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

^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.

^I just searched all 11 pages for "water" and "stress" and not a single hit.

Originally Posted by foobar

^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".

Originally Posted by foobar

I just searched all 11 pages for "water" and "stress" and not a single hit

...555: made you look!...

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

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

“Perhaps it’s because they are nervous speaking to a foreigner,” he said.

No shit.

(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/

Originally Posted by 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.

Why should we have heard about it by now?
Did you get paid wu mao shi bing ren?

^^ 'won the bid'

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

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.

Originally Posted by HermantheGerman

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.

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

Stupid chinkies and their bullshit.

The only way they are back with their families is if they've arrested all of them as well.

Plausible deniability....unfortunately it works on many.

Originally Posted by Latindancer

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.

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

Obviously not being repressive enough for chinky tastes.

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

Moving members of a religious minority to remote locations by train.

Where have I heard that before?

Video on this site. https://uhrp.org/news-commentary/dee...ation-xinjiang