Lawrence A. Franklin
The recent United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) vote -- rejecting the West's proposal to debate China's possible "crimes against humanity" in its treatment of its Muslim minority in Xinjiang -- covered up Beijing's gruesome treatment of its Uyghur Population. This vote, saving face for the Chinese Communist Party at its recently concluded 20th National Congress, shields the Chinese regime's true nature and indicates its increasing influence in international affairs.
The 19 to 17 vote with 11 abstentions was a stinging defeat for UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, who had released on August 31 a damning report on China's inhuman treatment of Xinjiang's Uyghurs.
The failure to publicly expose via debate Communist China's horrific abuses in Xinjiang also is testament to the betrayal of their Islamic Uyghur brethren by Muslim-majority members of the UN Human Rights Council. These Islamic countries -- Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Indonesia and Sudan -- voted against efforts to debate the resolution. Turkey, in solidarity with its ethnic Turkic kinfolk, the Uyghurs, voted "Yes," to consider the matter for debate.
Most significant for the United States were the abstentions cast by several of the largest Latin American members of the UNHRC, which were part of a pattern reflecting the waning of US diplomatic clout in the Western Hemisphere. The tally also underscores China's rising influence in the region, which campaigned hard opposing the resolution. Only Honduras and Paraguay voted with the West. Argentina, Brazil and Mexico voted to abstain. Predictably, Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia voted "No."
The Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) released in August a comprehensive, meticulously detailed report on Communist China's violations of the rights of its Muslim Uyghur citizens in Xinjiang. The OHCHR report accuses China of "crimes against humanity."
The report laid out chronologically evidence collection activities and is based upon a diversity of source materials. These collection methods included: commercially available satellite photography, open source information (OSI), and official texts from People's Republic of China (PRC) documents. Independently sourced material also includes reports by non-governmental organizations, think tanks, media outlets and the testimony of victims.
The OHCHR report noted, in late 2017, after complaints from "various civil society groups" about missing Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), that it commissioned the UN's "Rights Council of the Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances" to investigate the allegations. The collective bundle of human rights violations of Xinjiang's minorities reinforce existing arbitrary stipulations of China's Criminal Procedure Law. For instance, even before any arrest or subsequent release from official custody, a citizen can be banned from local transport, sequestered at his or her place of residence, have his passport confiscated, be prohibited from visiting particular places or people, and required periodically to report to a specific police site.
Several leaked official Chinese documents over the last few years have corroborated the OHCHR's specific accusations of human rights violations by Chinese Communist Party officials in Xinjiang. Implementation of the CCP's oppressive policies toward Xinjiang's Turkic minorities are principally executed by the Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Justice and Supreme People's Court personnel.
China's "Ta Fa" (Strike Hard Campaign), established in May 2014, continues to serve as the Chinese leadership's endorsement of the ongoing gruesome policies against Xinjiang's Turkic minorities. The Strike Hard Campaign was authorized by Xinjiang's former CCP Provincial Party Secretary, Zhang Chunxian, but put into high gear by his successor Chen Quanguo, who had earned his hardline reputation by crushing dissent in Tibet. Following Chen's widespread and systematic suppression of Xinjiang's Turkic minorities, Chen himself was replaced by Ma Xingrui. Ma pledged to continue Xi Jinping's policy of maintaining "stability" in Xinjiang.
UN investigators focused on China's Vocational and Educational Training Camps (VETCs) situated throughout Xinjiang, including Hotan, Aksu and Urumchi Prefectures. Chinese authorities claim that these centers are teaching Xinjiang's ethnic minorities new skills, enabling them to better participate in China's "modernization plans" for Xinjiang.
The OHCHR report painted a darker picture of what actually goes on inside Xinjiang's VETCs. Interviews of dozens of former VETC inmates reveal that the camps are lined with external and internal fencing, and armed guards stationed on watchtowers with orders to shoot to kill anyone attempting to escape. Former prisoners relate that there are no home visits, and prisoners receive no knowledge of the length of their enforced detention. A Council of Foreign Relations report estimates that the VETC "re-education centers" have forcibly detained between 800,000 and two million ethnic Turks, mostly Uyghurs, since 2017.
