Uyghur News Recap: Feb. 10-16, 2022

WASHINGTON — 

Here is a summary of Uyghur-related news around the world in the past week.

Uyghur grad student detained in Xinjiang

Radio Free Asia reported that a Uyghur graduate student from a Japanese university was detained by Chinese government in the Uyghur region.

Uyghurs in Britain face intimidation

A report by civil liberties group Index on Censorship revealed that Uyghurs in exile were intimidated by China.

NBC Olympics host calls out China’s ‘genocide’ of Uyghurs

NBC host was praised for calling out China’s treatment of Uyghurs during Olympic coverage.

UN labor report says China uses ‘coercive measures’

The U.N. labor agency, International Labor Organization, said in a report that Uyghurs and other ethnic groups from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have work conditions signaling “coercive measures” that deprive them of free choice.

Uyghur restaurateur says he cannot watch Beijing Olympics

A Uyghur restaurant owner in Washington said that he can’t watch the Olympics in Beijing because it is a reminder of his family members imprisoned in Xinjiang.

Uyghurs demand accountability for ‘Ghulja Massacre’

RFA reported that Uyghurs were demanding the Chinese government to account for 200 Uyghur protesters who were killed 25 years ago when the Chinese government violently suppressed a demonstration where they were demanding religious freedom.

News in brief

Report: 2008 Beijing Olympics Uyghur torchbearer sentenced to prison

Uyghur Beijing Olympics torchbearer in 2008 was sentenced to 14 years in prison for watching “counter-revolutionary videos.” Adil Abdurehim was hailed as a loyal Chinese government official and chosen to carry the Olympic torch 14 years ago.

Quote of note

“The committee is bound to observe, however, that the employment situation of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in China provides numerous indications of coercive measures, many of which arise from regulatory and policy documents,” experts with the U.N. labor agency International Labor Organization wrote.

Beijing Olympics Get Political with Taiwan, Uyghur Questions

BEIJING — 

For two weeks and more, China’s stance on questions about its politics and policies has been straightforward: It’s the Olympics, and we’re not talking about these things.

That changed at the Beijing organizing committee’s last regularly scheduled daily news conference Thursday, three days before the end of the Games. The persistent and polite refusal to answer such questions gave way to the usual state of affairs at news conferences with Chinese officials — emphatic, calibrated answers about the country’s most sensitive situations.

Taiwan? An indivisible part of China. The Uyghur population of the Xinjiang region? Not being pushed into forced labor. China’s sovereignty? Completely unassailable under international norms.

“What I want to say is that there is only one China in the world,” organizing committee spokesperson Yan Jiarong said, calling it “a solemn position” for China. She referred to other assertions about China’s treatment of Uyghurs and living conditions in the northwestern region of Xinjiang as “based on lies.”

It was only a matter of time before these topics burst at the seams. The run-up to the Games was overshadowed by a diplomatic boycott led by the United States, which centered on China’s human rights record; China was determined to keep the focus only on sports but is also very committed to vigorously defending its stances publicly. In the final regularly scheduled briefing before the Games close on Sunday, Yan and IOC spokesperson Mark Adams were peppered with questions about Taiwan, Xinjiang and the safety of Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai.

Following up on a question about Taiwan’s reported attempt to skip the opening ceremony, Yan asked for extra time to address the status of the self-governing island, which China views as its sovereign territory.

“Mark, could I just make some supplementary remarks?” Yan said, continuing: “Taiwan is an indivisible part of China and this is a well recognized international principle and well recognized in the international community,” she said. “We are always against the idea of politicizing the Olympic Games.”

Adams was immediately questioned by a non-Chinese reporter who suggested that Yan, herself, had “politicized” the Games by raising China’s stance on Taiwan. Adams dodged the question.

“There are views on all sorts of things around the world, but our job is to make sure that the Games take place,” Adams said.

A Games volunteer, a young Chinese woman named Wei Yining, got a question she did not expect when a reporter asked if she knew who Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai was and, further, did she believe Peng was safe.

