29 - 4 April 2021 Weekly Journal of Press

The US says is committing genocide against the Here’s some of the most chilling evidence Deirdre Shesgreen, USA TODAY April 3, 2021

The Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim ethnic mino- rity that the Chinese government views as a threat in part because some have sought autonomy.

1 Weekly Journal of Press 29 - 4 April 2021 WASHINGTON – The U.S. and China are enga- Some American Uyghurs have expressed new ged in an increasingly intense confrontation hope the U.S. will lead a global campaign to over ’s human rights record – exchan- stop China’s campaign against their people. ging near-daily salvos over allegations East “The tide is turning,” said Nury Turkel, a fore- Turkistan’s government is committing geno- ign policy expert and human rights advocate cide against the Uyghur people. with the Hudson Institute, who himself was The State Department announced new sanc- born in a re-education camp during China’s tions last week against two Chinese officials it cultural revolution. said were directly involved in abuses against But China is pushing back hard, accusing the the Uyghurs, and Secretary of State Antony U.S. of meddling in China’s internal affairs Blinken has said he would consider banning and blasting the genocide label as a fabricati- Chinese imports made by the Uyghurs with on of Western researchers and biased foreign forced labor. At his first solo news conferen- media outlets. ce, President Joe Biden vowed to be “unre- lenting” in calling attention to China’s human US, China spar in first meeting of Biden -ad rights abuses. min Top officials from the United States and China The Biden administration formalized its ac- sit down for their first face-to-face meeting cusations that China has engaged in “geno- since President Joe Biden took office, testing cide and crimes against humanity” on Tues- the two countries’ increasingly troubled rela- day as part of an annual State Department tions. (March 18) human rights report. The document cites AP Beijing’s “mass detention” of the Uyghurs, as well as evidence of forced sterilization, rape, torture and forced labor.

2 29 - 4 April 2021 Weekly Journal of Press Who are the Uyghurs? The Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim et- hnic minority who live in what China refers to as the region, but what some Uyg- East Turkistan hurs call East Turkistan. There are an estima- ted 11 million Uyghurs in East Turkistan, a lar- ge patch of land in western China that shares a border with Pakistan, Kazakhstan and. The Uyghurs speak a Turkic language and have a different cultural identity than the Han Chine- se population, which speaks Mandarin and is “China is not doing these things. And it’s very generally not religious. unfortunate some people, including some The Chinese Communist government views journalists, they start with very strong bias the Uyghurs as a threat in part because some and prejudice,” China’s ambassador to the have sought greater autonomy or even a se- U.S., Cui Tiankai, told CNN in a March 25 in- parate state. Chinese government officials al- terview. lege there are extremists within the Uyghur Cui said China’s campaign was spurred by a community and have said their campaign to “mounting terrorist, extremist and violent “re-educate” the Uyghurs is justified by terro- ideology among the local population.” Skep- rism concerns. tics say there is little credible evidence to sup- In May 2014, the Chinese government laun- port the terrorism allegation. ched what it called the “Strike Hard Campa- ign against Violent Terrorism” in East Turkis- Uyghurs are being detained in camps and tan, which included a dramatic expansion prisons of surveillance of the Uyghurs and a harsh Media outlets and researchers have used crackdown on their movement and commu- satellite images to map the Chinese go- nication, according to a legal opinion issued vernment’s network of camps and prisons. in February by a British law firm on behalf of Experts with the Australian Strategic Poli- Uyghur human rights groups. The opinion, cy Institute have identified at least 380 de- written by attorneys with Essex Court Cham- tention facilities in East Turkistan that have bers, concludes there is a “credible case” been newly built or expanded since 2017. that China’s treatment of the Uyghur peop- Some estimates put the number of detenti- le amounts to “crimes against humanity and on facilities as high as 1,400. the crime of genocide.” The human rights group Amnesty Interna- tional estimates at least 1 million Uyghurs ‘Fundamentally at odds’: Blinken, China me- have been “arbitrarily detained” in these eting got heated in Alaska facilities for what China calls its “transfor- Chinese officials reject such accusations. They mation-through-education” effort in East have dismissed media reports about mass Turkistan. detentions, rape, forced sterilization and -ot her abuses as biased and fabricated. The State Department report says China has engaged in “mass detention” of more than 1 million Uyghurs and other minorities, and the government has subjected another 2 million 3 Weekly Journal of Press 29 - 4 April 2021 people in East Turkistan to “re-education” training in less severe settings.

