China continues to persecute its Uyghur populace

Hong Kong, July 1 : China's harsh treatment of ethnic minorities, such as Muslim Uyghurs in the northwest province of Xinjiang, has not garnered as much international attention in recent times. This must delight the government in Beijing, especially given its earlier notoriety for a sophisticated network of concentration camps it set up in Xinjiang.

However, Beijing's public narrative backfired somewhat recently when a group from an American university began singing the praises of Chinese policy in the province. Carefully orchestrated to reflect well on China, the ill-advised visit is instead reigniting attention on the plight of Uyghurs in China.

Participating in the five-day Xinjiang visit were Princeton University Press (PUP) Director Christie Henry, Marketing and Sales Director Katie Hope, and Managing Director of PUP China Lingxi Li. The event was sponsored by the state-affiliated China National Publications Import and Export Group (CNPIEC).

Henry stated, "Our intention in accepting the tour invitation was to support that exchange by meeting with scholars, sinologists and translators, and visiting regions our US-based staff had not yet been to. We came away with newfound knowledge about the unique cultures and environment of Xinjiang, and a greater appreciation of its history and present..."

She said the group "remained cognizant of the region's ongoing human rights atrocities. We accepted this unique opportunity to experience the Xinjiang Province firsthand, with the understanding that it was to be a curated tour rather than a comprehensive visit."

Yet, despite this cognizance, amidst singing and dancing Uyghurs, Henry appeared in a Chinese video extolling the virtues of Chinese policy in Xinjiang. In this video produced and aired by China, PUP's director said Xinjiang showed "how cultures can peacefully coexist and exist in harmony".

"And I can't wait to tell this story to the rest of the world, particularly to the English-speaking world," she gushed. "The ability for multiple cultures and multiple languages to coexist in such a wonderful, magical way is a story that will help the rest of the world learn how to live..."

In response, a disgusted Rushan Abbas, Chairwoman of the World Uyghur Congress's Executive Committee, tweeted, "Are you knowingly contributing to the whitewashing of China's genocide against the Uyghurs? While you highlight what you perceive as 'cultural coexistence,' are you ignoring the reality that millions of Uyghurs are being persecuted precisely because of their culture, language and religion?"

Abbas, who is the sister of a Uyghur academic detained by the Chinese authorities since 2018, warned: "Behind the staged appearances lies a brutal, ongoing genocide, irrefutably confirmed by leaked internal documents from the Chinese government. It's deeply troubling to see respected academic voices in the United States echoing narratives that align with Chinese state propaganda."

There is a name for such naive people - that of "useful idiots". China is well-versed in wielding them to support its own narratives.

The truth is that "coexistence" is not what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has achieved in Xinjiang. Mass incarceration and sending around 20 per cent of the Muslim population into forced labour in sweatshops cannot be construed as "existing in harmony". Nor can the imposed separation of parents from children be described as "wonderful and magical".

The PUP lamented that some tour footage "has regrettably been repurposed and mis-contextualized in ways that notably undermine PUP's every intention of inclusive cross-cultural interactions". Rather, it is regrettable that Princeton accepted such an invitation to a heavily repressed region without realizing the visit would be co-opted to support Chinese propaganda.

It is somewhat ironic that Xinjiang is referred to as an autonomous region, when it is totally under the heel of the CCP. Uyghurs comprise 45 per cent of the province's population, which is always governed by an ethnically Han Chinese party secretary.

Unsurprisingly, the CCP is predominantly Han Chinese too. As of 31 December 2024, there were approximately 100.27 million members in the CCP, a net increase of 1.09 million, or 1.1% higher, compared to a year earlier. So, what exactly is going on in Xinjiang today?

China commenced its "Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism" in 2014, but this pogrom really escalated in 2017. In this period, Uyghurs could be arrested for "crimes" such as having long beards or possessing digital copies of the Quran.

The CCP created its infamous vocational skills education and training centers in Xinjiang, a disguise for what were extra-legal mass internment facilities. Anywhere from 2-3 million Uyghurs were incarcerated, with China saying 1.3 million people received "vocational training" sessions annually from 2014-19.

Some detention facilities have since closed, but perhaps half a million Muslims remain incarcerated. Add to this mass surveillance, disappearances, sexual violence, torture, religious persecution, family separations, forced sterilization, involuntary ethnic integration and forced labor, all of which have been documented in Xinjiang. Uyghurs living abroad are prevented from having contact with family members in China too. Human Rights Watch concluded in 2021 that the CCPs' actions constituted "crimes against humanity".

Adrian Zenz, Director of China Studies at the Washington-based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, believes that this policy of "vocational" incarceration has not been active since early 2020. Nevertheless, it has been succeeded by a wave of arbitrary detentions outside that former system. Zenz said, "While the vocational skills education and training centers system apparently no longer actively processes new victims, hundreds of thousands of detainees have been placed into forced labor and likely remain trapped in coercive work."

Indeed, China has moved forward with another policy revolving around forced labour. Perhaps responding to Western criticism and exposure, China has changed its modus operandi. In fact, Zenz estimates that, under Xinjiang Party Secretary Ma Xingrui, up to 2.5 million Uyghurs could be currently engaged in state-mandated and coerced work. This would make it the world's largest system of forced labour, and it continued to expand all through last year.

