By Aditi Parashar ’22 and Saman Bhat ’22
Staff Writers
“I hope they have already died because if they are alive it is worse torture for them.” Tahir Imin, a Uighur Muslim now in political asylum in the United States, told The Independent. He spoke about how his family has been detained due to his vocal dissent against the “reeducation centres” run by the Chinese government. Tahir Imin’s story is one of many that are slowly being released regarding the alleged treatment of China’s Uighur population under China’s Communist Party.
The Uighurs are a predominantly Muslim Turkic people with a population of around 11 million and live in China’s northwestern Xinjiang province. China has begun to receive global criticism for its alleged persecution of Uighur Muslims. Over the past few months, harrowing reports have surfaced describing millions of Uighurs detained in what Middle Eastern news source Al Jazeera calls “the largest network of internment camps since World War II.”
Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have long accused the Chinese government of mass detention, torture and mistreatment of Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang.
On Sept. 9, 2018, HRW released an extensive report based on firsthand accounts of several former Xinjiang residents, detainees and relatives of detainees, detailing the abuses the population has suffered. The report lists two violations of fundamental rights, including freedom of expression, religion and privacy, and lack of protections from torture and unfair trials.
There are an estimated 1 million Uighurs that have been detained in these camps; however, some have claimed that the number is closer to the 3 million range, according to the Save Uighur campaign.
Leaked official documents from within the region, along with firsthand accounts from former detainees, have helped expose what is happening inside these camps. Al Jazeera reports that Uighurs are subjected to systematic physical and mental atrocities, including being forced to consume pork and alcohol, both of which are prohibited in Islam.
Survivors have also spoken about their experiences of “electrocution, waterboarding, repeated beatings, stress positions, and injections of unknown substances,” according to a Foreign Policy report. This report also highlighted the mass female sterilizations happening in the region. “Anyone who has come out of [the camps] confirms they are worse than prisons,” claims the official Save Uighur website.
Ali Aslam, assistant professor of politics at Mount Holyoke, discussed how the actions of the Chinese government represented an effort to ethnically cleanse the region of Uighurs. “The detainment, enforced labor, sexual sterilization and separation of children from their parents for the purposes of cultural indoctrination represent an effort at ethnic cleansing on par with Rwanda and Kosovo,” Aslam said.
Chinese officials have dismissed claims of ethnic cleansing and concentration camps, with China's U.K. ambassador, Liu Xiaoming, claiming it is all “fake,” in an interview with the BBC. In addition, the Global Times stated that the tough security measures were necessary to prevent the region from falling to Islamic extremism. However, “experts say Beijing’s repression and subjugation of millions of Uighurs is vastly disproportionate to the comparatively minor terror threat in the region,” according to Vox.
In July 2019, more than twenty countries, including the United Kingdom and Canada, released a joint statement to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights condemning the Chinese government for its “arbitrary detention” and “widespread surveillance and restrictions, particularly targeting Uighurs and other minorities in Xinjiang, China.”
The U.S. has had a mixed response to the camps. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that this was “a human-rights violation on a scale we have not seen since World War II.” According to CNN, Pompeo’s statement comes days after former national security adviser John Bolton charged President Donald Trump with green-lighting President Xi Jinping’s constructions of the camps, stating it was the “right thing to do.”
Although outrage has slowly been growing in the international community, Aslam claims other countries are not doing enough. “The international response to China's genocidal campaign against the Uighur Muslim population in the far west territories has been tepid, when it has been registered at all,” he said. He added that neither states nor corporations “are willing to voice an objection for fear of losing access to the Chinese economy.”
Elizaveta Lozovaya, chaplain of Mount Holyoke College and advisor to the Muslim community on campus, also expressed her deep dissatisfaction with the world’s response to the issue. “I invite everybody to learn more about the crisis and to act with whatever support they can offer to the Uighur community,” Lozovay said. “I stand against prosecuting all religious groups, and my heartfelt prayers go to my sisters and brothers of faith in China.”
As of August 2020, the United States has imposed sanctions on 11 Chinese companies over human rights abuses, including brands like the suppliers of Apple, Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger. According to The New York Times, these sanctions “only prevent U.S. companies from selling components or technologies to Chinese companies without a license, not from purchasing products,” leaving some questioning the effectiveness and severity of these measures.
Aslam believes that it is now up to ordinary citizens to speak up about the events taking place in Xinjiang. “Unless[,] as citizens and consumers, ordinary people speak up, this genocide will continue.”