Peng, once the world’s top-ranked doubles player, three months ago accused a former high-ranking politician of sexual assault. Peng’s comments were immediately scrubbed from China’s censored internet.

“Well, I am sorry,” the young women replied. “I don’t really know that.”

One reporter asked Adams directly about the IOC’s position on the reported existence of “concentration camps” in Xinjiang, and whether China was using forced labor there. Adams suggested the question was not “particularly relevant’ to the briefing, and then went on to praise the power of the Olympics to unite people.

Yan again made sure China’s view was heard.

“I think these questions are very much based on lies,” she said. “Some authorities have already disputed this false information. There is a lot of solid evidence. You are very welcome to refer to all that evidence and the facts.”

Uyghur News Recap: February 3-9, 2022

WASHINGTON — 

Here is a summary of Uyghur-related news around the world in the past week.

Uyghur Olympic torchbearer in 2008 calls for boycott

In 2008, Kamalturk Yalqun carried the Olympic torch in Beijing, representing his 12 million-member Uyghur community from Xinjiang. Now in 2022, he is in the United States and has become an activist, calling for a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games over China’s mistreatment Uyghurs, including imprisoning his father, Yalqun Rozi, a renowned Uyghur textbook editor.

US lawmakers urge State Department to help Uyghurs, Kazakhs

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China urged the U.S. State Department to help Uyghurs and Kazakhs facing deportation from countries such as Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan to China.

UN, China accused of colluding

The South China Morning Post reported that leaked documents hint that the United Nations colluded with China in fabricating a “mutually convenient stalemate” to U.N. criticism of China’s treatment of Uyghurs.

Turkish Olympian uses the East Turkistan independence flag

Duringthe Beijing Games, a Turkish athlete, Fatih Arda Ipcioglu, was hailed by rights activists for raising awareness for Uyghur rights in China. He used a pair of skis with the blue crescent moon and star flag that Uyghurs use as a symbol of their short-lived independence of Xinjiang in the last century, which they call East Turkistan.

China has Uyghur Olympian light the cauldron at Games

The New York Times reported that Beijing’s choice of a 20-year-old female Uyghur cross-country skier to light the Olympic cauldron was seen by rights activists and critics of Beijing as an attempt to whitewash its suppression of Uyghurs.

Twitter accounts flood #GenocideGames hashtag

The Wall Street Journal reported that pro-China Twitter accounts had flooded the hashtag #GenocideGames on the platform in an effort to weaken it as criticism of China’s mistreatment of Uyghurs.

Proctor and Gamble silent on Uyghur issue

Fox News reported that as an official sponsor of the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games, Proctor and Gamble is silent on China’s human rights violations of Uyghurs in order not to lose profit in China, even though it has called out “systemic racism” in the United States.

China’s UN envoy defends Uyghur torchbearer

Reuters reported that China’s ambassador to U.N. defended his country’s selection of a Uyghur athlete as one of the two last torchbearers of the Winter Games after his U.S. counterpart at the U.N., U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said in an interview with CNN that China is using a Uyghur athlete to distract attention from country’s abuses toward the group.

News in brief

Radio Free Asia reported that Harris Mowbray, a U.S. college student, and a group of Uyghur researchers created a Braille alphabet for visually impaired Uyghurs. “I hope this Uyghur Braille script is used widely,” Mowbray told RFA. “Through this script, visually impaired people will be able to read, write, study and even write emails.”

Quote of note

“It seems to me that our sense of global citizenship and sportsmanship is not moving forward with these Olympic Games anymore.”

— Kamalturk Yalqun, Uyghur who carried the Olympic torch in Beijing for the 2008 Games.

China's UN Envoy Says Choice of Uyghur Torchbearer Not Meant to Deflect Western Criticism

China’s United Nations envoy has rejected his U.S. counterpart’s remark that China’s choice of an ethnic Uyghur as a torchbearer for the Olympic flame at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics was an attempt to distract from his country’s alleged rights abuses against Muslim minorities.

Ambassador Zhang Jun said in a statement on the embassy’s website that China “sternly refutes” the “unwarranted accusations” made by U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield in an interview with CNN.

