China sterilising ethnic minority women in Xinjiang, report says

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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Global alliance formed to counter China threat amid rising tensions

Lawmakers from EU parliament and eight other countries create new body

International cooperation is needed to protect democratic values from an increasingly assertive communist China, a new group made up of lawmakers from eight countries and the EU parliament has said.

The legislators, representing parties across the political spectrum, have formed a global alliance, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, to push their governments to take a stronger stance on relations with the country.

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

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’

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

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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Chinese state broadcaster pulls Arsenal v Man City after Mesut Özil criticism

• Özil posted message about China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims
• Chinese FA ‘outraged and disappointed’ by German’s remarks

China’s state broadcaster CCTV on Sunday removed Arsenal’s Premier League game against Manchester City from its broadcast schedule following Mesut Özil’s messages that criticised the country’s policy towards its Muslim Uighur minority.

The Global Times Newspaper said on its Twitter account on Sunday that CCTV took the decision after midfielder Özil’s comments on Saturday had “disappointed fans and football governing authorities”.

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Arsenal distance themselves from Mesut Özil comments on Uighurs’ plight

• Midfielder highlighted persecution of Muslims in China
• Club says it ‘does not involve itself in politics’ in statement

Arsenal have distanced themselves from comments made by Mesut Özil on Instagram, in which he spoke out strongly against China’s persecution of the Uighur population in the north-western region of Xinjiang and criticised Muslims for not doing more to highlight the issue.

The club sought to limit any damage caused to its business in China, where it has numerous commercial interests including a chain of restaurants, by releasing a statement on Weibo – a leading Chinese social media site – as well as other platforms stressing it is apolitical and does not associate itself with Özil’s views.

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

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

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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China cables: Chinese ambassador says ‘don’t listen to fake news’ about Xinjiang camps – video

These were the words of China's ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, after he was asked about a chain of detention camps holding more than a million people from the country's Muslim minority population in Xinjiang. The footage, due to be broadcast by BBC Panorama on Monday evening, was recorded prior to publication of the China Cables, a leak of what appear to be classified documents from within the Communist party. The BBC's Richard Bilton asked Liu to tell him the truth about these camps. The ambassador responded: 'There's no so-called labour camps, they are what we call vocational, education and training centres. They are there for the prevention of terrorists'

'Don't listen to fake news': Chinese ambassador pressed over detention camps in Xinjiang – video


Read the Guardian's coverage of the China cables:

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‘Allow no escapes’: leak exposes reality of China’s vast prison camp network

Documents confirm largest mass incarceration of an ethnic-religious minority since second world war

The internal workings of a vast chain of Chinese internment camps used to detain at least a million people from the nation’s Muslim minorities are laid out in leaked Communist Party documents published on Sunday.

The China Cables, a cache of classified government papers, appear to provide the first official glimpse into the structure, daily life and ideological framework behind centres in north-western Xinjiang region that have provoked international condemnation.

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China warns US: criticism of Uighur detentions is not ‘helpful’ for trade talks

Beijing voices anger over ‘gross interference’ after 23 countries criticise arbitrary detentions in Xinjiang

China’s UN envoy has sounded a warning note over trade talks with Washington after the US joined 22 other countries at the UN in criticising Beijing over the detention of ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims.

China has been widely condemned for setting up internment camps in the western region of Xinjiang that it describes as “vocational training centres” to stamp out extremism and give people new skills. The United Nations says at least a million Uighurs and other Muslims have been detained.

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Joe Hockey offered to assist in Barr inquiry without official request – politics live

There is a transcript of his conversation with US attorney, but officials say they do not intend to share it with estimates. All the day’s events, live

Mark Butler to Angus Taylor:

“I refer to the minister’s previous answer – where did the minister get the forged document?”

I absolutely reject the premise of the question and the bizarre assertions being peddled by those opposite.

Mark Butler to Angus Taylor:

My question is to the minister of emissions reduction. Section 253 of the New South Wales crimes act creates a serious offence for making a false document to influence the exercise of a public duty. I refer to his provision of a forged City of Sydney document in the Daily Telegraph in an attempt to influence the Lord Mayor of Sydney in exercise of her public duty. Will he administer to this house that this forgery was not made by him or his office?

Yes.

