Category Archives: Xinjiang

Clues to scale of Xinjiang labour operation emerge as China defends camps

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Beijing white paper says an average of 1.29 million workers a year have gone through ‘vocational training’ between 2014 and 2019

The Chinese Communist party government has defended its system of internment camps for Uighur and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, in a white paper that also revealed some details of the breadth of its labour program.

In the document published on Thursday, Beijing called them “vocational training centres” , saying: “Through its proactive labor and employment policies, Xinjiang has continuously improved the people’s material and cultural lives, and guaranteed and developed their human rights in every field.”

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Disney remake of Mulan criticised for filming in Xinjiang

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Film credits offer thanks to eight government entities in region where rights abuses are alleged

Disney’s live-action remake of Mulan, already the target of a boycott, has come under fire for filming in Xinjiang, the site of alleged widespread human rights abuses against Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.

The film, directed by Niki Caro, is an adaptation of Disney’s 1998 animation about Hua Mulan, a young woman who disguises herself as a man to fight in the imperial army in her father’s stead.

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‘Chairman Xi’ seeks only to purge and subjugate. That is his weakness | Simon Tisdall

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From Tibet to Taiwan, China’s leader is intent on wielding absolute power. Instead he is fanning the flames of dissent

It’s often said that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely – but does it also induce leaders to act in foolhardy, headstrong and ultimately self-destructive ways? History, especially Chinese history, is full of examples of omnipotent rulers whose unchecked behaviour led to disaster. Xi Jinping, China’s comrade-emperor, is a modern-day case in point. Xi seems to think he can do no wrong. As a result, not much is going right.

Xi’s authoritarian, expansionist policies, pursued with increasing vehemence since he became communist party chief and president in 2012-13, have enveloped China in a ring of fire. Its borderlands are ablaze with conflict and confrontation from Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet and the Himalayas in the north and west to Hong Kong, the South China Sea and Taiwan to the east. More than at any time since Mao’s 1949 revolution, China is also at odds with the wider world.

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Uighur Muslim teacher tells of forced sterilisation in Xinjiang

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Chinese government threatened woman when she resisted in move to suppress Muslim minority birth rates

A teacher coerced into giving classes in Xinjiang internment camps has described her forced sterilisation at the age of 50, under a government campaign to suppress birth rates of women from Muslim minorities.

Qelbinur Sidik said the crackdown swept up not just women likely to fall pregnant, but those well beyond normal childbearing ages. Messages she got from local authorities said women aged 19 to 59 were expected to have intrauterine devices (IUDs) fitted or undergo sterilisation.

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Ban US cotton imports from Xinjiang, say human rights campaigners

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Petitions issued to US authorities cite ‘integral role of forced labour’ involving Uighur Muslims and other minority groups

Human rights campaigners are calling on US authorities to ban all imports of cotton from the Chinese province of Xinjiang after allegations of widespread forced labour.

Two identical petitions, delivered today to US Custom and Border Protection, cite “substantial evidence” that the Uighur community and other minority groups are being press-ganged into working in the region’s cotton fields.

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Faith leaders join forces to warn of Uighur ‘genocide’

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Statement signed by Rowan Williams, bishops, imams and rabbis says Chinese Muslim minority faces ‘human tragedy’

Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, is among more than 70 faith leaders publicly declaring that the Uighurs are facing “one of the most egregious human tragedies since the Holocaust”, and that those responsible for the persecution of the Chinese Muslim minority must be held accountable.

The incarceration of at least a million Uighurs and other Muslims in prison camps, where they are reported to face starvation, torture, murder, sexual violence, slave labour and forced organ extraction, is a potential genocide, say the clerics.

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Secret footage shows Uighur man’s detention inside Chinese prison

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Merdan Ghappar’s texts and videos reveal shocking conditions in Xinjiang internment camps

Rare footage and text messages secretly sent by a detained Uighur man show chilling evidence of human rights violations by China, as global scrutiny of the situation in Xinjiang grows.

