Md. Zillur Rahaman :
Some news have already been sparking out recently in the time media that the Uighurs Muslims are being subject to torture by the Chinese Government in a preplanned way and the Human Rights bodies are also expressing their deep concern over the issues of their widespread human rights violations.
The Uyghurs, alternately known as Uygurs, Uighurs or Uigurs, are recognized as native to only one region, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China. They are considered to be one of China’s 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities. They are also recognized by China only as a regional minority within a multicultural nation and China rejects the idea of them being an indigenous group.
Recently the global media BBC disclosed a video that captioned – “An electric baton to the back of the head” – a former inmate described the conditions at a secret camp to BBC and it was some type of leaked documents describing details for the first time where it was unearthed about the China’s systematic brainwashing of hundreds of thousands of Muslims in a network of high-security prison camps. But the Chinese government has consistently claimed the camps in the far western Xinjiang region offered voluntary education and vocational technical training.
The leak was made to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which has worked with 17 media partners, including BBC Panorama and the Guardian newspaper of the UK.
According to Chinese government operating procedures, obtained by the ICIJ, the main feature of the camps is to ensure adherence to Chinese Communist Party ideology. Voluntary departure from the camps is not possible and inmates are detained for a minimum of 12 months depending on their performance in Chinese ideology tests. Communication between inmates and their family members is limited to one phone call per week.
About a million people – mostly from the Muslim Uighur community-are thought to have been detained without trial. The investigation has found new evidence which undermines Beijing’s claim that the detention camps, which have been built across Xinjiang in the past three years, are for voluntary re-education purposes to counter extremism. But official documents, obtained by BBC, show how inmates are locked up, indoctrinated and punished.
When the visiting journalists interviewed the “students” of those “Vocational Training Centers” they found that they were not students at all but prisoners and they were not terrorists but Muslim believers who were forced to renounce their faith under duress.
This Uighur community have traditionally been inhabited a series of oases scattered across the Taklamakan Desert comprising the Tarim Basin, a territory which has historically been controlled by many civilizations including China, the Mongols, the Tibetans and the Turkic world. They started to become Islamised in the tenth century and became largely Muslim by the 16th century and Islam has since played an important role in Uighur culture and identity.
Their crimes were practicing Islam, praying to Allah, watching Muslim televangelist videos on the internet, reading the Holy Quran or articles about Islam, writing about Islam, reading Uighur history, wearing hijabs, consuming halal food, burying their dead or marrying according to Islam and preaching Islam to their relatives.
Even though China claims that it is fighting “three evils” in Xinjiang, ethnic separatism, terrorism, and religious extremism, in fact, it is fighting the Islamic identity of the Uighurs which makes them a different nation from Han Chinese.
China is fighting against the diversity which in Xinjiang is represented by Islam. It wants to destroy any sign of Islam and totally sinicize the province, which is a major power hub in China’s One Road, One Belt project.
The Chinese Muslims of Xinjiang, who do not present a separatist threat for China, are also suffering similar problems like the Uighurs. Under the excuse of fighting extremism, the Chinese authorities have declared Islam, an extremist religion and do not want a Muslim presence to stand in the center of their Silk Road project which stretches from Beijing into Asia, Africa, and Europe.
The Chinese have banned the preaching and practice of Islam in Xinjiang and all state institutions have been ordered to fight any sign of religious practice.
Human Rights Watch says Uighur people in particular are subject to intense surveillance and are made to give DNA and biometric samples. Those with relatives in 26 “sensitive” countries have reportedly been rounded up, and up to a million detained. Rights groups say people in camps are made to learn Mandarin Chinese and criticise or renounce their faith.
In 2017, Human Rights Watch released a report saying that the Chinese government agents should immediately free people held in unlawful ‘political education’ centers in Xinjiang, and shut them down.
United Nations and many media reports said as many as one million people are held in such “re-education camps” in this region. As of November 2019, 1 in 10 Uighurs are being detained in re-education camps.
A US bill that describes Beijing’s treatment of Muslim minorities as “gross violations” of human rights has been overwhelmingly supported by the congressmen. Congress voted 407-1 in favor of the Uighur Human Rights Policy Act of 2019, which has already passed the Senate. China has refuted the claims, saying they are merely trying to combat terrorism. The US House of Representatives approved a bill late on December 3, 2019 aimed at increasing pressure on China over the brutal crackdown on Muslim minorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. The US Act decries China’s “gross human rights violations” linked to the maltreatment of more than 1 million Uighurs, Kazakhs and other minorities in so-called reeducation camps.
The instructions make it clear that the camps should be run as high security prisons, with strict discipline, punishments and no escapes. Since 2016, it is estimated that over a million Uighurs have been detained in Xinjiang re-education camps. One document reveals that 15,000 people from southern Xinjiang were sent to the camps over the course of just one week in 2017.
The documents reveal how every aspect of a detainee’s life is monitored and controlled. The students provided a fixed bed position, fixed queue position, fixed classroom seat, and fixed station during skills work, and it is strictly forbidden for this to be changed. Implement behavioural norms and discipline requirements are also restricted for getting up, roll call, washing, going to the toilet, organising and housekeeping, eating, studying, sleeping, closing the door and so forth.
The whole matter is a devastating, vulnerable and mind-boggling fact. This is trying to fundamentally change the hearts and minds of these people. They cannot move freely, perform their religious faiths and many of their basic rights are restricted even food, medicine and shelter. It is about enforcing allegiance and international rights group urged the Chinese authority to stop this inhuman torturing on Uighur Muslims immediately.
