Displaying items by tag: Xinjiang
China: Amnesty report on detainees in camps
The head of Amnesty International said China has created a ‘dystopian hellscape’ for people detained in Xinjiang camps, who are routinely tortured. A report based on 50+ former detainees details crimes against humanity - including mass imprisonment, torture and persecution - carried out by Chinese authorities against Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities. The secretary general of Amnesty said, ‘China must immediately dismantle the internment camps, release the people arbitrarily detained in them and in prisons, and end the systematic attacks against Muslims in Xinjiang.’ Since 2017 hundreds of thousands - and possibly more than one million people - have been sent to camps in Xinjiang. China for a long time denied the existence of any camps. It eventually changed tack and now says the camps are voluntary ‘vocational training centres’, necessary to combat terrorism. President Xi Jinping said his government's policies in the region are ‘totally correct’.
China: forced birth control of religious and ethnic minorities
China orders hospitals to abort, kill new-born babies of religious and ethnic minorities
Hospitals in Xinjiang were ordered by China’s Communist government to abort and kill all babies born in excess of its mandated family planning limits — including new-borns born after being carried to full term — or face hefty fines, claims a new report.
Hasiyet Abdulla, a Uighur obstetrician who worked in multiple hospitals in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region for 15 years, told Radio Free Asia that maternity wards implemented strict family-planning policies intended to restrict Uighurs and other ethnic minorities to three children.
Abdulla told RFA that babies were aborted even if their mothers were “eight and nine months pregnant,” adding that in some cases, medical staff would “even kill the babies after they’d been born.”
Babies who had been born at the hospital outside of family-planning limits weren’t safe either, she said, adding doctors would “kill them and dispose of the body.”
“They wouldn’t give the baby to the parents — they kill the babies when they’re born,” she said.
“It’s an order that’s been given from above, it’s an order that’s been printed and distributed in official documents. Hospitals get fined if they don’t comply, so of course they carry this out.”
In June, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom argued that the forced sterilization of Uighur Muslims is “evidence of genocide.”
“It’s evident from the Chinese government’s own data that the Communist Party’s policies are clearly designed to prevent population growth for the Uyghur, Kazakh, and other Turkic Muslim peoples,” USCIRF Commissioner Nury Turkel said in a statement.
“We urge the State Department to investigate whether the Chinese authorities’ deliberate and systematic attempt to genetically reducing the Turkic Muslim population in Xinjiang meets the legal definition for genocide as contemplated in the Genocide Convention.”
In a statement to Fox News, Morgan Ortagus said the U.S. State Department is “extremely concerned by reports of forced abortions and sterilization in Xinjiang.”
"These reports are consistent with an overwhelming and growing body of information that exposes the Chinese Community Party’s campaign of brutal repression targeting Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. We reiterate our call on the PRC [People's Republic of Chinahttps://www.christianpost.com/news/xinjiang-hospitals-forced-to-abort-kill-newborn-babies-born-outside-family-limits.html">https://www.christianpost.com/news/xinjiang-hospitals-forced-to-abort-kill-newborn-babies-born-outside-family-limits.html
Pray: for this ruthless and inhumane killing of unborn and newly born babies by the Chinese government to be stopped.
Pray: for an immediate cessation of the forced sterilisation and population control.
Pray: wisdom, authority and protection for those who are campaigning and advocating for the Uighur people and other ethnic groups.
China: UK calls for immediate UN access to Xinjiang
The Foreign Office has called on China to allow UN observers ‘immediate and unfettered’ access to China’s Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region, after two leaks provided further evidence of mass arbitrary detentions. An estimated 1 to 3 million Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities are detained without charge in ‘political re-education’ camps. US media published 400+ pages of documents detailing widespread involvement of senior Chinese officials in these unprecedented mass detentions, where authorities use a scoring system to determine who can leave the camps. Also, the behaviour of relatives outside the camps can affect detainees’ chances of release. More documents were leaked by investigative journalists, similarly detailing mechanisms, guidelines and procedures behind the detentions in Xinjiang and the severity of conditions inside the camps. China claims that the camps are voluntary training centres to combat terrorism.
China denies Uyghur detention camps
Western nations including the USA, France, and Germany have called on China to close down detention camps in the western region of Xinjiang which activists claim hold as many as one million Uyghurs and other Muslims. China, however, has described these criticisms as ‘seriously far away from facts’. Its vice minister of foreign affairs, Le Yucheng, told UNHCR in Geneva that his country protects the freedoms of its 55 ethnic minorities. China has said Xinjiang faces a threat from Islamist militants and separatists, and rejects all accusations of mistreatment and denies mass internment, although it states that some citizens guilty of minor offences are being sent to vocational centres to work. Mr Le, referring to Xinjiang, said: ‘Stability is most important, prevention should be put first. Setting up the training centres is a preventative measure to combat terrorism.’