinki virus, as it is now known in China


Is that what it is this week? Last week it was the "Norwegian Salmon" virus.

----------


## misskit

*China Uighurs: A model's video gives a rare glimpse inside internment*

As a model for the massive Chinese online retailer Taobao, the 31-year-old was well paid to flaunt his good looks in slick promotional videos for clothing brands.


But one video of Mr Ghappar is different. Instead of a glitzy studio or fashionable city street, the backdrop is a bare room with grubby walls and steel mesh on the window. And in place of the posing, Mr Ghappar sits silently with an anxious expression on his face.


Holding the camera with his right hand, he reveals his dirty clothes, his swollen ankles, and a set of handcuffs fixing his left wrist to the metal frame of the bed - the only piece of furniture in the room.

MORE China Uighurs: A model's video gives a rare glimpse inside internment - BBC News

----------


## panama hat

OhOh and Klondyke will be along shortly to talk about Guantanamo Bay, Brixton and Manus Island soon instead of actually accepting the horrendous things China does

----------


## Klondyke

^Who needs OhOh and Klondyke?

----------


## Backspin

There has been hundreds of nasty Muslim attacks in china. Most of them probably deserve it. France should open detention camps for their problem too

----------


## harrybarracuda

> There has been hundreds of nasty Muslim attacks in china. Most of them probably deserve it. France should open detention camps for their problem too


Backspin's feeble attempts at trolling are quite amusing.

He's actually worse at it than Buttplug.

----------


## misskit

*Three Camps in Xinjiang’s Uchturpan Believed to Hold Ten Percent of County’s Uyghur Population*

Three internment camps in one county in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’s (XUAR) Aksu (in Chinese, Akesu) prefecture may be holding nearly 10 percent of the county’s Uyghur residents, according to local authorities, despite recent claims by Chinese officials that such facilities have all been shuttered.


Authorities in the XUAR are believed to have held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a vast network of camps since April 2017.


Beginning in October 2018, Beijing acknowledged the existence of the camps, but described them as voluntary “vocational centers,” despite reporting by RFA’s Uyghur Service which has found that detainees are mostly held against their will in poor conditions, where they are forced to endure inhumane treatment and political indoctrination.


In a July 2019 press conference, XUAR Chairman Shohret Zakir told reporters that more than 90 percent of internees from so-called “vocational training centers” had graduated from their “studies” and been placed into jobs. In later statements, the Chinese authorities claimed that all “centers” had been closed.


Last week in Paris, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi repeated the claim that all those sent to the camps have been released and placed in employment.


“The rights of all trainees in the education and training program, though their minds have been encroached by terrorism and extremism, have been fully guaranteed,” he said during a conference at the French Institute of International Relations. “Now all of them have graduated, there is no one in the education and training center now. They all have found jobs.”


However, RFA recently spoke with police officers from Aksu’s Uchturpan (Wushi) county who directly contradicted the claims, not only confirming that at least three camps are still in operation in the county but estimating that together they are likely to hold more than 20,000 detainees.


Uchturpan is a county consisting of six townships and three “bazaars,” or market centers, and has an official population of around 235,000—more than 90 percent of which is ethnic Uyghur. If the estimates are correct, the number of detainees in the three camps would account for nearly 10 percent of the county’s Uyghur residents.


According to one Uyghur village police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing fear of reprisal, the largest of Uchturpan’s three operational camps is in a place known as “Kongtai,” located at the base of a mountainous area of the county.


“I think they call the No. 1 center Kongtai … Yes, the largest internment camp [in the county] is this one,” he said, adding that there are “more than 10,000” people held there.


‘More than 20,000’


The second camp is “where the old prison at Toqquzbulaq used to be,” the officer said. The camp is located around 1.5 kilometers (slightly less than a mile) from the county seat, he said, and around 5,000 people are being held there.


The third camp is “in a vocational [high] school that was converted into a [detention] center … directly across the street from the Bureau of Public Security,” he added, although he said he was unsure of how many people are being held there.


The school, which boarded students from throughout Uchturpan county, is also located catty-corner from office of the Uchturpan county government, he said.


According to the officer, a fourth camp at a former police station in Uchturpan’s Imamlirim township—located near a veterinary hospital and a livestock bazaar—is no longer in operation.


“They had people there before, initially, for something like two months, but then they moved them to Uchturpan,” he said, referring to the county seat.


The officer said that he had never taken anyone from his jurisdiction to any of the three operational camps or been present at one of the camps when the family members of detainees were visiting.


