Better to take the rewards and avoid the punishments. Many have remained silent, out of fear for those still there. Anarchist forum. Last week Abdusalam’s story was broadcast on Four Corners, detailing how his wife and son are trapped in China because they are Uighurs – ethnic minority Muslims. User account menu. But the main reasons why Muslims suffer in silence is that the Muslim-majority countries that raged against Rushdie, Jyllands-Posten and Charlie Hebdo have decided to stay silent. A Listening Post special on media coverage of Xinjiang, both inside China and beyond. However, as many of these journalists have experienced first hand, these tours offer only a mirage and hide a much darker truth. China has exacted severe retribution against those who have spoken out, including Abdusalam’s wife who, since the Four Corners broadcast, has been taken in by police almost every day and questioned for three or four hours. “I wanted to tell them: ‘Where have you been the last few years?’”. “We spend so much time and energy on this religious freedom debate in Australia; well here’s a group of people that are about to be exterminated in terms of their religion,” says Pearson. He was talking about conservative Islam. You say nothing about what we do to our subject people and we will say nothing about what you do to yours. Iran, Egypt, Syria and dozens of other countries that could not tolerate a magical realist novel can live with the mass sterilisation of Muslim women. admin October 25, 2019 In late 2019, in what has become emblematic of Uighur repression under the PRC, leaked footage showed hundreds of Uighur and other minority prisoners kneeling under guard by Chinese police. Australian Uighur Sadam Abdusalam holds up a photo of his wife Nadila Wumaier and their baby son Lutifeier, whom he has never met. Nations that claim to be defenders of the faith offer no protest to the concentration camps. admin October 25, 2019 PSD to WordPress “No one wants to talk, with good reason,” says Leibold. They all say they have a family member detained, imprisoned or trapped in what the Chinese call the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in northwest China. 2. In several instances, investigative reporters that have spoken out against China’s Uighur policies have been condemned by state-run media. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for example, keeps his conservative base happy in Turkey by posing as an ostentatiously Islamic strongman. The Uighur Rights Advocacy Project, which works to raise awareness of the plight of the Uighurs in Canada, applauded the decision by the subcommittee in its own statement. Website Designing Company Many have remained silent, out of fear for those still there. He spent 18 months battling the home affairs department, which initially refused to recognise his son’s Australian citizenship. Reporters are free to cover China’s suppression of democracy in Hong Kong, for the time being at any rate, but cannot get near Xinjiang without taking extraordinary risks. Workers walk by the fence of a detention centre for Uighurs in Xinjiang, China. there were at least five Australian children trapped in China, United Nations reported that an estimated one million people, but still insists they are “vocational training centres”. 12. China has stripped away the religious justifications to reveal what was once half-hidden: unadorned and unstoppable power. But Australia could do more, he says. Anarchism. Serves as a Colonizing Force The Chinese government refers to the camps as “Re-education Centres” and has released glossy videos claiming the Uighurs are happy there. As some of us tried to say in the 1990s and 2000s, the gap between the sacred and the profane was never as wide as religious sentimentalists and liberal multiculturalists believed. On July 21, 2020, Dr. Elise Anderson, UHRP's Senior Program Officer for Research and Advocacy, testified before the House of Commons of the Canadian Parliament on the Human Rights Situation of the Uyghurs. r/Uyghur: A space for Uyghurs and the Uyghur diaspora, sharing news about the ongoing occupation of East Turkestan, and Uyghur culture, history, and … They did not understand how men with real power and malice were manipulating religious outrage to consolidate their rule over their wretched population. All rights reserved. In many countries, criticising China is the new blasphemy. He is trying to get them released from China. China is now a more active and influential voice at the United Nations because so many countries are benefiting from billions of dollars in Chinese investments through its “Belt and Road” infrastructure programme. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Through personal testimonies, research into satellite imagery, and information found in Chinese government documents online, this film examines the government’s policy of cultural and religious repression of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang – and shines a light on what some analysts believe may be the largest imprisonment of a group of people on the basis of ethnicity since the second world war. He hopes his wife and son might soon be able to come to Australia – ideally in time for his son’s second birthday on 31 August – meaning he could meet his son for the first time. Most members of the Australian Uighur community are missing someone. Editor’s note: The Australian producers of ‘Tell the World’ invited the Chinese ambassador to Australia to be interviewed for this programme, but he declined. EXPLAINER—Five Things to Know About the Bingtuan, UHRP BRIEFING—Uyghurs to China: "Return our relatives’ passports", UHRP REPORT: “The Happiest Muslims in the World”: Disinformation, Propaganda, and the Uyghur Crisis, BRIEFING: Testimony of Dr. Elise Anderson Before the House of Commons of Canada, Subcommittee on International Human Rights, UHRP REPORT—Kashgar Coerced: Forced Reconstruction, Exploitation, and Surveillance in the Cradle of Uyghur Culture, UHRP EXPLAINER: Uyghur activists ask world to #HearUyghurs. Following the money, however, can lead you into a dead end. But it was only two weeks ago that a statement was issued by 22 countries condemning China’s treatment of Uighur and other minorities. 12 days ago. Leibold says a “subtle, unarticulated bias against Islam” may also go some way to explain why the “slow-burning act of cultural genocide” in Xinjiang has not gained traction in western countries. But now, in a state of desperation, they are starting to … Beijing was forced to confirm a precipitous drop in the birth rate amongst the Uighurs. China has finally been forced to admit the detention centres exist, but still insists they are “vocational training centres”. The United Nations and other global experts estimate that close to 2 million Uighurs may be interred in these secret government run facilities.