Hold China accountable
Conditions in Xinjiang have certainly got human rights activists worried
IT HAS BEEN about three weeks since the UN reported that up to a million Uyghur Muslims are being held in internment camps in China, and still no one wants to talk about it.
According to Gay McDougall, vicechair of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), up to 10% of the Uyghur population (who are mostly Muslim) are being held in jails or have been placed in “re-education camps” in the north-western region of Xinjiang in China since mid-2017.
McDougall said the reports suggested that China “had turned the (Xinjiang) Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) into something that resembles a massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy”.
Here they are forced to sing the national anthem at dawn, refused water to bath or perform ablutions, made to chant pro-Chinese slogans at various times of the day and subjected to torture if they answered questions “incorrectly”.
In the name of eradicating “religious extremism” and “maintaining social stability”, these are circumstances that must count as the most vivid violation of religious freedoms in the world today.
According to human rights activists familiar with the issue, the Chinese government initially held Uyghurs identified as a threat to the state. But it has since targeted anyone seen as practising Islam, wearing “Islamic clothing” or sporting a beard.
Over and above the 1 million said to be held in internment-like conditions, the UN says another 2.2 million Uyghurs are forced to attend “open re-education camps” daily; these “attendees” are allowed to go home in the evening. A memo sent out by the Communist Party last year said those “who have been chosen for re-education have been infected by an ideological illness”.
“They have been infected with religious extremism and violent terrorist ideology, and therefore they must seek treatment from a hospital as an inpatient. If we do not, (it will) spread all over like an incurable malignant tumour.”
In other words, the internment camps are meant to “inoculate” Uyghur Muslims from their “sick thinking” or religious beliefs in order to become reliable, dependable Chinese citizens.
The Chinese deny the existence of such camps in the province. The country’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying, described the accusation as having “no factual basis”.
“As for certain counter-terrorism and stability maintenance preventive measures, I think that internationally this is in general use by lots of countries,” she added.
It is not clear what she means by “certain counter-terrorism and stability maintenance preventive measures”, but the conditions in Xinjiang have certainly got human rights activists worried. For one, the region has long acted as a test-site for authorities. Bloomberg reported earlier this year that the government had installed facial-recognition systems in villages across the province. Authorities are alerted if residents move 300m beyond “safespaces”. Today, Xinjiang is one of the most surveilled areas on Earth. And activists argue that if these conditions go unchallenged, these policies could easily be replicated by other countries, looking to repress or control minorities.
There have been reports lingering in the press over the past year about the marginalisation of Uyghurs in China, but the UN’s damning comments last month have ushered in a wave of news coverage. Even then, no Muslim-majority country from the Gulf to Indonesia and Malaysia or Turkey has commented or asked the Chinese to explain themselves.
Certainly, none of the leaders of more than 50 African countries currently in Beijing has raised it.
The biggest noise so far has come from American lawmaker Marco Rubio, who wrote to the US secretary of state asking him to condemn the Chinese and elevate the issue in international forums.
Why few countries would be willing to raise their voice in lieu of the discrimination and inhumanity suffered by the Uyghurs is crystal clear. China has immense economic and political clout and is not shy to flex its muscles.
Surely then, our “poor” African leaders currently in Beijing to discuss investment, trade and development with the continent’s biggest trade partner cannot be expected to ask questions about the Uyghurs?
But then, when is it the right time to take a stand, ask for an explanation or point out an injustice?
At a time in which so much ambiguity hovers over Chinese-Africa trade, and so much confusion remains over the nature of China’s relationship with the continent, would it not settle a few nerves if our leaders behaved like equals on the world stage?
No one is asking South Africa, Rwanda or Senegal to boycott China, but where is the leadership?
To continually gloss over the misery of others is to betray the dream of a peaceful, more equitable future.