When asked how many people are held in the three operational camps in total, the officer said he was unsure, “but I would estimate that it’s more than 20,000.”


RFA also spoke with a police officer in the seat of Uchturpan who said he was unsure of how many camps remain operational in the county but claimed that the second camp in Toqquzbulaq held “approximately 5,000-6,000” detainees.


The confirmations of operational camps in Uchturpan align with information RFA has received from anonymous sources who said there were formerly six camps in the county but that detainees from three of them were moved to the facilities at Kongtai and the former prison at Toqquzbulaq after the two complexes were expanded in recent years.


In addition to Imamlirim, the two other camps that have been closed were located near the Uchturpan County Party School and the Uchturpan No. 5 Elementary School.



Former resident


A Uyghur who is originally from Uchturpan, but currently lives in Kazakhstan, told RFA that Kongtai is “a very wide-open valley” located eight villages away from Aksu city.


“In the past they would send people who’d been given the death penalty there,” said the Uyghur, who also declined to be named. “The camp called Kongtai is in the same place.”


They also confirmed that the second camp was located Toqquzbulaq at the site of an old prison outside of the county seat.


“There was a prison there before, from the time I was very small,” they said.


“It wasn’t all that big in the past, though they’ve expanded it in the current situation.”


The third camp, at the former vocational high school, is located at Dongkowruk bazaar, they said.


It was called the Gucheng High School … They turned [Gucheng] into a boarding school where they would bring students from all the villages into the county to study,” the source said, noting it had been “a very large school.”


The Uyghur source said they believe that the Uyghur population of Uchturpan is much larger than statistics show and suggested that “more than 35,000” members of the ethnic group are being held in various forms of detention in the county, including in camps, factories, and prisons.


Reports of the continued operations of the camps in Uchturpan come a week after Buzzfeed said it had used satellite imagery to identify 268 structures built in the XUAR since 2017 “bearing the hallmarks of fortified detention compounds,” noting that there was “at least one in nearly every county” in the region.


Amid international condemnation and U.S. sanctions, experts believe that China has begun sentencing Uyghurs held in internment camps to prison, providing legal cover to the detentions.

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyg...020142042.html

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## misskit

*UK Parliament Launches Enquiry Into Xinjiang Internment Camps, Questions British Business Ties*

Britain’s parliament on Wednesday opened an investigation into British business connections with China’s internment camps and use of forced labor in its Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, vowing to find ways to end British firms’ support of repression in the region, media and other sources said.


The enquiry, launched by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons, will also look for ways to strengthen atrocity-prevention mechanisms of Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and to support ethnic Uyghurs driven into exile, sources said.


The UK move follows calls by the European Union and the U.S. to investigate conditions in Beijing’s sprawling network of camps in the region, where authorities are believed to have held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities since April 2017.


Washington and others are also taking measures to block imports of suspect goods and to sanction and hold to account Chinese officials responsible for human rights violations in the XUAR.


China’s treatment of its mostly Muslim ethnic Uyghur community “utterly abhorrent,” Layla Moran—foreign affairs spokeswoman for Parliament’s Liberal Democrats—said in a Sept. 16 statement, adding that the UK government now has a duty to act and impose sanctions to help stop the abuses.


A Sept. 8 letter to China’s ambassador to the UK signed by 135 members of parliament had already signaled British lawmakers’ “extreme concern” over the situation in the XUAR, where authorities are believed to have held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a vast network of internment camps since April 2017.


China has sought to justify its network of camps as voluntary “vocational centers” despite reporting by RFA which has found that detainees are mostly held against their will in poor conditions, where they are forced to endure inhumane treatment and political indoctrination.


“The UK has not done nearly enough,” Moran added in a Sept. 15 opinion piece in Britain’s newspaper The Times. “How any [government minister can watch the videos from the Xinjiang camps and decide that a course of relative inaction is beyond me.”


“It is time the UK worked to regain our status as a country that defends and promotes human rights internationally,” Moran said.


“The mass detention of Uighurs in Xinjiang has horrifying echoes of the 1930s,” said Conservative Party member and investigating committee chair Tom Tugendhat, quoted on Sept. 16 in the Hindustan Times. “There have been similar atrocities since, and each time the world has promised to never allow such violations to happen again.”


“And yet, we now have clear, undeniable evidence of the persecution of more than one million people in these so-called re-education camps,” Tugendhat said, adding that his committee will look into ways the government can use to discourage private businesses in Britain from contributing to Beijing’s abuses in Xinjiang.