In response to increased international criticism, Chen Quanguo, the Chinese Communist Party Committee Secretary of Xinjiang, claimed that the re-education centers had closed because the students had graduated. Although satellite imagery indicates that Chen was technically correct in saying that some "re-education centers" have been closed, subsequent reporting by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute determined that the overall number of detention facilities and prisons has markedly increased and that the security gulag system in Xinjiang has not been phased out.
Reports of brutal practices inside the VETCs are widespread. They include rape, beatings with batons and electric shock treatments. There is also humiliation by forced nakedness, various forms of sexual abuse and prolonged periods of forced wakefulness. Inmates are often strapped to what is called a "Tiger Chair" as these tortures are meted out. Specific types of brutality meted out to female Uyghurs are indicative of the regime's overall objective of genocide of Xinjiang's Muslims. The guards who dish out these tortures act with impunity, which suggests that even repeated mass rape is formal policy. Many female detainees have endured forced abortions, mandatory sterilization and IUDs implanted against their will. These practices demonstrate that a principal CCP goal is to reduce the Muslim population in Xinjiang. Official regime statistics already show that the Han Chinese population is nearly equal to the ethnic Turkic groups in Xinjiang, with Uyghurs at 11.5 million and Han at 10.9 million.
China's Communist regime is pursuing another key goal in Xinjiang, that of "cultural genocide." UN investigators have catalogued the CCP's anti-Muslim tactics, which support the charge of "cultural genocide." The OHCHR report condemns the regime's policies of banning public displays of religiosity like praying and celebrating Muslim religious holy daysץ The UN offers proof by satellite imagery of widespread destruction of mosques. The report charges that people are arrested for donning clothing indicative of religious affiliation, such as women wearing a hijab. Muslim men are often detained for too long a beard, carrying Islamic scripture or obviously fasting during Ramadan. Even Muslim names, especially for boys, such as Hajj and Jihad, are banned. Under the regime's totalitarian state security measures, people who suddenly stop smoking or drinking are detained, and Han Chinese teachers pressure students not to speak Uyghur, Kazakh or Kirgiz. Elementary school children are instructed in Mandarin Chinese.
Another facet of the horrific treatment of Xinjiang's Turkic minorities by Xi Jinping's totalitarian Communist dictatorship is mandatory "ideological re-education." Detainees are forced to participate in standard Communist behavioral reform practices such as self-criticism and singing Communist revolutionary "red songs." Perhaps the most sinister program of the regime is its policies to destroy the integrity of the Uyghur family. The CCP abolished the right to family privacy, by forcibly quartering ethnic Han Communist agents inside the homes of Xinjiang's Muslim citizens. The regime calls this invasive policy "Becoming Family." These "visitors," often quartered in Muslim homes for a month at a time, report on family religious practices or signs of political dissidence.
China's Communist regime still insists that its overall policy in Xinjiang is designed to improve security, lift indigenous peoples out of poverty and improve their quality of life by encouraging lifestyle changes such as family planning practices, learning new skills, and moving into urban environments.
Beijing is willing to endure universal condemnation of its coercive programs in Xinjiang because these draconian policies are designed to counter the Communist Party's fear of losing control of territories in China's northwest. Every Chinese government from the Han Dynasty down the present Communist regime has been faced with the dilemma of whether China should expend resources and implement the cruel policies of "preventive repression" necessary to maintain its territorial integrity.
There is an aspect of the CCP's Xinjiang policy that exposes China's total abandonment of international decorum. Uyghurs, even after escaping Xinjiang, often discover that they are still not beyond the tentacles of the Chinese authorities. China has effectively employed its global influence on some countries to forcibly extradite Turkic emigrants back to China. Since 2014, the UN estimates that at least 1,300 Uyghurs have been detained, extradited or rendered (covertly transferred) back to China's clutches from foreign countries, including, incredibly Muslim countries Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
President Xi justifies CCP policies in Xinjiang by the necessity to combat the "Three Evils" of terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism. Subduing Xinjiang also facilitates Communist China's broad economic plans to increase its influence in Central Asia while using the region as a thoroughfare to implement Xi's Belt and Road Initiative projects in Africa, the Near East and Europe.
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