Thread by @AgnesClackett

IT’S TIME TO TAKE A STAND FOR THE UYGHURS @hopenothate

It’s 31yrs since Chinese tanks rolled over peaceful student protestors in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square However, this repression pales into insignificance to what’s happening 3000 miles away in the western province of Xinjiang

2) HOPE not hate has looked into what exactly is happening to the Uyghur people. Read on to find out more.

NEVER AGAIN? NOT AGAIN!
07/07/2020 - Nick Lowles

It’s time to take a stand for the Uyghurs.

3) It’s 31 years since Chinese tanks literally rolled over peaceful student protestors in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, bringing to a violent end the 1989 Democracy Movement which had occupied the square for the previous seven weeks.

(4) An estimated 10,000 people, overwhelmingly young, were butchered by the Chinese state in what was the country’s most public and violent crackdown on dissent until last year’s Hong Kong protests.

5) However, this repression pales into insignificance to what is happening several thousand miles away in the western province of Xinjiang. Here, where China meets Pakistan and the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan,

6) at least 1 million ethnic Uyghurs are being held against their will in giant concentration camps.
With US Govt recently suggesting true figure being held might be as many as 3 million, between 10% & 30% of all Uyghurs being imprisoned by Chinese for simply being Muslim Uyghurs

7) Over 400 pages of secret Chinese documents, revealed in the New York Times last December, put an end to the Chinese Government lie that these camps are merely educational establishments.

nytimes.com/interactive/20…

8) Rather, these documents set out the systematic nature of imprisoning at least 1 million ethnic Uyghur as a response to a deadly terrorist attack in 2014 which killed 31 people, just days after Chinese President visited the region,

9) a fear of long-standing separatist feeling among the ethnic population, & a desire for homogeneity in modern day China

The inmates forced to lose their Muslim religion, learn Han Chinese, & commit themselves to total obedience to Chinese Communist Party &President Xi himself

10) They are forced to eat pork and drink alcohol. Torture and gang rape is also common place.

Evidence that the authorities were harvesting the organs of thousands of Uyghurs was even presented to a UN human rights body last September.

11) But the repression goes far beyond the concentration camps, as atrocious as they are. The Chinese government has launched an all-out assault on the Muslim Uyghurs and it is nothing less than a cultural genocide.

12) The authorities have banned Uyghur parents from calling their sons Mohammed, blocked Uyghur children from entering mosques, and levelled a third of mosques and two shrines in the ancient city of Kashgar alone.

13) Uyghurs who work for the Government are forbidden from fasting during Ramadan, while all men are prohibited from growing their beards “abnormally long.”

14) Widespread surveillance & facial recognition software has been deployed by the Chinese authorities &, in a move reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution, children are encouraged to spy on their parents for any sign of disobedience or religious fervour.

15) Monitoring apps have been surreptitiously added to the smartphones of many Uyghurs, and bar codes posted on to the front doors of Muslim households.

16) MUTED RESPONSE
International condemnation has, given enormity of the systematic abuse that’s been taking place, been surprisingly muted. UK was amongst 22 countries that last year wrote a letter to the UN’s Human Rights Committee to register their disapproval, but in response

17) 54 countries – including Russia, Syria, Pakistan and the Congo – delivered a counter view, praising the Chinese authorities for their resolute and effective counter-terrorism strategy. Beyond some public rhetoric, only the United States has taken any firm action.

18)China successfully limited international outrage & action thru its growing economic, political power, derived from its Belt & Road Initiative – a global development strategy funding infrastructure development & investments in nearly 70 countries & international organisations

19) Even the Arab League, which one would have thought would have been outspoken in their criticism, backtracked on earlier condemnation to then voice public support of the Chinese regime after a delegation of 20 senior Chinese officials attended one of their gatherings.

20) AIDING AND ABETTING
Indifference and realpolitik might have led to depressing inaction amongst Governments, but it has only encouraged well-known European and North American companies to profit from the Uyghur oppression without scrutiny or fear of sanction.

21) The German giant Siemens is collaborating on advanced automation, digitization and networking technology with China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, a state-owned military contractor that has developed a policing app used in Xinjiang

22) that Human Rights Watch claims has led some people to be sent to the camps. German & Dutch research centres have been linked to Chinese scientists pioneering the collection of DNA samples in order to recreate an image of a person’s face for use in facial recognition software

23) A far wider group of European, American & Japanese companies are profiting from Uyghur repression through use of forced labour in the Chinese factories used in their products.

24) A recent report by Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) claims that 86 well-known brands operate or use 27 factories in China that use forced Uyghur labour, incl. Nike, Adidas, Apple, BMW, IBM, Microsoft & Sony. Also includes iconic British brands Jaguar & Land Rover

25) Another ASPI report, released late last year, listed Swedish companies IKEA and H&M as just two of several European companies that use cotton from Xinjiang that has been picked and prepared with forced labour.

26) With so little action being taken by the international community over the treatment of the Uyghurs, especially in Europe, these companies have been able to ignore and brush aside any criticism.

27) The only exception has been in the United States, where the Senate last month passed a bi-partisan Uyghur human rights act to sanction Chinese government officials responsible for forced labor camps in Xinjiang.

28) This followed the earlier sanctioning of 28 Chinese companies that have been implicated in the abuse of the Uyghurs, thus barring them from buying products from US companies without approval from Washington.

29) While this bill still needs to be signed by President Trump, and will inevitably be used as a bargaining chip in increasingly fraught US-China relations, it is an important first step.

30) European countries should enact similar legislation, but also work to prevent and even sanction companies that are directly implicated in the persecution of the Uyghurs or use factories that employ forced labour.

31) The British Govt definitely needs to do more. While the foreign office has been publicly outspoken on the treatment of Uyghurs, other Govt Depts & Ministers continue to collaborate with Chinese companies responsible for the repression.

32)In mid-Feb,Guardian reported UK Govt had allowed Hikvision, a surveillance equipment provider active in China’s western Xinjiang province, to attend Security & Policing trade fair it was hosting in Farnborough in March. Hikvision is 1 of 28 Chinese companies blacklisted by US

Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that UKtrade minister GrahamStuart, June 2019, met SenseTime, a Chinese facial recognition company to discuss artificial intelligence & data in higher education, despite reports that company’s products had been used in Xinjiang province

34) CANARY IN THE CAGE
Uyghurs persecution is probably the worst oppression of a minority that currently exists in the world. The scale of the internment & extent of surveillance & curtailment of freedoms is on a level that we’ve not seen since the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

35) Our collective failure to speak out and take action against it is as much a stain on countries outside China as it is on the Chinese regime.

In many ways the Uyghurs are the canaries in the cage. If we fail to address their persecution, then we will only embolden the Chinese

36) regime to undertake similar persecution of other minorities in the country. If we do not make a stand for the Uyghurs, what moral authority do we have to oppose any other country doing the same to their people?

37) China is a massive economic and political power and as such can bully, silence and punish opposition, so of course individual countries are somewhat limited to what they can do. But collectively, we have power. If countries act together, then China will be forced to act.

38) If we as citizens and consumers act together, then major companies and research centres that are complicit in the Uyghur repression or benefit indirectly through forced labour, will have to change their ways.

.

39) This year, world leaders remembered the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and the ending of the Second World War in Europe.

40) . If the often-used phrase ‘Never Again’ is not to be turned into ‘Not Again’, then we need to act against this cultural genocide.
.
Nick Lowles CEO @hopenothate

@threadreaderapp unroll please