China’s repression of Uighurs won’t stop until the international community intervenes

[KhalaiMakhlooq]

I wouldn't hold your breath. China and human rights are an oxymoron.

(Prison Slaves in China)

 

[Sanchez]

You are not only repressing east Turkistan movement but also ordinary Uighur Muslim . Unless you stop repressing innocent extremist will get support of masses.

Bring the extremists to China! You would see our fists!

WASHINGTON (RNS) — Mihrigul Tursun is a 29-year-old woman of Uighur ethnicity with a story to tell the world.

“At age 12, I was sent to a school in inner China to deny my culture, identity and religious belief,” Turson told an audience at the National Press Club in Washington last week (Nov. 26). Her testimony, in which she told of the loss of her 4-month-old child, was a dramatic highlight of an event organized by an international group of scholars to call attention to China’s mass internment and psychological torture of innocent civilians.

In a statement, the Concerned Scholars on China’s Mass Detention of Turkic Minorities denounced the escalating atrocities facing Uighurs and called internment camps like the one Tursun was sent to a gross violation of human rights.

Tursun’s experience of family separation, threats, violence, re-education and torture at the hands of the Chinese government puts a human face on these abuses. More than that, it makes clear that the communist regime is not prepared for a woman like Turson. The repression, she said, “only made me more confident in my identity.”

Turson, who wore a headscarf tied at her neck, said she was forbidden in China from wearing the hijab. Most other forms of Muslim devotion are also proscribed.

After praying for death rather than endure more brutality, she said, she was “blessed to have miraculously escaped from the camps and have an opportunity to speak out.”

Uighurs and their supporters march to the United Nations to protest in New York, on March 15, 2018. Members of the Uighur Muslim ethnic group held demonstrations in cities around the world to protest a sweeping Chinese surveillance and security campaign that has sent thousands of their people into detention and political indoctrination centers. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

The State Department brought her to the United States in hopes she will inspire Americans to combat faraway human-rights violations the international community has been trying to ignore.

It would be tempting to think of Turson as one of the lucky ones. But even in the relative safety of her new home in Virginia, Turson has suffered debilitating post-traumatic stress: nightmares, sudden bouts of anxiety that the Chinese police will knock on her door in the night and kill her.

There are also physical reminders. She has scars on her body and pain from the chains and beatings. Her two surviving children have extreme physical and psychological health issues.

Stories like Turson’s happen every day in China’s northwest Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. Home to Kazakhs and Kyrgyz people as well as Uighurs, together known as the Turkic Minorities, the region has seen detentions, religious repression, invasive surveillance and psychological stress — all of which the world has known about for years, thanks mostly to investigative journalists who have documented the abuses.

So far, however, China has been given a free pass, largely because developing and advanced economies alike want to engage in lucrative trade and commerce with an economy that is the world’s second largest and still rising in its influence.

The U.K., looking to establish trade agreements with China after exiting the European Union, has a particular incentive to turn a blind eye. The United States, though it prides itself on defending international religious freedom, is hampered in its response by its own recent coldness toward refugees and asylum-seekers — as well as its concern for a domestic constituency focused on the persecution of Christians abroad.

To regain its credibility on the Uighur crisis, and on religious freedom and human rights in general, the Trump administration should boldly condemn China for its repression of Muslim minorities.

The Xinjiang province in western China where many Uighurs live. Map courtesy of Creative Commons

The world at large, too, needs to organize itself to address the crackdown. The scholar-advocates at last week’s news conference offered a list of policy proscriptions: States and institutions can demand that China’s dictator-president, Xi Jinping, and regional governor Chen Quanguo immediately abolish the “transformation through education” detention system and release all minority detainees.

Countries can go further and impose economic sanctions. Regulators and consumers can pressure technology companies backed by Western investors, whose concessions on internet surveillance in China implicate them in the repression taking place.

Trump boasted of his successful meeting with Xi at the recent G-20 summit in Argentina. Good (or even mediocre) world leaders can tout trade deals with China. It will take great leaders to confront China on human rights.

The U.S. Congress could pass the bipartisan Uyghur Human Rights Act of 2018, currently pending in both the House and the Senate, directing the executive branch to take action on behalf of China’s ethnic and religious minorities.