Some news have already been sparking out recently in the time media that the Uighurs Muslims are being subject to torture by the Chinese Government in a preplanned way and the Human Rights bodies are also expressing their deep concern over the issues of their widespread human rights violations.
The Uyghurs, alternately known as Uygurs, Uighurs or Uigurs, are recognized as native to only one region, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China. They are considered to be one of China’s 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities. They are also recognized by China only as a regional minority within a multicultural nation and China rejects the idea of them being an indigenous group.
Recently the global media BBC disclosed a video that captioned – “An electric baton to the back of the head” – a former inmate described the conditions at a secret camp to BBC and it was some type of leaked documents describing details for the first time where it was unearthed about the China’s systematic brainwashing of hundreds of thousands of Muslims in a network of high-security prison camps. But the Chinese government has consistently claimed the camps in the far western Xinjiang region offered voluntary education and vocational technical training.
The leak was made to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which has worked with 17 media partners, including BBC Panorama and the Guardian newspaper of the UK.
According to Chinese government operating procedures, obtained by the ICIJ, the main feature of the camps is to ensure adherence to Chinese Communist Party ideology. Voluntary departure from the camps is not possible and inmates are detained for a minimum of 12 months depending on their performance in Chinese ideology tests. Communication between inmates and their family members is limited to one phone call per week.
About a million people – mostly from the Muslim Uighur community-are thought to have been detained without trial. The investigation has found new evidence which undermines Beijing’s claim that the detention camps, which have been built across Xinjiang in the past three years, are for voluntary re-education purposes to counter extremism. But official documents, obtained by BBC, show how inmates are locked up, indoctrinated and punished.
When the visiting journalists interviewed the “students” of those “Vocational Training Centers” they found that they were not students at all but prisoners and they were not terrorists but Muslim believers who were forced to renounce their faith under duress.
This Uighur community have traditionally been inhabited a series of oases scattered across the Taklamakan Desert comprising the Tarim Basin, a territory which has historically been controlled by many civilizations including China, the Mongols, the Tibetans and the Turkic world. They started to become Islamised in the tenth century and became largely Muslim by the 16th century and Islam has since played an important role in Uighur culture and identity.
Their crimes were practicing Islam, praying to Allah, watching Muslim televangelist videos on the internet, reading the Holy Quran or articles about Islam, writing about Islam, reading Uighur history, wearing hijabs, consuming halal food, burying their dead or marrying according to Islam and preaching Islam to their relatives.
Even though China claims that it is fighting “three evils” in Xinjiang, ethnic separatism, terrorism, and religious extremism, in fact, it is fighting the Islamic identity of the Uighurs which makes them a different nation from Han Chinese.
China is fighting against the diversity which in Xinjiang is represented by Islam. It wants to destroy any sign of Islam and totally sinicize the province, which is a major power hub in China’s One Road, One Belt project.
The Chinese Muslims of Xinjiang, who do not present a separatist threat for China, are also suffering similar problems like the Uighurs. Under the excuse of fighting extremism, the Chinese authorities have declared Islam, an extremist religion and do not want a Muslim presence to stand in the center of their Silk Road project which stretches from Beijing into Asia, Africa, and Europe.
The Chinese have banned the preaching and practice of Islam in Xinjiang and all state institutions have been ordered to fight any sign of religious practice.
Human Rights Watch says Uighur people in particular are subject to intense surveillance and are made to give DNA and biometric samples. Those with relatives in 26 “sensitive” countries have reportedly been rounded up, and up to a million detained. Rights groups say people in camps are made to learn Mandarin Chinese and criticise or renounce their faith.
In 2017, Human Rights Watch released a report saying that the Chinese government agents should immediately free people held in unlawful ‘political education’ centers in Xinjiang, and shut them down.
United Nations and many media reports said as many as one million people are held in such “re-education camps” in this region. As of November 2019, 1 in 10 Uighurs are being detained in re-education camps.
A US bill that describes Beijing’s treatment of Muslim minorities as “gross violations” of human rights has been overwhelmingly supported by the congressmen. Congress voted 407-1 in favor of the Uighur Human Rights Policy Act of 2019, which has already passed the Senate. China has refuted the claims, saying they are merely trying to combat terrorism. The US House of Representatives approved a bill late on December 3, 2019 aimed at increasing pressure on China over the brutal crackdown on Muslim minorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. The US Act decries China’s “gross human rights violations” linked to the maltreatment of more than 1 million Uighurs, Kazakhs and other minorities in so-called reeducation camps.
The instructions make it clear that the camps should be run as high security prisons, with strict discipline, punishments and no escapes. Since 2016, it is estimated that over a million Uighurs have been detained in Xinjiang re-education camps. One document reveals that 15,000 people from southern Xinjiang were sent to the camps over the course of just one week in 2017.
The documents reveal how every aspect of a detainee’s life is monitored and controlled. The students provided a fixed bed position, fixed queue position, fixed classroom seat, and fixed station during skills work, and it is strictly forbidden for this to be changed. Implement behavioural norms and discipline requirements are also restricted for getting up, roll call, washing, going to the toilet, organising and housekeeping, eating, studying, sleeping, closing the door and so forth.
The whole matter is a devastating, vulnerable and mind-boggling fact. This is trying to fundamentally change the hearts and minds of these people. They cannot move freely, perform their religious faiths and many of their basic rights are restricted even food, medicine and shelter. It is about enforcing allegiance and international rights group urged the Chinese authority to stop this inhuman torturing on Uighur Muslims immediately.
(Md. Zillur Rahaman, Banker and Freelance Contributor, Dhaka; [email protected])