Human rights: Blinken blasts the Trump ad- ministration’s ‘unbalanced’ emphasis on re- ligious liberty over other human rights Human rights groups say the Uyghurs have been put in the camps for a variety of rea- sons, from attending religious ceremonies, wearing a veil or having a beard, or refusing to marry a non-Uyghur. Starting in 2017, the local government in East Turkistan began criminalizing “virtually all Islamic matters,” A guard tower and barbed wire fence sur- according to an extensive report by a Was- round a detention facility in the Kunshan hington-based think tank called the Newlines Industrial Park in Artux in western China’s Institute for Strategy and Policy and the Ra- Xinjiang region in 2018.... oul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, a THE ASSOCIATED PRESS consortium based in Canada. The report, based on interviews with former body’ detainees and other evidence, concluded Chi- Chinese officials have singled out one researc- na bears responsibility “for an ongoing geno- her in particularly harsh terms: Adrian Zenz, a cide against the Uyghurs” and has breached German scholar who now lives in the U.S. and key elements of the 1948 Genocide Conventi- is a senior fellow for China studies at a group

Demonstrators wea- ring a mask painted with the colors of the flag of East Tur- kestan hold placards reading “Speaking Turkish , banned” and “fasting in Ra- madan,... OZAN KOSE, AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

on with its “intent to destroy” an entire ethnic called the Victims of Communism Memorial group. Foundation. The foundation’s spokesperson President Joe Biden: Chinese President Xi Jin- did not respond to a request for an interview ping doesn’t have ‘a democratic ... bone in his with Zenz. 4 29 - 4 April 2021 Weekly Journal of Press

During a March 20 press conference, Chi- nese Communist Party officials said his- re ports were “full of lies and fake information,” among other attacks. He is “a goon fed by an- ti-China forces,” said Sun, the foreign ministry official.

‘Vocational centers’ or ‘concentration cam- ps’? Chinese officials say the facilities in East -Tur kistan are not prisons, but rather “re-educa- tion” centers aimed at “de-extremification.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, They argue the facilities provide Uyghurs with listens as White House national security vocational skills, recreational activities, medi- adviser Jake Sullivan, right, speaks at the cal services and a host of other benefits. They opening session of U.S.-China talks at the also say the Uyghurs are allowed to “return Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage, Alaska, home regularly.” on March 18. But media reports and independent research FREDERIC J. BROWN, AP shows that in the internment camps, Uyghurs are indoctrinated on the “backwardness” of in a forced sterilization effort targeting Uyg- their identity and subjected to a wide range hur women living in certain regions. of mental, physical and sexual abuses. They “Government documents from 2019 demons- are forced to recite Chinese Communist Party trate plans for a campaign of mass female propaganda and renounce Muslim religious sterilization in rural Uyghur regions, - targe practices. ting 14 and 34 percent of all married women of childbearing age in two Uyghur counties in “Being an Uyghur is a crime,” one camp gu- that year alone,” the Newlines report states. ard told a detainee, according to the Newli- In one district, the percentage of women who nes’ report. In another instance, a detainee were infertile increased by 124% between was told, “you don’t look like a human,” af- 2017 and 2018, according to the think tank’s ter being raped and struck by an electrosho- data. ck prod, the report says. Reports suggest the same is occurring inside the detention facilities. In February, the BBC The researchers also cite Chinese government published a story detailing systematic rape documents which list prison supplies used to and torture of detainees with accounts from control the detainees. Among the items: ele- former detainees. The Newlines report says a ctric cattle prods, Tasers, spiked clubs known number of former female detainees testified as “wolf’s teeth,” pepper spray and handcuf- about being forcibly fitted with IUDs while in fs. detention. Genz and other researchers say the detention ‘Birth prevention’ campaign centers are part of a broader birth prevention According to media reports and independent strategy, noting many of those locked up are researchers, Chinese officials have engaged of child-bearing age.