According to reports by the BBC and the Globe and Mail, Merdan Ghappar, a successful model on the e-commerce platform Taobao, was detained after having spent over a year in prison on a drugs charge his supporters said was trumped up.

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World is legally obliged to pressure China on Uighurs, leading lawyers say

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Exclusive: Sanctions on China and companies operating there, along with use of treaty agreements, can bring Beijing to account, British barristers argue

The international community is legally obliged to take action on China’s alleged abuse of Uighur and other Turkic minorities, a prominent group of British lawyers has said, suggesting nations use sanctions, corporate accountability mechanisms, and international treaties preventing racial discrimination to pressure Beijing.

China’s refusal to be held legally accountable for the widespread and documented allegations did not absolve the global community of responsibility, the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales (BHRC) said in a report released on Wednesday.

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The ‘perfect Uighur’: outgoing and hard working – but still not safe from China’s camps

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Beijing claims its re-education camps in Xinjiang are needed to combat Islamic terrorism, but Dilara’s experiences tell a different story

By the standards of Chinese officialdom, Dilara is surely the perfect minority. She doesn’t wear a headscarf. She drinks beer. Pretty and outgoing, she socialises often with Chinese friends.

If you closed your eyes and heard her speak Mandarin, you would never guess she had greenish eyes and brown hair, that she isn’t Han – the dominant ethnic group in China – but Uighur, a Muslim, Turkic-speaking people who call Xinjiang province, in the far west of China, their homeland.

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UK risks China’s wrath by suspending Hong Kong extradition treaty

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Foreign secretary also bans export of riot control kit in response to security crackdown

The UK is to immediately suspend its extradition treaty with Hong Kong and also bar the export of riot control equipment following Beijing’s imposition of a sweeping national security law on the territory, Dominic Raab has announced.

Speaking to the Commons on Monday, the UK foreign secretary said that while Britain sought cooperative ties with China, it was deeply worried at both events in Hong Kong and the repression of the Uighur population in China’s Xinjiang province.

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China’s ambassador denies abuse of Uighurs in Xinjiang during Andrew Marr interview – video

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China’s ambassador to the UK has denied reports of abuse of the Uighur population in the Xinjiang region, as he was confronted with footage of shackled prisoners being herded on to trains.

Appearing on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Liu Xiaoming said: 'I do not know where you get this videotape,' adding, 'sometimes you have a transfer of prisoners, in any country.'

Xinjiang is home to China's Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group that has been subjected to religious and ethnic persecution by Chinese authorities in recent years. 

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Donald Trump is a hypocrite on China – but China deserves to be condemned | Jonathan Freedland

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Beijing is crushing human rights in Hong Kong, and is accused of genocide against the Uighurs. The world cannot stand by

Donald Trump taints everything he touches. If he supports a cause, he damages it. If he takes a stance, the instinct of most self-respecting liberals is to rush to the opposing side. So when Trump rails against China, a favourite bete noire, it can make a progressive pause.

That’s especially true when the US president lurches so easily into casual bigotry – referring to the coronavirus as “kung flu” – and when his hypocrisy is so rank. Thanks to his former national security adviser, John Bolton, we know that, for all his talk, Trump begged Beijing to meddle in this year’s election in his favour, breezily granting US blessing to what Amnesty International calls the “gulag” of camps in Xinjiang, in which China holds a million Uighur Muslims against their will.

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US imposes sanctions on senior Chinese officials over Uighur abuses

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Mike Pompeo says US ‘will not stand idly by’ over abuses of ethnic minorities in China’s western region of Xinjiang

The United States has imposed sanctions on three senior officials of the Chinese Communist party, including a member of the ruling politburo, for alleged human rights abuses targeting ethnic and religious minorities in the western part of the country.

Secretary of state Mike Pompeo said in a statement: “The United States will not stand idly by as the Chinese Communist party carries out human rights abuses targeting Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs and members of other minority groups in Xinjiang, to include forced labor, arbitrary mass detention, and forced population control, and attempts to erase their culture and Muslim faith.”