The Uighurs’ dire situation may seem far off, but in today’s intertwined world, we must realize that all people of good faith and goodwill can affect lives around the globe. Mihrigul Tursun’s plea may sound impractical, but it reminds us how humanly possible making a difference can be. “If you ever go to China,” she said, “ask about my parents and family. I pray I see them alive again someday.”

(Jacob Lupfer, a frequent commentator on religion and politics, is a writer and consultant in Baltimore. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily represent those of Religion News Service.)

https://religionnews.com/2018/12/04...until-the-international-community-intervenes/

You would see our iron fists as your God father said,

 

[KhalaiMakhlooq]

Bring the extremists to China! You would see our fists!

You cant handle free speech, never mind anything else.

You would see our iron fists as your God father said,

The only thing we see is the iron wires that make up your robot brains, programmed by the government.

 

[OIO]

there are separatists in the picture.

 

[Sanchez]

You cant handle free speech, never mind anything else.



The only thing we see is the iron wires that make up your robot brains, programmed by the government.

A Brit with your name is a slave of their previous colony for sure! Forget what you know! You are an obvious low IQ immigrant. Don't reply to my post, OK?

 

[kankan326]

The only thing we see is the iron wires that make up your robot brains, programmed by the government.

Better than the bomb connecting wires on somebody waist.

 

[beijingwalker]

I wouldn't hold your breath. China and human rights are an oxymoron.

(Prison Slaves in China)

Live with the time, Laogai was history long time ago. China is one of the safest countries in the world. but maybe you enjoy mass shooting in US more.

 

[Kyle Sun]

The only thing we see is the iron wires that make up your robot brains, programmed by the government.

Since it's our brains, you can leave us alone.

 

[denel]

WASHINGTON (RNS) — Mihrigul Tursun is a 29-year-old woman of Uighur ethnicity with a story to tell the world.

“At age 12, I was sent to a school in inner China to deny my culture, identity and religious belief,” Turson told an audience at the National Press Club in Washington last week (Nov. 26). Her testimony, in which she told of the loss of her 4-month-old child, was a dramatic highlight of an event organized by an international group of scholars to call attention to China’s mass internment and psychological torture of innocent civilians.

In a statement, the Concerned Scholars on China’s Mass Detention of Turkic Minorities denounced the escalating atrocities facing Uighurs and called internment camps like the one Tursun was sent to a gross violation of human rights.

Tursun’s experience of family separation, threats, violence, re-education and torture at the hands of the Chinese government puts a human face on these abuses. More than that, it makes clear that the communist regime is not prepared for a woman like Turson. The repression, she said, “only made me more confident in my identity.”

Turson, who wore a headscarf tied at her neck, said she was forbidden in China from wearing the hijab. Most other forms of Muslim devotion are also proscribed.

After praying for death rather than endure more brutality, she said, she was “blessed to have miraculously escaped from the camps and have an opportunity to speak out.”

Uighurs and their supporters march to the United Nations to protest in New York, on March 15, 2018. Members of the Uighur Muslim ethnic group held demonstrations in cities around the world to protest a sweeping Chinese surveillance and security campaign that has sent thousands of their people into detention and political indoctrination centers. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

The State Department brought her to the United States in hopes she will inspire Americans to combat faraway human-rights violations the international community has been trying to ignore.

It would be tempting to think of Turson as one of the lucky ones. But even in the relative safety of her new home in Virginia, Turson has suffered debilitating post-traumatic stress: nightmares, sudden bouts of anxiety that the Chinese police will knock on her door in the night and kill her.

There are also physical reminders. She has scars on her body and pain from the chains and beatings. Her two surviving children have extreme physical and psychological health issues.

Stories like Turson’s happen every day in China’s northwest Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. Home to Kazakhs and Kyrgyz people as well as Uighurs, together known as the Turkic Minorities, the region has seen detentions, religious repression, invasive surveillance and psychological stress — all of which the world has known about for years, thanks mostly to investigative journalists who have documented the abuses.

So far, however, China has been given a free pass, largely because developing and advanced economies alike want to engage in lucrative trade and commerce with an economy that is the world’s second largest and still rising in its influence.