5 Weekly Journal of Press 29 - 4 April 2021 “As a result of these interconnected policies, growth rates in Uyghur-concentrated areas are increasingly approaching zero.”

China has also clamped down on and Tibet While China’s persecution of the Uyghurs stands out in scope and severity, Xi’s govern- ment has also ramped up other types of rep- ression. China’s Ambassador to the United States, Last year, China imposed a “national secu- Cui Tiankai, walks past the closed-door mor- rity” law on Hong Kong and used the statu- ning session of talks between the U.S. and te’s sweeping powers to conduct mass arrests China in Anchorage, Alaska on March 19. of protesters and regime critics. Now, Chinese FREDERIC J. BROWN, officials have dramatically curbed free, direct POOL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES elections in Hong Kong. Beijing also maintains an iron grip on Tibet, As with other accusations related to the Uyg- where Xi has escalated a campaign to stamp hurs, Chinese officials dismiss these accounts out the region’s identity and culture through as false. At the March 20 event, Mahmut “re-educational patriotism.” Abduwali, an associate researcher with Xin- jiang Academy of Social Sciences, cited Chi- The State Department’s human rights report na’s country-wide family planning policies in says China has been monitoring and disrup- countering Genz’s research. China implemen- ting telephone and East Turkistan communi- ted its “one-child policy” in 1979 to limit the cations in both Tibet and Xinjiang. The gover- country’s population growth, a campaign Be- nment installed surveillance cameras inside ijing ended in 2015. Tibetan monasteries, the report says, and “The implementation of family planning po- has used a broader surveillance network to licy in China has experienced an orderly pro- intimidate political dissidents, religious lea- cess,” Abduwali said. “It first started in the ders and individual Tibetans and Uyghurs. inland provinces and then moved to the fron- tier provinces, in the urban area first and then to the rural area, and on the Han population first and and then on the ethnic minorities.” But the Newlines report says it is part of a concerted strategy to destroy the Uyghurs.

“In the camps, Uyghur women are subjec- ted to forced IUD insertions, abortions, and Exile Tibetans use the Olympic Rings as injections or medication halting their mens- a prop as they hold a street protest against trual cycles, while Uyghur men of childbea- the holding of 2022 Winter Olympics in Bei- ring age are targeted for internment, depri- jing in, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ving the Uyghur population of the ability to reproduce,” the report says. 6 29 - 4 April 2021 Weekly Journal of Press

Blinken: US-China talks difficult but ‘candid’

Top U.S. and Chinese officials have Chinese soldiers ride on the back of a truck concluded 2 days of meetings in Alaska after as they patrol outside the Id Kah , offering sharply different views of each other China’s largest, on July 31, 2014 in Kash- and the world in their first face-to-face talks gar,...KEVIN FRAYER GETTY IMAGES since President Joe Biden took office. (March 19)

Identities of 161 Australian citizens including a former intelligence chief, government official, and business leaders have been exposed in a hacked security database which reve- als the inner workings of China’s surveillance state.

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The cost of speaking up against China By Joel Gunter, BBC News

Women who spoke up last month about raping and sexual abusements in Chineese detaintion camps have been harrased and smeared in the weeks since. The CCP police often uses their family members’ phone numbers in China as a disguise to contact those abroad and to threa- ten them. “Cooraporate or we harm your family in China”. the CCP police said.

Uyghur protesters in Istanbul last month. Uyghurs in Turkey fear they Wang Wenbin holds up pictures of witnesses at a could be deported to China press conference in Beijing last month Beijing last month

8 29 - 4 April 2021 Weekly Journal of Press

Not Fooling But Genocide

#notfoolingbutgenocide an electronic campaign of solidarity with #Uyghurs On the anniversary of the start of the authorities’ campaign in #China - Aga inst them. A press conference was held in Beya- zit Square in Istanbul, Turkey, entitled “Not Fooling But Genocide”, to mark the fourth anniversary of the establish- ment by the Chinese authorities of Chi- nese detention centers in East Turkis- tan to implement the genocide, today.

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It is the responsibility of all companies to stop China’s forced labor crime in East Turkistan.

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