The European Union on Monday called on China to allow independent observers to visit the XUAR to investigate China’s treatment of the Uyghurs, while in Washington the Trump administration announced new customs actions to block imports of Chinese products believed to be produced with forced labor.


The Withhold Release Orders, measures intended to prevent goods suspected to have been made with forced labor from entering the United States, targeted three entities from Xinjiang and one from Anhui province in eastern China.


Meanwhile, calls are growing in the U.S. for a boycott of Disney’s $200 million live-action film “Mulan,” shot partly in Xinjiang’s ancient Silk Road City of Turpan, with rights groups and others citing the new film’s links to entities responsible for repressing Uyghurs in the XUAR.


UK Parliament Launches Enquiry Into Xinjiang Internment Camps, Questions British Business Ties

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## Latindancer

A great move ! Now for Tibet......

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## panama hat

> A great move ! Now for Tibet......


A bit late for that . . . after massive 're-education', forced sterilisation, incarceration, mass-immigration of Han and relocation - the place is lost

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## misskit

China Hits Back at US Label of Genocide in Xinjiang as ‘Lies’ in Propaganda-Laden Screed


China on Monday labeled as “lies” a U.S. designation of abuses in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) as genocide in a report that cites residents it said had flocked to social media to “refute” the claim, but an expert said it would do little to address growing concerns over the situation there.


On Jan. 19—his last full day as top U.S. diplomat—former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Chinese policies in the XUAR aim for “the forced assimilation and eventual erasure of a vulnerable ethnic and religious minority group” as he announced a designation that Uyghur exile groups have advocated since the revelation in 2017 of mass internment camps that have held as many as 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.


Pompeo said he had “determined” China is “committing genocide and crimes against humanity” in the XUAR against Uyghurs and other ethnic groups, and that Beijing and the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “must be held to account.”


The new Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has endorsed the designation, suggesting that President Joe Biden’s administration will pursue a more forceful approach in holding China accountable for its abuses in the region. Emily Horne, the spokesperson for Biden’s National Security Council, told the Washington Examiner over the weekend that “President Biden has called the oppression of the Uyghurs a genocide, and he stands against it in the strongest possible terms.”


On Jan. 20, the first day of the Biden administration, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying slammed Pompeo’s “venomous lies” and called the determination “nothing more than a piece of wastepaper.”


“This notorious liar and cheater is making himself a doomed clown and a joke of the century with his show of lies and madness just before the curtain falls,” she told reporters at a regularly scheduled press briefing in Beijing.


On Monday, the official Global Times newspaper ran an unsigned report which said that since the announcement “many residents from Xinjiang began to post videos of themselves telling stories of their own lives to refute Pompeo's ‘genocide’ claim” with the hashtag ‘This is Xinjiang’ on the Sina Weibo social media platform. It said that at the time of publishing, the topic had been viewed nearly 47 million times and commented on by more than 53,000 netizens.


The report, which was accompanied by a video of Uyghurs using the Uyghur language and Mandarin Chinese to discuss how the CCP had improved their lives in the region, quoted four Uyghurs praising the government and telling Washington to butt out of China’s affairs.


“Pompeo is a liar. What he said is opposite to what I see with my own eyes every day,” the report cited Alinur, a “grassroots civil servant,” as saying.


“As a Uyghur living in Xinjiang, I have more rights to say whether it is good than a U.S. politician,” said the resident of Ghulja (in Chinese, Yining)—the seat of Ili Kazakh (Yili Hasake) Autonomous Prefecture and the XUAR’s third largest city.


The report also said that in recent days authorities in China and the XUAR have “expressed strong opposition” to Pompeo’s designation. It cited a statement released by the Standing Committee of Xinjiang Regional People's Congress on Sunday, which said that Pompeo’s “slander severely violated international laws and hurt the feelings of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang.”


The regional legislature trumpeted achievements in “poverty alleviation, anti-terrorism, employment and improving local residents’ living standards in recent years,” and said members of the international community who have been invited to the XUAR “have applauded Xinjiang's improvements in protecting human rights.”


The report quoted “Chinese analysts” as saying that countries “should be cautious” about following Pompeo’s lead “as it would jeopardize bilateral ties,” noting that Canadian Conservatives on Sunday called on the federal government to also label Beijing’s policies in the region as “genocide” and “crimes against humanity.”