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China sterilising ethnic minority women in Xinjiang, report says

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Uighurs are among those facing involuntary contraception or threats over birth quotas

Chinese authorities are carrying out forced sterilisations of women in an apparent campaign to curb the growth of ethnic minority populations in the western Xinjiang region, according to research published on Monday.

The report, based on a combination of official regional data, policy documents and interviews with ethnic minority women, has prompted an international group of lawmakers to call for a United Nations investigation into China’s policies in the region.

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China’s Arsenal blackout highlights Premier League’s ethics problem

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Özil’s Uighur comments have angered China, but the world’s most famous league has remained tight-lipped so far

Across the street from the Workers’ Stadium in Beijing, the venue of Arsenal’s first ever match in China in 1995, shoppers at an Adidas store ignore a rack of puffer jackets, football shirts and backpacks bearing the football club’s name.

One, inspecting a range of Adidas clothing released for Chinese New Year, says he had once been a fan of Arsenal’s Mesut Özil, but since the star midfielder had condemned China’s treatment of the country’s Uighur minority, he has changed his mind.

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China’s ambassador to Australia says reports of detention of 1m Uighurs ‘fake news’

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Cheng Jingye also says detained Australian writer Yang Hengjun’s rights are being protected

China’s ambassador to Australia has labelled reports that one million Uighurs are being held in detention “fake news”, seeking to excuse mass incarceration as a deradicalisation measure.

At a rare press conference at the Chinese embassy in Canberra, Cheng Jingye claimed the mass detention in Xinjiang province had “nothing to do with human rights, nothing to do with religion” and was “no different” from other countries’ counter-terrorism measures.

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Mesut Özil row: China’s Arsenal fans burn shirts in anger at Xinjiang post

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Player, who has 4 million followers on Chinese microblog Weibo, is called a ‘dirty ant’ for attacking China

Chinese football fans have burned Arsenal football shirts and called on the club to fire star player Mesut Özil after he publicly criticised China’s treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang.

On Friday, Özil, who is usually quiet on social media, posted a message on his Instagram profile describing Uighurs in the far north-western region of China as “warriors who resist persecution”.

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‘Atrocity of the century’: Uighur activist urges Australia to take tougher stance against China

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Rushan Abbas says countries doing business with China are enabling its mass detention of 3 million people, including her sister

A leading Uighur activist, Rushan Abbas, has urged Australian MPs to take a stronger stance against the Chinese regime, while backing controversial comparisons between the state’s authoritarianism and Nazi Germany.

Abbas, who met with MPs in Canberra on Thursday and held a roundtable at the US Embassy on the plight of the Uighur Muslim minority in western China’s Xinjiang province, said that “modern day” concentration camps holding as many as 3 million Uighurs were a case of “history repeating itself”.

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Markets in tailspin amid fears US-China trade deal is in peril

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Asian markets plunge after Trump comments about trade deal delay made worse by possible Xinjiang sanctions

Global financial markets have gone into a tailspin amid mounting concern that the US and China are not going to conclude an interim trade agreement before a new set of American tariffs hit Chinese goods on 15 December.

Asian markets saw heavy selling on Wednesday after Donald Trump said a trade deal could wait until next year’s presidential election, scotching widely held expectations that he was ready to give the go ahead for an agreement.

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US House approves Uighur Act calling for sanctions on China’s senior officials

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Legislation in response to crackdown in Xinjiang prompts angry response from Beijing

The US House of Representatives has overwhelmingly approved a bill that would require the Trump administration to toughen its response to China’s crackdown on its Muslim minority in Xinjiang, drawing swift condemnation from Beijing.

The Uighur Act of 2019 is a stronger version of a bill that angered Beijing when it passed the Senate in September. It calls on the president, Donald Trump, to impose sanctions for the first time on a member of China’s powerful politburo even as he seeks a trade deal with Beijing.

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