Category Archives: Uyghurs

Intel faces backlash in China after banning products and labour from Xinjiang

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Chinese social media users call for boycott of US chip maker after it issues directive to suppliers over human rights concerns

Intel, the US computer chip maker, is facing a backlash from China after telling its suppliers not to source products or labour from the region of Xinjiang.

Intel said it had been “required to ensure that its supply chain does not use any labour or source goods or services” from Xinjiang in accordance with restrictions imposed by “multiple governments”.

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‘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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US hits China with new trade curbs and sanctions over forced Uyghur labour

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US lawmakers have ramped up pressure on China in a bid to censure the country’s treatment of the Muslim minority

The United States has unleashed a volley of actions to censure China’s treatment of the Uyghur minority, with lawmakers voting to curb trade and issuing new sanctions on Beijing.

The United States has been ramping up pressure on China amid a crop of disputes, with president Joe Biden’s administration a day earlier targeting producers of painkillers that have contributed to America’s addiction crisis.

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‘This is our voice’: The Uyghur traditions being erased by China’s cultural crackdown

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Ancient shrines, oral folklore and hip-hop cyphers are all part of a rich artistic heritage being ‘hollowed out’ in Xinjiang, say Uyghur exiles and scholars

On Thursday, the Uyghur Tribunal delivered its damning judgment on the human rights abuses allegedly committed by the Chinese state in Xinjiang. Over the past months this London-based people’s tribunal has heard testimony from international scholars as well as survivors of Chinese detention and “re-education camps”.

While the ruling has no legal standing, the aim is to highlight the treatment of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic Muslims in north-west China. Rachel Harris, a British ethnomusicologist and Uyghur specialist, has described the state’s strategy as an attempt “to hollow out a whole culture and terrorise a whole people”.

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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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UK spy chief suggests Beijing risks ‘miscalculation’ over west’s resolve

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Island’s status and surveillance technology making China ‘single greatest priority’ for MI6

China is at risk of “miscalculating through over-confidence” over Taiwan, said the MI6 head, Richard Moore, in a statement clearly intended to warn Beijing to back off any attempt to seize control of the island.

Giving a rare speech, Britain’s foreign intelligence chief said in London that China was at risk of “believing its own propaganda” and that the country had become “the single greatest priority” for MI6 for the first time in its history.

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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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‘Little Britain’: Chinese media weigh in on reports of spat between Liz Truss and UK envoy

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Official newspaper calls Truss ‘radical populist’ after her alleged row with Caroline Wilson over UK’s hard line

An official Chinese newspaper has weighed in on an alleged spat between the British foreign secretary and the UK’s ambassador to China, suggesting Liz Truss was “a radical populist” and quoting Chinese internet users calling the UK “Little Britain”.

The alleged row between Truss and Caroline Wilson, the British ambassador to China, was first reported by the Times early this month.

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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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Has Interpol become the long arm of oppressive regimes?

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Once used in the hunt for fugitive criminals, the global police agency’s most-wanted ‘red notice’ list now includes political refugees and dissidents

Flicking through the news one day in early 2015, Alexey Kharis, a California-based businessman and father of two, came across a startling announcement: Russia would request a global call for his arrest through the International Criminal Police Organization, known as Interpol.

“Oh, wow,” Kharis thought, shocked. All the 46-year-old knew about Interpol and its pursuit of the world’s most-wanted criminals was from novels and films. He tried to reassure himself that things would be OK and it was just an intimidatory tactic of the Russian authorities. Surely, he reasoned, the world’s largest police organisation had no reason to launch a hunt for him.

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Joe Biden and Xi Jinping to hold virtual meeting this year – White House

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Biden administration announces plan after meeting between US national security adviser and China’s top diplomat

The US president, Joe Biden, and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, are planning to meet by video link before the end of the year, a senior US official said on Wednesday.

There is an “agreement in principle” for the “virtual bilateral”, the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

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Chinese ambassador to UK barred from British parliament

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Move agreed by Speakers of Commons and Lords follows imposition of sanctions on British MPs by Beijing

The new Chinese ambassador to the UK has been barred from parliament by the Speakers in the Commons and Lords after the imposition of sanctions on British MPs by Beijing.

The new ambassador, Zheng Zeguang, was due to attend a meeting of the broadly pro-Chinese all-party group on China, but after a letter from MPs who were subjected to sanctions by China, including the former Conservative party leader Iain Duncan Smith, the Commons Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, has said the meeting is not appropriate.

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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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Reasons to be fearful of China’s data-gathering | Letters

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We should be suspicious of the role of the Chinese Communist party in the harvesting of genetic data from unborn babies, argues William Matthews

In her column (What does the Chinese military want with your unborn baby’s genetic data?, 10 July), Arwa Mahdawi suggested that the alleged involvement of the People’s Liberation Army (which is directly answerable to the Chinese Communist party) with BGI’s data-gathering (likewise answerable as a China-based company) is essentially equivalent to data-gathering by western companies. To suggest that the former case is worse, she argued, “smacks of Sinophobia”.

As a scholar of China, I cannot agree. While the harvesting of genetic data by any company is frightening and fraught with ethical issues, it should be obvious that this is a false equivalence. It is undoubtedly worse if genetic data is gathered by a company which must also comply with the rule of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) and its military-industrial complex, a regime which harvests and aggregates data on its citizens on a massive scale and uses it directly to implement the most repressive system of social control on earth in Xinjiang.

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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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Malawi Pride and press freedoms in Palestine: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Chile to Cambodia

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