Sweet-talking Washington


German researcher Adrian Zenz, a leading expert on China’s policies toward Uyghurs whose research provided critical evidence of abusive policies in the XUAR, told RFA’s Uyghur Service on Monday that China is trying to promote a counternarrative both internationally and domestically about the Uyghurs. And while that narrative may be largely successful on the nation’s majority Han Chinese, “there's a good chance that the Uyghurs will interpret this in light of their entire and past experience with the regime and its propaganda and might come to opposite conclusions.”


Reports suggest that amid increasing international scrutiny, authorities in the XUAR have begun to send detainees to work at factories as part of an effort to label the camps “vocational centers,” although those held in the facilities regularly toil under forced or coerced labor conditions.


Former President Donald Trump’s administration in July leveled sanctions against several top Chinese officials deemed responsible for rights violations in the region, including regional party secretary Chen Quanguo, under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.


The move, which marked the first time Washington had sanctioned a member of China’s powerful Politburo, followed Trump’s enactment in June of the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 (UHRPA), which passed nearly unanimously through both houses of Congress at the end of May. The legislation highlights arbitrary incarceration, forced labor, and other abuses in the XUAR and provides for sanctions against the Chinese officials who enforce them.


The Biden administration has yet to lay out its foreign policy approach to China and Zenz, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, said Beijing may be trying to test the waters with state media reports such as the one published Monday.


“I think they're now being very careful because of the new Biden administration and I think there is some hope on the side of the Chinese that they can sweet talk the Biden administration into being more compromising—taking a more compromising or lenient stance on China which, from what I gather, is unlikely … at least on Xinjiang and human rights,” he said.


“China is obviously hoping to sweet talk them and is trying to sort of blame individuals like Pompeo. It is always easy to blame individuals for a wider problem.”

Targeting individuals


In June, Zenz published a report documenting a dramatic increase in recent years in the number of forced sterilizations and abortions targeting Uyghurs in the XUAR. The report concludes that such measures may amount to a government-led campaign of genocide under United Nations definitions.


China did not make a spokesperson available for comment on this report, but when Zenz’s study on forced birth control came out in June, official media vilified him and said Beijing is ‘considering suing’ him for libel, while the foreign ministry denounced him.


Zenz said he is “very used to” being vilified in China these days for speaking out about rights violations in the XUAR and elsewhere in the country.


“It's become very normal for the Chinese foreign ministry to attack me by name, which kind of shows their desperation,” he said.


“They're quite desperate, quite on the defensive, because there's been so much evidence on the terrible atrocities they're committing, and so that seems to be their solution to try to attack and discredit individuals.”


He said Chinese propaganda has a certain value in that “there are always going to be people who are going to read between the lines.”


“Anybody with any experience knows that they often say the very opposite of what is true, and so there might be some benefit in their propaganda falsehoods, as long as people know how to interpret it,” he said.


Zenz acknowledged that such reports by state media give nations that benefit from Chinese investment the ability to appoint their version of the truth, saying that Beijing is denying rights abuses in the XUAR and that there isn’t enough evidence, and thus construct an alternative narrative.


But he warned China against becoming too overconfident about its ability to continue its policies of repression there without being held to account.


“I think the Chinese at this point just trust that they're not going to pay a heavy price for the atrocities and in that sense, maybe they think it doesn't matter ... [They say] ‘We can do whatever we want to and internationally there’s enough countries who are at least quiet or are on our side,’” Zenz said.


“They might feel just confident about this, but people who are very confident also tend to make mistakes, so this could be very interesting.”


China Hits Back at US Label of Genocide in Xinjiang as ‘Lies’ in Propaganda-Laden Screed — Radio Free Asia

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## harrybarracuda

> a report that cites residents it said had flocked to social media to “refute” the claim


That would be as believable as Israeli settlers flocking to social media to say that Palestinians are all smiles and laughs at having their homes bulldozed.

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## Latindancer

Mr Shithole is being a hypocrite again....surprise surprise.


NEW YORKChinese President                       Xi Jinping          issued a veiled warning against the new Biden administrations preparations to rally allies to challenge Beijing on a range of issues, urging multilateral coordination to tackle global challenges such as the pandemic.

             To build small circles or start a new Cold War, to reject,  threaten or intimidate others, to willfully impose decoupling, supply  disruption or sanctions, to create isolation or estrangement, will only  push the world into division and even confrontation, Mr. Xi told the  World Economic Forum, which this year is convening online instead of in  the ski town of Davos, Switzerland.

He is conveniently ignoring the various industries and many individuals in Australia which are suffering because of China's intimidation and decoupling.

China’s Xi Warns Against Confrontation in Veiled Message to Biden - WSJ

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