RFA, 19 March 2020
Below is an article published by RFA, Photo courtesy of TikTok.
Shohret Hoshur – All internment camp detainees in one county in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have been relocated to prisons or to parts of the country’s interior, according to a local police officer, following reports of similar policies in other parts of the region.
Read More →Hong Kong Free Press, 27 February 2020
Below is an article published by Hong Kong Free Press, Photo Uyghur Human Rights Project.
Draconian measures by China to curb the coronavirus have caused widespread hunger in the tightly controlled Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang, ethnic Uighur activists charged Wednesday.
The Uighur Human Rights Project, a Washington-based advocacy group, also voiced concern that the COVID-19 could spread in internationally condemned camps where more than one million Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims are incarcerated.
The group said that China imposed a quarantine with little advance notice in parts of Xinjiang in late January after at least two COVID-19 cases in the regional capital Urumqi.
Citing videos, photos and residents’ conversations with members of the Uighur diaspora, the group said that “many” people have gone short on food, medicine or other critical supplies as they have been ordered to stay inside their homes.
In one video believed to have been shot last week in Yining county, a man is heard shouting at officials, “I’m starving. My wife and children are starving,” before banging his head into a pole and shouting, “Do you want to kill me? Just kill me.”
The group vouched for the video’s authenticity, saying the man and the person who filmed the episode were taking great risks by both breaking the quarantine and circulating the footage.
Radio Free Asia earlier reported that in the city of Artux, authorities erected metal fences almost two meters (six feet) high to keep residents from leaving their neighborhoods.
China has imposed quarantines in numerous parts of the country to contain the novel coronavirus, which originated in the central city of Wuhan and has since killed more than 2,700 people worldwide, the vast majority in China.
China has come under international criticism for its treatment of the Uighurs, with activists and witnesses saying it is trying to forcibly integrate the mostly Muslim ethnicity and strip their Islamic heritage.
Beijing has described the camps as educational, saying it is providing minorities with training and discouraging Islamic extremisim.
Reuter, 26 February 2020
Below is an article published by Reuter, Photo REUTERS/Denis Balibouse.
Read More →Press Release – For immediate release
27 January 2020
Contact: World Uyghur Congress www.uyghurcongress.org
+49 89 5432 1999 or [email protected]
The WUC is deeply concerned that the rapidly spreading novel corona virus outbreak, which has affected thousands of people in China, may put the Uyghur people and those detained in camps at particular risk. The virus, which was first reported in Wuhan, has already infected 2,000 people and resulted in the deaths of 81 people.
Read More →Politico, 5 January 2020
Politico – Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said Sunday that he hopes the signing of a U.S.-China trade deal will not prevent the United States from criticizing China on its human rights abuses.
Read More →World Uyghur Congress, 20 December 2019
On December 18, the European Parliament awarded the 2019 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to imprisoned Uyghur economist Ilham Tohti. His daughter, Jewher Ilham was present to accept the award on behalf of her father.
Read More →The Washington Post, 17 December 2019
The Washingtion Post Editorial Board – At a news conference in Beijing recently, the head of China’s Xinjiang province in the far northwest, Shohrat Zakir, said that “trainees” in a notorious archipelago of reeducation camps had all “graduated,” and “with the help of the government, stable employment has been achieved and their quality of life has been improved.”
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RFA, 12 November 2019
By Alim Seytoff & Joshua Lipes – China has built more than 1,000 internment camps for ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), one of the world’s foremost experts on mass incarcerations in the region told RFA.