A protester from the Uighur community living in Turkey holds an anti-China placard during a protest in Istanbul on Oct. 1, 2020. (Emrah Gurel/AP Photo)
Critics around the globe are crying out against China’s apparent human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims. The whole world seems to be behind a recent United Nations report detailing China’s inhumane treatment of the group.
In a press briefing Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Biden administration welcomes the report and urged the Chinese Communist Party to cease its atrocities. She even went as far as to call the crimes against humanity “genocidal,” which is a move likely to irk America’s number one adversary.
“The report deepens our grave concern regarding the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity that China is perpetrating,” stated Jean-Pierre. “Our position on the atrocities in Xinjiang has been clearly demonstrated with our words and in our actions. The Biden administration has taken concrete measures, including improving visa restrictions, Global Magnitsky Act and other financial sanctions, export controls, import restrictions and the president has rallied allies and partners including the G7 commitment to ensure all global supply chains are free from the use of forced labor, including from Xinjiang.”
On Wednesday, the UN’s Human Rights Commission released a 48-page report assessing more than a million Uyghurs were taken from their homes and concentration camps in China’s Western Xinjiang province. At these camps, Uygurs are forced to do hard manual labor as well as ditch their language and culture. Additionally, many women in these camps are raped and sexually assaulted, while prisoners as a whole are routinely tortured and beaten.
Many Uyghur advocacy groups came out in support of the report stressing the victims have fled to other parts of the country, suffering the consequences of experiencing the discriminatory abuses while leaving others behind.
“I interpreted for many survivors,” said Rahima Mahmut, Director of the World Uyghur Congress, U.K. “I know the horrors that they have experienced, including sexual violence, torture, sterilization and extremely disturbing details of what has been happening and to those being detained and also those who are, you know, living in their own home. They also been suffering because they have…most of their families have direct family members or relatives, you know, being taken, and they don’t know what happened to them for so many years.”
Meanwhile, the Chinese government is combating what they call allegations against its regime. Officials are trying to undermine the credibility of the report by claiming it’s a fabrication spawned by the US and other anti-China Western countries. Reports say China delayed the reports release in an effort to either kill it from going public or white wash its atrocities.
They even launched a propaganda campaign against the US trying to deflect attention to the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the virus plaguing the world from Wuhan, China. However, these efforts are not being welcomed by the international community with activists seeing through the fog of attempted deception. They say governments should punish China diplomatically as a result of the UN’s findings.
“We don’t believe Chinese government, this government will act,” Mahmut continued. “We’ve seen the reaction from the Chinese foreign minister and the rest. They are completely denying that, saying ‘this is completely fabricated, it’s not true’. And so from that attitude the governments, the UN should recognize who they are dealing with. This is not a regime that you can have diplomatic relationship and to fix any problems.”
In the meantime, Joe Biden is scheduled to meet with China’s President Xi Jingping in person next week. This comes in light of the new report China’s aggressive rhetoric and military actions against US officials meeting Taiwanese leaders as well as the White House’s concern with China’s allies amid the Ukraine crisis.
Critics hope Biden puts China in check as the CCP looks to usurp America as global hegemon and is signaling it could invade Taiwan soon.
Source: One America News Network
