BISHKEK (TCA) — The Chinese government is conducting a mass, systematic campaign of human rights violations against Turkic Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwestern China, Human Rights Watch (HRW) says in a report released on September 9.
The 117-page report, “‘Eradicating Ideological Viruses’: China’s Campaign of Repression Against Xinjiang’s Muslims,” presents new evidence of the Chinese government’s mass arbitrary detention, torture, and mistreatment, and the increasingly pervasive controls on daily life. Throughout the region, the Turkic Muslim population of 13 million is subjected to forced political indoctrination, collective punishment, restrictions on movement and communications, heightened religious restrictions, and mass surveillance in violation of international human rights law, the report said.
“The Chinese government is committing human rights abuses in Xinjiang on a scale unseen in the country in decades,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. “The campaign of repression in Xinjiang is key test of whether the United Nations and concerned governments will sanction an increasingly powerful China to end this abuse.”
The report is primarily based on interviews with 58 former residents of Xinjiang, including 5 former detainees and 38 relatives of detainees. Nineteen of those interviewed have left Xinjiang within the past year and a half.
The Chinese government’s “Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Extremism” began in Xinjiang in 2014. The level of repression increased dramatically after Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo relocated from the Tibet Autonomous Region to assume leadership of Xinjiang in late 2016.
Since then, the authorities have stepped up mass arbitrary detention, including in pretrial detention centers and prisons, both of which are formal facilities, and in political education camps, which have no basis under Chinese law. Credible estimates indicate that 1 million people are being held in the camps, where Turkic Muslims are being forced to learn Mandarin Chinese, sing praises of the Chinese Communist Party, and memorize rules applicable primarily to Turkic Muslims. Those who resist or are deemed to have failed to “learn” are punished, the report said.
The HRW report echoes remarks by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which on August 10 said ethnic Uyghurs in China were being held in “counterextremism centers,” with millions more forced into reeducation camps, turning China’s Uyghur region into “something that resembles a massive internment camp,” RFE/RL reported.
China has denied the allegations, claiming the country had prevented a “great tragedy” in the far-western Xinjiang region.
It said Xinjiang faced a serious threat from Islamist militants and separatists who plot attacks and stir up tensions between the Uyghur minority the ethnic Han Chinese majority.
