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  1. #326
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    Quote Originally Posted by Klondyke View Post
    ^How heart-breaking how they care...
    More than China . . . your point?

  2. #327
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
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    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

  3. #328
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    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.

  4. #329
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    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    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...

  5. #330
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    Quote Originally Posted by Klondyke View Post
    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>

  6. #331
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    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.

  7. #332
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    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

  8. #333
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    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

  9. #334
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    How heart-breaking the care for the Uighurs. Wondering what percentage of the "caring" population would mistaken it for swear-word...

  10. #335
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    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    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.



    Strangely enough, that it more or less the picture being painted by the Chinese .......and about the Tibetans too.

  11. #336
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by panama hat View Post
    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.

  12. #337
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    Quote Originally Posted by Klondyke View Post
    Wondering what percentage of the "caring" population would mistaken it for swear-word...
    Well, there's you for a start . . .


    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    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

  13. #338
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by panama hat View Post
    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.

  14. #339
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
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    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

  15. #340
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    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

  16. #341
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    ^Who needs OhOh and Klondyke?

  17. #342
    Thailand Expat Backspin's Avatar
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    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

  18. #343
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Backspin View Post
    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.

  19. #344
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
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    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

  20. #345
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
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    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

  21. #346
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    A great move ! Now for Tibet......

  22. #347
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    Quote Originally Posted by Latindancer View Post
    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

  23. #348
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    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

  24. #349
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    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.

  25. #350
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    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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