The U.K., looking to establish trade agreements with China after exiting the European Union, has a particular incentive to turn a blind eye. The United States, though it prides itself on defending international religious freedom, is hampered in its response by its own recent coldness toward refugees and asylum-seekers — as well as its concern for a domestic constituency focused on the persecution of Christians abroad.

To regain its credibility on the Uighur crisis, and on religious freedom and human rights in general, the Trump administration should boldly condemn China for its repression of Muslim minorities.

The Xinjiang province in western China where many Uighurs live. Map courtesy of Creative Commons

The world at large, too, needs to organize itself to address the crackdown. The scholar-advocates at last week’s news conference offered a list of policy proscriptions: States and institutions can demand that China’s dictator-president, Xi Jinping, and regional governor Chen Quanguo immediately abolish the “transformation through education” detention system and release all minority detainees.

Countries can go further and impose economic sanctions. Regulators and consumers can pressure technology companies backed by Western investors, whose concessions on internet surveillance in China implicate them in the repression taking place.

Trump boasted of his successful meeting with Xi at the recent G-20 summit in Argentina. Good (or even mediocre) world leaders can tout trade deals with China. It will take great leaders to confront China on human rights.

The U.S. Congress could pass the bipartisan Uyghur Human Rights Act of 2018, currently pending in both the House and the Senate, directing the executive branch to take action on behalf of China’s ethnic and religious minorities.

The Uighurs’ dire situation may seem far off, but in today’s intertwined world, we must realize that all people of good faith and goodwill can affect lives around the globe. Mihrigul Tursun’s plea may sound impractical, but it reminds us how humanly possible making a difference can be. “If you ever go to China,” she said, “ask about my parents and family. I pray I see them alive again someday.”

(Jacob Lupfer, a frequent commentator on religion and politics, is a writer and consultant in Baltimore. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily represent those of Religion News Service.)

https://religionnews.com/2018/12/04...until-the-international-community-intervenes/

Everyone knows the attrocities being carried out by the new Chinese govt hell bent on any display of religion. Brainwashing, communist party is the saviour blah blah blah.

Enough is enough, Uighur must start to protest in mass action; that is the only way to bring the plight to the rest of the world.

 

[KhalaiMakhlooq]

Better than the bomb connecting wires on somebody waist.

I hear Chinese girls have small waists.

 

[monitor]

Neither West nor India has any love for Uyghurs. They are manipulating it to beat China.

The ones with genuine love for Uyghurs are Turks and Pakistanis as we have ethnic ties.

Using close ties ties Pakistan Turkey should step forward to religious freedom and culture of Uighur Muslim .

 

[beijingwalker]

Everyone knows the attrocities being carried out by the new Chinese govt hell bent on any display of religion. Brainwashing, communist party is the saviour blah blah blah.

Enough is enough, Uighur must start to protest in mass action; that is the only way to bring the plight to the rest of the world.

You can come to organize.

 

[帅的一匹]

Everyone knows the attrocities being carried out by the new Chinese govt hell bent on any display of religion. Brainwashing, communist party is the saviour blah blah blah.

Enough is enough, Uighur must start to protest in mass action; that is the only way to bring the plight to the rest of the world.

whp will take it to the street if the life is pretty good......

 

[Beast]

Everyone knows the attrocities being carried out by the new Chinese govt hell bent on any display of religion. Brainwashing, communist party is the saviour blah blah blah.

Enough is enough, Uighur must start to protest in mass action; that is the only way to bring the plight to the rest of the world.

Indeed. US is the king of human right and champion of justice. The West is always just and always partial.

US has never murder a single muslim. The US supported Israel is just helping muslim to settle into the enlarged settlement to give all muslim a better life.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voice...-robert-fisk-wheres-the-outrage-a8504471.html

Israel is building another 1,000 homes on Palestinian land. Where's the outrage?

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/20/politics/trump-saudi-arabia/index.html

Trump signals US won't punish Saudi crown prince over Khashoggi killing

 

[denel]

You can come to organize.

Will be very happy to; peaceful protests are right of every citizen and we know how well the police will then huddle every one of the protesters and intimidate their families.
You people will never learn that strength of your country lies with its diversity not by suppression.