Xinjiang, an autonomous territory in northwestern China, became the scene for four years of systematic attacks on human rights that generated indignation and sanctions against the Chinese dictatorship, responsible for a wave of repression against the Uighur minority whose real extent and momentary situation, as in many things in the world’s second largest economy are still unknown.
Dictator Xi Jinping’s government has always denied accusations of disrespect for human rights – two years ago, German footballer of Turkish origin Mesut Özil mentioned the matter on their social networks, and China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the athlete he had been “given by fake news” and invited him to visit the region – but several reports hint at a grim reality, largely still ongoing, despite Beijing’s assurances that its detention camps in Xinjiang have been closed.
Check out five points about the repression of Uighurs in the region:
Origins
The Uighurs are a mostly Muslim people historically established in the Xinjiang region, crossed by the Silk Road. Since the Communist Party took control of the area in 1949, Beijing and the Uighurs have alternated periods of greater and lesser hostility, with the dictatorship seeking to integrate the Muslim population into the communist project and Uighurs complaining of disrespect for their identity and religion.
When dictator Xi Jinping took power in China in 2013, Beijing began to force this assimilation: in 2017, it started a wave of repression in Xinjiang, putting hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and people from other minorities in detention camps. the counter-terrorism argument.
Ethnic and religious persecution
In a report to the American magazine The Atlantic, poet and film director Tahir Hamut Izgil, who emigrated four years ago with his family to the United States, where he applied for political asylum, explained that he decided to leave Xinjiang when many of his friends and relatives started. to be caught in the wave of repression unleashed by Beijing.
Tahir had already been detained in the 1990s, when he was sentenced without trial to three years in prison for carrying books (borrowed from the institute’s library where he taught) on pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism – interestingly, according to the poet, the works were criticism of the two movements, which respectively preach the union of Muslim and Turkish peoples, and had been published with the aim of helping in the fight against “ethnic separatism” in the Xinjiang region.
In the crackdown that started in 2017, Tahir said, any justification was used to arrest Uighurs. “Foreign connections, a history of traveling abroad or even just having relatives and friends in other countries were enough to put Uighurs in prison, especially if the countries in question were Muslims,” he reported.
When the local government demanded that the Uighurs hand over all the religious items they owned, an elderly man who had forgotten to hand over a Koran wrapped the book in a plastic bag and threw it into a river, but it was discovered because the Xinjiang authorities they had installed wire mesh under all the bridges, and when one of them was cleaned, the Koran was found: inside it was a copy of the old man’s identity card.
“In Xinjiang, older people are in the habit of storing important documents in frequently read books so they can be easily found when needed,” explained Tahir. “He was sentenced to seven years in prison.”
Prison and Violence Quotas
Reports about the Xinjiang detention camps pointed to situations of sexual abuse, slave labor and forced sterilization. A former Chinese detective told CNN this month that he has repeatedly witnessed the use of torture methods such as hanging detainees from the ceiling, electrocution and drowning, and prisoners forced to stay awake for days without food or water. He reported that those responsible for making the arrests had to meet quotas on the numbers of Uighurs to be detained.
A former detainee said in the same CNN report that on his first night in a police detention center in the city of Kashgar he was raped by more than ten non-Uighur detainees, who had been designated by prison guards to commit the assault.
international conviction
The US State Department has estimated that up to 2 million Uighurs and people from other Muslim minorities were incarcerated in detention centers in the wave of repression that began in 2017. An independent report by more than 50 experts in human rights, war crimes and law international testified that the Chinese government violated provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in Xinjiang.
After international condemnation and sanctions, Beijing declared in 2019 that the camps were closed.
the situation today
However, a report published this month by the Associated Press highlighted that “permanent detention facilities were built, in an apparent shift from makeshift camps to a lasting system of mass incarceration” in Xinjiang.
Reporter Dake Kang pointed out that, compared to a few years ago, life in the region seems to have changed, with tourism being stimulated, but some indications suggest that the persecution of Uighurs continues: residents show fear and refuse to talk to foreigners , fearing reprisals; in schools, students are instructed to speak Mandarin, not Uighur; mosques have been closed and calls for Islamic prayer times are no longer heard in many cities; and schools for imams need to teach both the contents of the Quran and pro-Beijing indoctrination.
“It’s hard to know why Chinese authorities have switched to more subtle methods of controlling the region. It may be that fierce criticism from the West, coupled with political and trade sanctions, has pressured authorities to become more flexible,” Kang said. “Or it could simply be that China thinks it has gone far enough in its goal of subjugating Uighurs and other mainly Muslim minorities and has decided to relax its hold.”