Category Archives: Xinjiang

‘The world must boycott’: Australian Uyghur calls for more pressure on Beijing Games

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Almas Nizamidin, whose wife has been sentenced to seven years in prison in Xinjiang, says a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics is not enough

What Almas Nizamidin knows of his wife’s arrest and disappearance is second-hand: the harried reports relayed by his relatives as it rapidly unfolded.

The police came for Buzainafu Abudourexiti at her home in Ürümqi as she was travelling to a doctor’s appointment on 29 March 2017. Her family called, she cancelled her appointment and hurried home.

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Xinjiang: Twitter closes thousands of China state-linked accounts spreading propaganda

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Content was often ‘embarrassingly’ produced and pumped out via repurposed accounts, analysts say

Twitter has shut down thousands of state-linked accounts in China that seek to counter evidence of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, as part of what experts called an “embarrassingly” produced propaganda operation.

The operations used photos and images, shell and potentially automated accounts, and fake Uyghur profiles, to disseminate state propaganda and fake testimonials about their happy lives in the region, seeking to dispel evidence of a years-long campaign of oppression, with mass internments, re-education programs, and allegations of forced labour and sterilisation.

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Leaked papers link Xinjiang crackdown with China leadership

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Secret documents urge population control, mass round-ups and punishment of Uyghurs

Excerpts from previously unpublished documents directly linking China’s crackdown on Uyghur Muslims and other minorities in Xinjiang province to speeches by the Chinese leadership in 2014 have been put online.

The documents – including three speeches by Chinese president Xi Jinping in April 2014 – cover security, population control and the need to punish the Uyghur population. Some are marked top secret. They were leaked to the German academic Adrian Zenz.

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Global activists gather at Rome G20 to demand tougher action on China

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Beijing must not be let off hook over human rights abuses in return for climate cooperation, say legislators

Legislators from around the world have gathered on the fringes of the G20 summit in Rome to protest against the presence of the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, and urge leaders not to let China off the hook over human rights abuses in return for Beijing’s cooperation on the climate crisis.

Many of those at the Rome counter-meeting have been banned from travelling to China as punishment for campaigning against Chinese repression in Xinjiang.

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Chinese effort to gather ‘micro clues’ on Uyghurs laid bare in report

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Authorities using predictive policing and human surveillance on Muslims in Xinjiang, thinktank says

Authorities in the Chinese region of Xinjiang are using predictive policing and human surveillance to gather “micro clues” about Uyghurs and empower neighbourhood informants to ensure compliance at every level of society, according to a report.

The research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) thinktank detailed Xinjiang authorities’ expansive use of grassroots committees, integrated with China’s extensive surveillance technology, to police their Uyghur neighbours’ movements – and emotions.

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Labour says PPE contracts must not go to Xinjiang firms that use forced workers

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Exclusive: Emily Thornberry appeals to Sajid Javid to tackle issue of forced labour in Chinese province

Labour has written to the health secretary, Sajid Javid, urging him to ensure a new £5bn contract for NHS protective equipment including gowns and masks is not awarded to companies implicated in forced labour in China’s Xinjiang region.

Following up earlier concerns about medical gloves for the NHS being produced in Malaysia, where there have been consistent reports of forced labour in factories, Emily Thornberry called for an urgent response.

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China will tread carefully in navigating the Taliban’s return

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Analysis: Difficult to predict how China will deal with its volatile neighbour, but Uyghur issue could prove contentious

The US’s hasty departure from Afghanistan has provided much material for China’s propaganda agencies to discredit Washington’s foreign policy. But Beijing is also treading a careful line in navigating an increasingly uncertain security situation in one of its most volatile neighbours.

On Monday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying, said that while Beijing will “continue developing good-neighbourly, friendly and cooperative relations with Afghanistan”, it also urges the Taliban to “ensure that all kinds of terrorism and crimes can be curbed so that the Afghan people can stay away from war and rebuild their homeland”.

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Expulsions lead BBC to fear for reporters in authoritarian regimes

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Broadcaster says relations with China and Russia are fraught as its correspondent Sarah Rainsford is forced out of Moscow

BBC news executives vowed on Saturday night to continue to report from Russia and China despite growing fears that both countries are becoming increasingly difficult to cover.

After a surprise Russian move last week that will force correspondent Sarah Rainsford permanently out of Moscow at the end of the month, a senior figure in BBC news said that Russia’s decision not to renew her visa marks a new low in relations. “Efforts are being made to keep communications open but the feeling is that Sarah is sadly right when she says she doesn’t see Russia changing its mind,” he said.

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Morocco authorities arrest Uyghur activist at China’s request

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Supporters fear Yidiresi Aishan will be extradited and say arrest is politically driven

Moroccan authorities have arrested a Uyghur activist in exile because of a Chinese terrorism warrant distributed by Interpol, according to information from Moroccan police and a rights group that tracks people detained by China.

Activists fear Yidiresi Aishan will be extradited to China and say the arrest is politically driven as part of a broader Chinese campaign to hunt down perceived dissidents outside its borders.

