World Uyghur Congress, 27 July 2018

US Government Holds Hearing on Human Rights Crisis in East Turkistan

This week, Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), convened a hearing on the Surveillance, Suppression, and Mass Detention: Xinjiang’s Human Rights Crisis. 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.

Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Rally for Religious Freedom in Asia

WUC President Dolkun Isa spoke about the religious persecution and arbitrary detention of more than 1 million Uyghurs in political indoctrination camps at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation Rally for Religious Freedom in Asia on Monday, 23 July 2018, in front of the Capital Building in Washington D.C.

The event on the west lawn of the Capitol was part of a weeklong State Department-sponsored program to promote the issue of religious freedom abroad.

Mr. Isa was joined at the event by US Senator Ted Cruz, representatives from dozens of human rights organizations, ethnic groups, and religious organizations joined together on the west lawn of the United States Capitol to protest the ongoing religious persecution carried out by the world’s last remaining communist regimes. Mr. Isa met with Senator Cruz after the event to provide him with more information on the situation in East Turkistan and to call for concrete action to be taken.

In addition to speaking of the persecution of Uyghurs more broadly, Dolkun Isa shared the heart-wrenching story of how his mother recently passed away while imprisoned inside one of the Chinese Communist Party’s political indoctrination camps in East Turkestan.

The event proved to be an important occasion to raise further awareness of the human rights crisis facing the Uyghur people in China, especially with high-level U.S. officials. The WUC will continue to push for the US Government to take concrete action to alleviate the suffering of the Uyghur people.

US Vice President Pence Raises the Mass Arbitrary Detention of Uyghurs During Address

US Vice-President Mike Pence has criticized China for allegedly holding hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs in political indoctrination camps during his address to the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom on Thursday July 26.

“Sadly, as we speak as well, Beijing is holding hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, of Uyghur Muslims in so-called “re-education camps,” where they’re forced to endure around-the-clock political indoctrination and to denounce their religious beliefs and their cultural identity as the goal.”

The words of recognition and concern from US officials about the crimes against humanity being perpetrated against the Uyghur people in East Turkistan is encouraging and the World Uyghur Congress urge them to follow up with concrete action to help all those who are detained or who have disappeared.

Persecution of Uyghurs is a ‘Crime Against Humanity’

This week CNN reporter Michael Caster published an article calling out the Chinese Communist Party for its systematic persecution of Uyghurs. He urges the U.S. to acknowledge the appearance of crimes against humanity in East Turkistan and use the Global Magnitsky Sanctions against China’s Party Secretary to East Turkistan Chen Quanguo.

Mr. Caster stresses that “despite the increasingly dire human rights situation in Xinjiang, few around the world are aware of it, and even fewer have spoken out. We are now reaching a crisis point, when speaking out is not enough.

He also argues that “the situation that is unfolding in Xinjiang fits the textbook definition of crimes against humanity.”

The WUC is in agreement that the targeted mass arbitrary detention of over 1 million Uyghurs and the torture, killings, disappearances and other serious human rights violations perpetrated against the Uyghur people certainly should be labelled as crimes against humanity. Due to the seriousness and severity of the persecution, states should act with the utmost urgency to stop it.