There are now two concurrent labour systems in Xinjiang. One is forced labour linked to the region's reeducation camps, and the second is the aforementioned "Poverty Alleviation through Labor Transfer" policy. The latter moves non-detained laborers and farmers from the primary agricultural sector into secondary or tertiary work. Others may also be transferred into seasonal agricultural work, such as harvesting cotton.

This "Poverty Alleviation through Labor Transfer" program has been certifiably linked to products such as cotton, tomatoes, peppers and seasonal agricultural products, seafood products, polysilicon production for solar panels, lithium for electric vehicle batteries, and aluminum for batteries, vehicle bodies and wheels. Massive Chinese industrial parks are where most of these coercive labour practices occur, with Uyghurs, often once reeducation detainees, now forced into work placements.

These work requirements were first issued in 2021, and in Chairman Xi Jinping's visit to Xinjiang in August 2023, he insisted on the "legalization and normalization of stability maintenance work" and "consolidating and expanding poverty alleviation achievements". Such coercive policies "enable the state to restructure ethnic societies by maximizing societal control through parent-child separation and to 'optimize' the ethnic population structure by 'reducing Uyghur population density'," the German academic Zenz reported.

Even the Chinese academic publication the Nankai Report admitted that labor transfers represent an important long-term "method to reform, meld and assimilate" Uyghurs. These institutionalised labour placements naturally rely upon intensified monitoring and surveillance. The government has also transferred large tracts of land from ethnic smallholder farmers to state-supervised cooperatives. Such land transfers are another way China can impose labour transfers on "liberated" farmers. Simultaneously, the state prevents people from returning to unapproved and traditional livelihoods.

"Village-based work teams" go door to door to enforce this state policy, monitor compliance, identify deviant citizens for reeducation internment, and to subject ethnic household members to skills training and work assignments, Zenz shared. Many workers end up in provinces far from home too.

China's 14th Five-Year Plan, covering 2021-25, aimed to expand "vocational training" - another CCP euphemism for forced labor - efforts to 1.2 million to 1.5 million person sessions annually. In 2023, Xinjiang exceeded its target by 67per cent, reaching 2.5 million person sessions. This includes people - such as housewives - who traditionally do not seek employment.

In 2022 the United Nations (UN) published a damning report on forced labor pogroms for Uyghurs. These efforts are organized by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), which is actually a paramilitary organization overseeing both economic productivity and law and order. The UN has sanctioned senior figures in the XPCC.

The use of forced labour has raised thorny issues for companies reliant on global supply chains. Western companies must now be careful that they are not using products or materials sourced from XPCC-related ventures.

Volkswagen, for example, has operated a joint venture factory in Urumqi since 2013. In mid-2023, the German carmaker promised an independent audit of its factory, claiming that it found "no indication of any human rights violations or wider issues around working conditions". However, Zenz issued a rebuttal, saying VW's "statements about the audit are misleading or false," as its auditor and methodology did not meet required international standards.

Abuses continue and are widespread. The UN, in a September 2023 report, listed large-scale, forced separations and language policies at state-run boarding schools. In these institutions, which have been growing exponentially in number, classes are taught exclusively in Mandarin, thus forcing Uyghur children to adopt Han cultural practices and the Mandarin language. The children include the offspring of those arbitrarily detained, and the UN said they are essentially treated as orphans.

The organization said, "Uyghur and other minority children in highly regulated and controlled boarding institutions may have little interaction with their parents, extended family or communities for much of their youth. This will inevitably lead to a loss of connection with their families and communities and undermine their ties to their cultural, religious and linguistic identities." Simultaneously, local schools using the Uyghur language have been closed, leaving no other options for students.

Quoting UN experts such as Fernand de Varennes, Special Rapporteur on minority issues; Alexandra Xanthaki, Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights; and Farida Shaheed, Special Rapporteur on the right to education, the report warned, "The massive scale of the allegations raises extremely serious concerns of violations of basic human rights."

Religious control is extremely harsh too. Human Rights Watch reported that revised regulations introduced in Xinjiang in February 2024 have tightened controls over Muslim religious practices there. Xi's aim is to Sinicize all religions in China, meaning that religions and places of worship need to reflect Han Chinese culture and those ideologies espoused by the CCP.

Maya Wang, acting China Director at Human Rights Watch, stated, "The Chinese government's new regulations on religion in Xinjiang are the latest attempt to suppress Uyghur culture and ideology. The revisions aim to forcibly transform religious practice to be consistent with Chinese Communist Party ideology: to do otherwise risks imprisonment."

The legal revisions extend beyond physical buildings, for places of worship must "deeply excavate the content of teachings and canons that are conducive to social harmony...and interpret them in line with the requirements of contemporary China's development and progress, and in line with the excellent traditional Chinese culture," according to the law's Article 11.

Furthermore, the law prohibits any religious education other than that performed by government-approved religious groups. China argues that its contingency policies in Xinjiang have rooted out "terrorists, extremists and secessionists," but the cost on Uyghur and other minorities has been merciless and savage.

Zenz concluded, "Higher-level policy and state planning documents indicate that coercive Xinjiang employment and poverty alleviation policies are to continue at least through 2025. Xinjiang state and media sources document that these policies continue

to be implemented."

Yes, Beijing's policy changes have made forced labour less visible than the mass concentration camps it established, but this massive human rights problem exists nonetheless. As Zenz remarked, "Uyghur forced labour is becoming both more prevalent and more insidious".

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