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‘Think of your family’: China threatens European citizens over Xinjiang protests

Uighurs living in Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, and France have complained of intimidation by Beijing

Two days after Abdujelil Emet sat in the public gallery of Germany’s parliament during a hearing on human rights, he received a phone call from his sister for the first time in three years. But the call from Xinjiang, in western China, was anything but a joyous family chat. It was made at the direction of Chinese security officers, part of a campaign by Beijing to silence criticism of policies that have seen more than a million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities detained in internment camps.

Emet’s sister began by praising the Communist party and making claims of a much improved life under its guidance before delivering a shock: his brother had died a year earlier. But Emet, 54, was suspicious from the start; he had never given his family his phone number. Amid the heartbreaking news and sloganeering, he could hear a flurry of whispers in the background, and he demanded to speak to the unknown voice. Moments later the phone was handed to a Chinese official who refused to identify himself.

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Uighur children are being separated from their families. Guterres must denounce China | Tahir Imin Uighurian

Eleven children from my family have been taken from their parents in Xinjiang – the UN chief must not remain silent

It has already been a year since the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination said it had credible evidence that more than 1 million ethnic Uighurs and minorities in China were being held in internment camps and forced into “political camps for indoctrination”, turning the Uighur autonomous region into a “no rights zone”.

As the United Nations General Assembly meets this week, UN chief António Guterres should denounce China’s crimes against Uighurs. On Tuesday, the US led more than 30 countries in condemning what it called China’s “horrific campaign of repression” against Muslims in Xinjiang. Assistant secretary of state John Sullivan said the UN and its member states had “a singular responsibility to speak up when survivor after survivor recounts the horrors of state repression”.

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Footage shows hundreds of blindfolded and shackled prisoners in China – video

Drone footage has emerged showing police leading hundreds of blindfolded and shackled men from a train in what is believed to be a transfer of inmates in Xinjiang. The video, posted anonymously on YouTube last week, shows what appear to be Uighur Muslims or people from other minorities wearing blue and yellow uniforms, with shaven heads, their eyes covered, sitting in rows on the ground and later being led away by police. Prisoners in China are often transferred with handcuffs and masks covering their faces

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Uighurs in China were target of two-year iOS malware attack – reports

Android and Windows devices also targeted in campaign believed to be state-backed

Chinese Uighurs were the target of an iOS malware attack lasting more than two years that was revealed last week, according to multiple reports.

Android and Windows devices were also targeted in the campaign, which took the form of “watering hole attacks”: taking over commonly visited websites or redirecting their visitors to clones in order to indiscriminately attack each member of a community.

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China: A New World Order review – are we conniving with a genocidal dictatorship?

This documentary dared to do what politicians the world over would not, asking tough questions of Xi Jinping’s hardline rule

The drink Mihrigul Tursun’s captors offered her was strangely cloudy. It resembled, she said, water after washing rice. After drinking it, the young mother recalled in China: A New World Order (BBC Two), her period stopped. “It didn’t come back until five months after I left prison. So my period stopped seven months in total. Now it’s back, but it’s abnormal.”

We never learned why Tursun was detained – along with an estimated one million other Uighurs of Xinjiang province, in what the authorities euphemistically call re-education centres – but we heard clearly her claims of being tortured. “They cut off my hair and electrocuted my head,” Tursun said. “I couldn’t stand it any more. I can only say please just kill me.”

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Families of missing Uighurs use Tiktok video app to publicise China detentions

Short messages campaign for information on loved ones held in Xinjiang camps

Uighurs are sending out messages on social media video app Tiktok showing family members who have gone missing, in their latest attempt to raise awareness about the estimated 1 million Uighurs who have been detained in camps that have sprung up across China’s Xinjiang region.

The videos, many of which are over eery music, show images of missing people, with a photograph or video of the person posting the clip superimposed over the top. Many of those posting the videos are crying.

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Uighur man held after leaking letters from Xinjiang camp inmates, says family

Abdurahman Memet believed notes from his parents and brother were proof they had been imprisoned in Chinese ‘re-education’ centres

A Uighur man who leaked letters from inmates at China’s secretive internment camps in Xinjiang has been detained, according to activists and relatives.

Abdurahman Memet, 30, a tour guide in Turpan, last year received letters from his parents and brother, written from inside detention centres in the far western region where as many as 1.5 million Muslims are believed to be detained in political “re-education” and other camps.

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