{"id":936,"date":"2018-07-30T17:16:58","date_gmt":"2018-07-30T17:16:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/?p=936"},"modified":"2018-07-30T17:16:58","modified_gmt":"2018-07-30T17:16:58","slug":"east-turkestan-uyghurs-afraid-to-speak-out-due-to-government-repression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/?p=936","title":{"rendered":"East Turkestan: Uyghurs Afraid to Speak Out Due to Government Repression"},"content":{"rendered":"

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UNPO<\/a><\/p>\n

Hoja, who today is a US citizen, tells her story of being belonging to the Uyghur minority in China. Her brother Kaisar Keyum was detained by Chinese government officials while he was driving their sick mother to the hospital. When Hoja wanted to speak out about her brother\u2019s forced disappearance, her mother told her to not to make her brother\u2019s case public because as she was fearing for their safety. Thousands of Uyghurs are currently detained in \u2018re-education camps\u2019, one in five of these arrests occurring in East Turkestan.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The article below was published by <\/em>Hong Kong Free Press<\/em><\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n

China is silencing overseas critics amid its crackdown on\u00a0Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang,\u00a0said Radio Free Asia (RFA) journalist Gulchehra Hoja at\u00a0a United States congressional hearing on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Hoja, who is a US citizen and lives in Washington DC, said that critics sometimes did not speak out against human rights violations out of fear of\u00a0retribution by Chinese authorities against family members in the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome Uyghur researchers in other countries have the opportunity to speak, they have freedom, but they are afraid to,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

China has been conducting large-scale arrests of people belonging to Xinjiang\u2019s predominantly Muslim Uyghur population since 2014<\/a>\u00a0when President Xi Jinping called for \u201cstrike hard\u201d government campaigns to tackle unrest. In 2009, violent riots broke out among Uyghur groups in\u00a0\u00dcr\u00fcmqi \u2013 the provincial capital \u2013 targeting mainly Han people. The crackdown has intensified since hardline official Chen Quanguo was transferred from Tibet to govern the far west region in 2016.<\/p>\n

Hoja said that her brother Kaisar Keyum was detained by Chinese authorities in September last year as he drove their 74-year-old mother to the hospital, leaving her alone in the car. Keyum has not been seen since.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I heard that my brother was detained, I chose not to speak up too because my mother asked me, \u2018please I have already lost you, I don\u2019t want to lose my son too\u2019,\u201d Hoja said.<\/p>\n

She said that 24 of her family members in Xinjiang have been reported missing and that they have not been able to reunite for 17 years.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0hearing on the human rights situation in Xinjiang\u00a0was arranged by the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China and\u00a0chaired by\u00a0Senator Marco Rubio.<\/p>\n

It follows reports from US-backed media outlet\u00a0RFA that thousands of Uyghurs have been detained without formal arrest in \u201cre-education\u201d camps, where they are reportedly made to give daily thanks to the Communist Party. They are also forced to eat pork in violation of Islamic beliefs.<\/p>\n

The authorities have also stepped up the surveillance of residents by using advanced technology as well as increasing the police presence.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery Uyghur has somebody in their family or friends in the camps,\u201d Hoja said.<\/p>\n

According to Chinese government data,\u00a0one in five arrests in China last year took place in the Xinjiang region, yet it contains only about\u00a01.5 per cent<\/a>\u00a0of the country\u2019s population.<\/p>\n

Rubio said that the Communist Party is sensitive to criticism because of its goal of\u00a0reshaping perceptions of China in order to influence their position as a global superpower.<\/p>\n

He added\u00a0that this means universities refrain from criticising Beijing out of fear of losing their Confucius Institute funding for China studies or campuses in China.<\/p>\n

In reaction to\u00a0testimony by UN Ambassador Kelley E. Currie<\/a>\u00a0at the commission, he said that news from Beijing was akin to a \u201chorrible movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c[T]hese are crazy things, things we\u2019ve read about that used to happen thousands of years ago, or things that happened under regimes in a science-fiction novel,\u201d he said. \u201cThese are some of the most horrifying things that are happening in the world today. That it doesn\u2019t lead newscasts in the country and around the world in and of itself is problematic.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is outrageous. And it\u2019s hypocritical. And the international organisations that stand by and say nothing \u2013 why? Because China went into somebody\u2019s country and built a road or a bridge or maybe bribed them and gave them a billion dollars to be quiet and go along. This is just \u2013 this is sick.\u201d<\/p>\n

China has denied the existence of the detention camps, and officials say security measures are aimed at preventing Islamic extremism and terrorism.<\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0http:\/\/unpo.org\/article\/20994<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UNPO Hoja, who today is a US citizen, tells her story of being belonging to the Uyghur minority in China. Her brother Kaisar Keyum was detained by Chinese government officials while he was driving their sick mother to the hospital. When Hoja wanted to speak out about her brother\u2019s forced disappearance, her mother told her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinas-uyghur-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936","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=936"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":939,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936\/revisions\/939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}