Zhang said that Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a cross country skier born in Xinjiang, is “among the best” of the 20 athletes from nine ethnic minorities competing for Team China at the Winter Games.

“She is the pride and excellent representative of the Chinese people. Where does the U.S.’ inexplicable anger over this come from, and what intentions does it harbor?” Zhang said.

Dinigeer was selected as one of the last two torchbearers at the opening ceremony. Many Western nations have imposed a diplomatic boycott of the Games over China’s treatment of Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang.

U.N. experts and rights groups estimate more than a million people, mainly from the Uyghur and other Muslim minorities, have been detained in camps in Xinjiang since 2016.

China rejects accusations of abuse, describing the camps as vocational centers designed to combat extremism, and in late 2019 it said all people in the camps had “graduated”.

International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams said on Saturday that Dinigeer was not chosen because of where she comes from.

Chinese organizers of the Games said the torchbearers who entered the stadium with the flame had been picked based on their birth dates, with each having been born in a different decade, starting from the 1950s through to the 2000s.

French Parliament's Uyghur Genocide Declaration Angers China

BEIJING — 

China condemned a French parliament resolution on Friday that accuses Beijing of carrying out a genocide against its Uyghur Muslim population, a move that has strained ties two weeks before the Winter Olympics.

The resolution adds to a chorus of western nations that have criticized Beijing for placing around 1 million Uyghurs in forced labor camps, terming “the violence perpetrated by the People’s Republic of China against the Uyghurs as constituting crimes against humanity and genocide.”

France’s National Assembly joins Canada, the Netherlands, Britain and Belgium in having parliaments where lawmakers have passed similar motions. The United States government has formally accused China of genocide in western Xinjiang.

But China rejects such accusations and hit out at French lawmakers Friday.

“The French National Assembly’s resolution on Xinjiang ignores facts and legal knowledge and grossly interferes in China’s internal affairs,” foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a regular press briefing. “China firmly opposes it.”

The French motion was proposed by the opposition Socialists in the lower house of parliament but also backed by President Emmanuel Macron’s Republic on the Move (LREM) party.

The non-binding resolution by France’s National Assembly was adopted with 169 votes in favor and just one against Thursday.

It calls on the French government to undertake “the necessary measures within the international community and in its foreign policy towards the People’s Republic of China” to protect the minority group in the Xinjiang region.

“China is a great power. We love the Chinese people. But we refuse to submit to propaganda from a regime that is banking on our cowardice and our avarice to perpetrate a genocide in plain sight,” Socialist party chief Olivier Faure said.

Tit-for-tat sanctions

He recounted testimony to parliament from Uyghur survivors who told of conditions inside internment camps where men and women were unable to lie down in cells, subjected to rape and torture, as well as forced organ transplants.

The French government has declined to term China’s treatment of the Uyghur minority a “genocide,” arguing that it is a legal term that can only be proven with a judicial investigation.

Beijing has turned down repeated requests from the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights to visit the region to investigate.

President Emmanuel Macron, who has sought to avoid being dragged into increasingly confrontational ties between China and the United States, was asked about the Uyghurs during an appearance before the European Parliament on Wednesday.

“France raises this in a very clear fashion in all of our bilateral talks (with Beijing),” he told campaigning MEP Raphael Glucksmann.

He said he was in favor of an EU regulation that would “ban the import of goods that result from forced labor” and supported increasing requirements on European companies operating in China to check supply chains.

Human rights groups say they have found evidence of mass detentions, forced labor, political indoctrination, torture and forced sterilization in Xinjiang.

Beijing denies genocide or the existence of forced labor camps in Xinjiang and has accused Uyghurs testifying overseas about conditions inside the northwestern region of being paid liars.

After initially denying the existence of the Xinjiang camps altogether, China later defended them as vocational training centers aimed at reducing the appeal of Islamic extremism.

The United States has slapped sanctions on a growing list of Chinese politicians and companies over the treatment of the Uyghurs, leading to tit-for-tat measures from Beijing.

China has sanctioned European, British and U.S. lawmakers, as well as academics who study Xinjiang and a London law firm.