China is committing ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang – it's time for the world to stand up: Frances Eve
Now is the time to act
on China’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang. China’s efforts to destroy the
ethnic Uighur identity through mass
internment camps and militarised surveillance must be raised loudly
and clearly condemned during a UN human rights review of China on Tuesday in
Geneva.
Countries afraid of
standing up to China on
their own can speak out on 6 November on a UN platform, known as the universal
periodic review (UPR), where all countries equally take turns to be scrutinised
by their peers about every four years. The UPR tests UN member states’
commitment to promoting and protecting human rights, but more pragmatically, it
gives governments a shield to protect themselves when speaking up.
These countries are at
less risk of China angrily cutting economic or political ties if they criticise
its policies in Xinjiang as a part of a UN process. As peers, their opinion
carries more weight with the Chinese government than the NGOs, journalists, and
academics who have been sounding the alarm for months. A clear, collective
voice from dozens of countries at this critical juncture in China’s crackdown
on Xinjiang could
make the Chinese government pause and rethink its approach. So far, governments
have been slow to react to the human rights disaster in China’s far western
Xinjiang region. Its sheer scale demands immediate international action.
An estimated one
million Uighurs and other Muslims minorities are believed to be held in extra-legal
detention centres in Xinjiang because of their ethno-religious identity,
with torture and
ill-treatment rife in the camps. Authorities in partnership with tech companies
have developed and deployed dystopian surveillance technologies to turn the
rest of Xinjiang into an open-air prison.
In August, the UN
committee on racial discrimination described Xinjiang
as a “massive internment camp shrouded in secrecy”. The US congressional-executive
commission on China said the
Chinese government’s policies in Xinjiang might amount to crimes against
humanity. The UK government recently confirmed reports
of internment camps for Uighur Muslims following a visit to the region by
British diplomats. Step-by-step the Xi
Jinping regime has crossed thresholds unthinkable years ago, with little
repercussion. The government detained nearly every single human
rights lawyer over a single weekend in July 2015, imprisoned China’s only Nobel
peace prize laureate until he died in custody in July 2017, and earlier this
year, abolished presidential terms limits, paving the way for Xi to become
dictator for life. The Han-dominated Chinese Communist party is now confident
that the only way to govern Xinjiang is to eradicate the distinct Uighur
identity in the name of countering terrorism. This cannot continue… read more:
