Xinjiang [China], February 23 (ANI): The Xinjiang autonomous region is facing the worst kind of cultural and ethnic genocide at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), said an Uighur activist.
In an article for the Jerusalem Post, Dr Burhan Uluyol, an associate professor at the Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University and an Uyghur activist, said that the Chinese government refuses to categorise Uyghurs as an indigenous population and describe Uighurs as a regional minority.
“The Xinjiang autonomous region in China is facing the worst kind of cultural and ethnic genocide. There is a long history of dissonance between the indigenous ethnic Uighur and Chinese authorities… Evidence suggests that China is systematically targeting Uighur Muslims through a state-planned birth-control process,” the activist wrote.
“Women survivors from these camps say they were beaten, raped and given mysterious injections. A study of concentration-camp survivors suggest that Chinese authorities have adopted brutal methods to stop new Uighur births. Forced pregnancy checks, medications that stop menstruation, forced abortions, sterilizations, IUDs, and unidentified injections are given to Uighur women by Chinese officials,” Uluyol added.
He called for a strong international response to push back China‘s attack on human dignity. US President Joe Biden reaffirmed his commitment to counter China on human-rights abuses and raised the issue during his first phone call as president with Chinese President Xi Jinping. He said, “This is a sign of hope for the Uighur movement.”
“The Uighur movement has received attention and support from Western governments, which has internationalized the issue. Support from different communities, organizations and individuals has improved the movement,” the activist said.
He pointed out that Since 1949, China has used a policy of racial discrimination, mass killings and imprisonment under the pretext of national security. China, meanwhile, politicizes its investments and mutual cooperation with other countries to get its political goals fulfilled.
“It seems as if China bought the silence of many countries by using Chinese money. Countries need to open their diplomatic gates so that the Chinese state evolves a political architecture that will allow the Uighurs to maintain their identity and peacefully co-exist,” the associate professor pointed out.
UK Foreign Minister Dominic Raab called on the UN Human Rights Council on Monday to address the human rights violations in China stating that the international body does not “consistently” pinpoint areas of the prevalence of the most pressing human rights issues.
“We see almost daily reports now that shine a new light on China‘s systematic human rights violations perpetrated against Uyghur Muslims and other minorities in Xinjiang. The situation in Xinjiang is beyond the pale. The reported abuses – which include torture, forced labour and forced sterilisation of women – are extreme and they are extensive,” he saidat the 46th Session of the UN Human Rights Council, of which China and Russia are both members.
China has been rebuked globally for cracking down on Uyghur Muslims by sending them to mass detention camps, interfering in their religious activities and sending members of the community to undergo some form of forcible re-education or indoctrination.
Beijing, on the other hand, has vehemently denied that it is engaged in human rights abuses against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang while reports from journalists, NGOs and former detainees have surfaced, highlighting the Chinese Communist Party’s brutal crackdown on the ethnic community, according to a report.
The US Department of State under then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the crackdown on Uyghurs as ‘genocide‘. (ANI)
High malnutrition rate in Xinjiang amid China crackdown on Uyghurs
With the Chinese government continuing to suppress Uyghurs in Xinjiang, malnutrition has been rising in the community, especially among children and adolescents, according to two separate studies by Chinese researchers.
About 16 per cent of Xinjiang residents 15 years old or younger had anaemia, according to South China Morning Post (SCMP). The rate of anaemia in Xinjiang is 23 per cent higher than the national average.
The discovery “suggests that there may be malnutrition among adolescents in Xinjiang“, Professor Sun Hong, of Central South University’s Xiangya Hospital, said in a peer-reviewed paper published in the journal Soft Science of Health early this month. Sun’s data came from Xinjiang‘s health authorities.
SCMP reported that another study by Xinjiang Medical University’s school of public health found that over a quarter of Xinjiang children aged up to six years old had anaemia, more than twice the national rate. The results were published by Zikeya Naijimu and colleagues in a paper in another Chinese-language journal, Modern Preventive Medicine, in January.
The researchers say the anaemia was likely caused by the shortage of some elements, such as iron and vitamins, in the diet.
China’s sweeping crackdown on Muslim ethnic minority, Uyghurs in Xinjiang since 2017 in the name of counterterrorism has drawn global ire, particularly US State Department, that has classified it as ‘genocide’, reported The Washington Post.
More than one million Uyghurs were detained in re-education camps, where they receive daily indoctrination programmes, with reports of torture for periods ranging from weeks to years.
China denied the existence of such camps, but under global pressure in 2019 it eventually accepted that all trainees at “vocational educational and training centers” in Xinjiang had graduated.
However, China has continued to build massive detention centers in the region since then.
The US State Department negates the theories of China and in January categorised Beijing’s action against Uyghurs as ‘genocide’. It also banned imports of goods made in Xinjiang, citing a risk of forced labour in the region.
A number of Western governments have denounced China’s policies in Xinjiang, with Britain pressing China in January to allow United Nations rights inspectors to visit the region. The European Parliament condemned China in December for forced labor in Xinjiang.
In order to further impose restrictions on reporting the “genocide” by the Chinese goverment, the Chinese Communist Party has barred the broadcasting of BBC World News on the mainland claiming that it has shown ‘falsified reports’ on issues of human rights violations in Xinjiang against Uyghurs. (ANI)
