{"id":860,"date":"2018-06-19T20:30:12","date_gmt":"2018-06-19T20:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/?p=860"},"modified":"2018-06-19T20:30:12","modified_gmt":"2018-06-19T20:30:12","slug":"time-to-denounce-chinas-muslim-gulag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/?p=860","title":{"rendered":"Time to denounce China\u2019s Muslim gulag"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lowy Institute<\/a><\/p>\n

By \u00a0 James Leibold<\/p>\n

One of the worst human rights abuses in recent times is occurring in China\u2019s far-western region of Xinjiang. The Chinese Communist Party has rounded up possibly\u00a0one million<\/a>\u00a0Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslim minorities in purpose-built concentration camps where they are subjected to mental and physical abuse without legal recourse.<\/p>\n

Despite the scale and intensity of this crackdown, few know what is happening inside Xinjiang, and even fewer are willing to say anything about it. The Australian Government must acknowledge the failure of its closed-door \u201cdialogue\u201d with China on human rights, and join other free countries in publicly condemning this egregious abuse of power.<\/p>\n

China unsurprisingly denies the existence of such camps,\u00a0claiming<\/a>\u00a0\u201cthe various ethnic groups in Xinjiang have seen great progress in the protection of their human rights\u201d. Yet recent research by a handful of academics and journalists has meticulously documented the construction of a vast network of \u201ccollective re-education centres\u201d across Xinjiang.<\/p>\n

Anyone engaging in \u201cabnormal behaviour\u201d or exhibiting \u201csymptoms\u201d of radicalisation or political disloyalty can find themselves incarcerated. These \u201csigns<\/a>\u201d include refusing to drink or smoke in public, wearing a veil, praying outside a\u00a0mosque, or even wearing a watch on the right wrist. Internment\u00a0quotas<\/a>\u00a0mean many ordinary citizens are now being held indefinitely against their will, and in some cases their families are forced to pay for their detention.<\/p>\n

Using open-source procurement and construction bids, German scholar Adrian Zenz estimates that the Chinese Government has already spent\u00a0more than US$100 million<\/a>\u00a0building these walled, barbwire\u00a0compounds, and that more than 10% of the adult Muslim population of Xinjiang has been locked away.<\/p>\n

Law student Shawn Zhang is using\u00a0satellite imagery<\/a>\u00a0to visually document the rapid assembly of these camps, including one, outside the regional capital of Urumqi, that is the size of five aircraft carriers\u00a0and likely houses ten thousand or more detainees.<\/p>\n

We now have a handful of accounts about life inside Xinjiang\u2019s secretive gulag, where detainees are subjected to around-the-clock political indoctrination and forced to denounce their culture and religion. Omir Bekali was detained without a legal warrant and held for eight months in a\u00a0squalid,\u00a0overcrowded camp in Karamay. After his release, he told\u00a0AP News<\/a>\u00a0that he was placed in solitary confinement, physically tortured, and deprived food.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0Uyghur student<\/a>\u00a0at an American university was forcefully removed from a plane in Shanghai when he tried to visit his parents over the summer holiday. He was blindfolded and transported thousands of kilometres to an internment camp in Xinjiang, where he was held in a tiny cell with 19 other inmates under the constant glow of a single light bulb and subjected to continual brainwashing. He was one of the lucky ones, released after 17 days and allowed to return to the US to resume his studies.<\/p>\n

This systematic cultural cleansing is what Professor James Millward, one of world\u2019s leading experts on Xinjiang,\u00a0calls<\/a>\u00a0\u201cBeijing\u2019s attempt to find a\u00a0final solution\u00a0to the\u00a0Xinjiang\u00a0problem\u201d.<\/p>\n

These actions violate not only Chinese law but also international norms against the extrajudicial deprivation of liberty. Article 37 of the Chinese Constitution and Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, explicitly forbid any form of arbitrary detention.<\/p>\n

In response, the\u00a0Canadian<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0US<\/a>\u00a0governments have publicly censured Beijing, while the commission monitoring China\u2019s human rights record for the\u00a0US Congress<\/a>\u00a0has labelled these\u00a0\u201cpolitical education camps\u201d as \u201cthe largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Australian Government, in sharp contrast, has said nothing publicly. This, despite the fact that many Australian citizens of Uyghur ethnicity have relatives in arbitrary detention in Xinjiang, including Adelaide resident\u00a0Almas Nizamidin<\/a>\u00a0whose newly pregnant wife, Bizainafu Abudourexit, was detained without charge in Xinjiang and disappeared before she could join him in Australia.<\/p>\n

Over the past thirty years, both sides of politics in Australia have preferred to raise human rights issues behind closed doors,\u00a0arguing<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cnon-confrontational, cooperative dialogue is the most effective way to address the human rights situation in other countries\u201d. Yet these bilateral efforts to engage China on its own terms have failed to produce any concrete results.<\/p>\n

In 2015 the Chinese Government made a\u00a0unilateral decision<\/a><\/u>\u00a0to walk away from these annual, high-level human rights meetings, leaving Australia with fewer diplomatic options for altering China\u2019s\u00a0repressive behaviour<\/a>\u00a0at home.<\/p>\n

If Australia is unwilling to publicly name and shame Beijing, it has little hope of changing China\u2019s behaviour. The failure to speak out not only sanitises the actions of an abusive regime, but also contributes to China\u2019s efforts to\u00a0redefine<\/a>\u00a0international human rights standards.<\/p>\n

The Turnbull government has warned against the dangers of a \u201ccoercive China<\/a>\u201d and the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s interference in Australian politics and national life, but has said little about the systematic abuses occurring inside China itself. The CCP\u2019s autocratic, bullying culture begins at home, with\u00a0Human Rights Watch<\/a>, among other global NGOs, documenting \u201cthe broad and sustained offensive on human rights\u201d since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.<\/p>\n

This week Australia has a perfect opportunity to openly condemn the transgressions in Xinjiang at the\u00a0UN Human Rights Council<\/a>. Australia lobbied hard to secure a\u00a0seat<\/a>\u00a0on the council, promising a\u00a0\u201cpragmatic and principled approach\u201d to its membership. We should now join other countries in deploring the oppression in Xinjiang and call for an\u00a0independent international commission of inquiry<\/a>\u00a0to document what is happening inside these concentration camps and how they violate Chinese and international law.<\/p>\n

China and its client states will inevitably block such a recommendation. But a principled approach to our engagement with China requires a firm moral compass. Future generations will judge Australia on whether it\u00a0speaks out or turns a blind eye to the incarceration and forced domestication of Xinjiang\u2019s Muslim population.<\/p>\n

Source;\u00a0https:\/\/www.lowyinstitute.org\/the-interpreter\/time-denounce-china-muslim-gulag<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lowy Institute By \u00a0 James Leibold One of the worst human rights abuses in recent times is occurring in China\u2019s far-western region of Xinjiang. The Chinese Communist Party has rounded up possibly\u00a0one million\u00a0Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslim minorities in purpose-built concentration camps where they are subjected to mental and physical abuse without legal recourse. Despite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinas-uyghur-politics","category-central-asia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=860"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":867,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860\/revisions\/867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}