China is Committing Crimes Against Humanity Against its Muslim Minority in Xinjiang

There appears to be no end to the horrors that China will perpetuate against its Muslim minority in Xinjiang. The Chinese government’s oppression of the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang now represents a "crime against humanity" under international law. Human Rights Watch has been documenting the atrocities.

Human Rights Watch: "As many as a million people have been arbitrarily detained in 300 to 400 facilities,[3] which include “political education” camps, pretrial detention centers, and prisons.[4] Courts have handed down harsh prison sentences without due process, sentencing Turkic Muslims to years in prison merely for sending an Islamic religious recording to a family member or downloading e-books in Uyghur. Detainees and prisoners are subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, cultural and political indoctrination, and forced labor. The oppression continues outside the detention facilities: the Chinese authorities impose on Turkic Muslims a pervasive system of mass surveillance, controls on movement, arbitrary arrest and enforced disappearance, cultural and religious erasure, and family separation."

China is again targeting Muslims in the region by pressuring women to use IUDs or get sterilized in order to suppress births. Women that refuse, face severe consequences.

New York Times: "If they had too many children or refused contraceptive procedures, they faced steep fines or, worse, detention in an internment camp. In the camps, the women were at risk of even more abuse. Some former detainees say they were made to take drugs that stopped their menstrual cycles. One woman said she had been raped in a camp."

Human rights organizations, the United Nations, and many governments have called on China to stop the abuses against the Uyghurs. The United States recently labeled it as genocide and a crime against humanity, and sanctioned Chinese officials and agencies linked to abuses in Xinjiang.

China claims the detention camps were created "to teach Mandarin, Chinese laws, and vocational skills, and to prevent citizens from becoming influenced by extremist ideas, to “nip terrorist activities in the bud,” according to a government report." However, China won't allow an outside investigation of conditions in Xinjiang and foreign journalists are rarely able to gain access to the region. Much of the information we get comes from individuals who have fled China.

So far, outside pressure has had no impact on China's behavior. It's difficult to effectively sanction such an economic behemoth, and much of the world is willing to ignore the abuses, save for periodic expressions of disgust. So, for now, the Uyghurs have joined Hong Kong, hacking, trade policies, territorial claims in the South China Sea, and Taiwan as major irritants in China's relationship with the West. None of those items can be settled without a unified global response.

#China #news #humanrights #internationalrelations

By: Don Lam & Curated Content