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EU votes for diplomats to boycott China Winter Olympics over rights abuses

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Non-binding resolution also calls for governments to impose further sanctions on China as tensions rise

The European parliament has overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling on diplomatic officials to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics in response to continuing human rights abuses by the Chinese government.

In escalating tensions between the EU and China, the non-binding resolution also called for governments to impose further sanctions, provide emergency visas to Hong Kong journalists and further support Hongkongers to move to Europe.

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Beijing using its financial muscle to target Uyghurs living abroad – report

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Cases of transnational repression found in 28 countries are ‘just the tip of the iceberg’, say rights researchers

China is using its unprecedented economic clout across vast swathes of Asia and the Middle East to target Uyghur Muslims living beyond its borders through a sprawling system of transnational repression, a new report says.

Beijing’s crackdown on Xinjiang province, where more than 1 million people are thought to have been detained in a network of internment camps in recent years, has coincided with a rise in efforts to control Uyghurs living overseas, the report found.

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Unions join call for Australian anti-slavery law to prevent profiting from forced labour, including in Xinjiang

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Coalition facing growing pressure – including from own MPs – to join international efforts to curb modern slavery

A top union leader has called on the Morrison government to urgently introduce laws to prevent Australian businesses from “profiting by importing goods made by slavery”, as the push gains support from across the political spectrum.

The president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Michele O’Neil, told Guardian Australia it “should appall all Australians that there is no ban on the importation of goods produced by forced labour”.

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UN warns of worst ‘cascade of human rights setbacks in our lifetimes’

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Rights chief calls for concerted global action, citing recent violations in China, Russia and Ethiopia

The UN rights chief has called for concerted action to recover from the worst global deterioration of rights she had seen, highlighting the situation in China, Russia and Ethiopia among others.

“To recover from the most wide-reaching and severe cascade of human rights setbacks in our lifetimes, we need a life-changing vision, and concerted action,” Michelle Bachelet told the opening of the UN Human Rights Council’s 47th session.

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Hungary’s LGBT protests and Juneteenth Day: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms from China to Colombia

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China’s Uyghurs living in a ‘dystopian hellscape’, says Amnesty report

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Widespread internment, torture and rights abuses have been claimed by former detainees as Beijing continues a policy of denial

Amnesty International has collected new evidence of human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region of China, which it says has become a “dystopian hellscape” for hundreds of thousands of Muslims subjected to mass internment and torture.

The human rights organisation has collected more than 50 new accounts from Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities who claim to have been subjected to mass internment and torture in police stations and camps in the region.

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EU parliament ‘freezes’ China trade deal over sanctions

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Tit-for-tat sanctions over Beijing’s treatment of Uyghurs puts halt on investment agreement

The European parliament has voted overwhelmingly to “freeze” any consideration of a massive investment deal with China, following recent tit-for-tat sanctions over Beijing’s treatment of its Uyghur population in Xinjiang province.

According to the resolution, the parliament, which must ratify the deal, “demands that China lift the sanctions before parliament can deal with the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI)”. Some MEPs warned that the lifting of the sanctions would not in itself ensure the deal’s ratification.

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Chinese Uyghur policy causes ‘unprecedented’ fall in Xinjiang birthrates

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Research finds figure fell by almost half between 2017-2019, backing claims of coercive fertility policies

Birthrates in Xinjiang fell by almost half in the two years after the Chinese government implemented policies to reduce the number of babies born to Uyghur and other minority Muslim families, new research has claimed.

The figures show unprecedented declines which were more extreme than any global region at any time in the 71 years of UN fertility data collection, including during genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia, according to the authors of the report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Aspi).

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Refugees and the Armenian genocide: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to China

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Where is New Zealand’s ‘values-based’ foreign policy when it comes to the Uyghurs? | Guled Mire

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Other small nations also feel vulnerable to Chinese aggression but it hasn’t stopped them speaking out over the Uyghur genocide

After the Christchurch terror attacks, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern donned a hijab as she comforted the relatives of the 51 Muslims who were killed simply for practising their faith. The image spread across the world and she was lavished with international praise.

Yet her apparent turning away from the active erasure of China’s Uyghur Muslim minority population may undo that reputation. On Wednesday, New Zealand’s parliament backed away from calling what is happening in Xinjiang a “genocide,” opting instead for the watered-down language of “human rights breaches”.

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EU ‘suspends’ ratification of China investment deal after sanctions

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Massive trade agreement stalls after tit-for-tat sanctions prompted by Chinese policy in Xinjiang

The European Commission has said that efforts to ratify a massive investment deal with China have been in effect suspended after tit-for-tat sanctions were imposed over China’s treatment of its Uyghur population in March.

“We now in a sense have suspended … political outreach activities from the European Commission side,” said the commission’s executive vice-president, Valdis Dombrovskis, on Tuesday. He said that the current state of relations between Brussels and Beijing was “not conducive” for the ratification of the deal, which is known as EU-China comprehensive agreement on investment.

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