Chinese President Xi Jinping said a few months ago that the province of Xinjiang was now harmonious, stable and prosperous. Last week, however, the United States accused three other companies of using forced labor aimed at the re-education of the Uyghur people in this region of northwest China.
There are now 68 entities on the list of companies to be banned because they use components manufactured in Xinjiang at one point or another in their supply chain. The accusations range from the cotton, tomato and seafood industries to manufacturers of solar panels, floor coverings, cars and electronic products.
In December 2020, BBC investigators determined that almost half a million people were forced to pick cotton in Xinjiang, near former internment camps that were “closed” by the government. In 2021, France blocked the expansion of clothing company Zara on its territory due to an investigation into the use of forced labor by Chinese cotton suppliers.
After the rise of a Muslim separatist movement in the 1990s and 2010s, China orchestrated a widespread campaign of repression against the Turkish-speaking Uyghur minority in Xinjiang, with the establishment in 2017-2018 of re-education camps aimed at “sinicizing” them. “. According to Xinjiang police files reported by the BBC, in one county alone, around 23,000 Uyghurs were found in camps that year, more than 12% of the region’s adult population. A few dozen Uyghur students abroad were also reportedly arrested and sent to China for re-education, including those studying at al-Azhar University, where Egyptian police reportedly collaborated in their extradition.
More than 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities aged 15 to 73 were reportedly sent to these camps, out of a total of 12 million people. The Chinese regime’s goal was to destroy the traditions and culture of the Uyghur people, including banning practices linked to Islam and destroying mosques. For example, a man was reportedly imprisoned for 10 years in 2017 for “studying Islamic scriptures with his grandmother” for a few days in 2010, and an elderly woman was arrested because of her son’s travels to majority countries. Muslim, and another man for “growing a beard under the influence of religious extremism”.
Following these series of arrests, the international media somewhat neglected the case, and the majority of countries resumed diplomatic relations with China. Around ten of them, such as Canada (in 2021), the United States, France and the United Kingdom, had nevertheless adopted (non-binding) motions qualifying the Chinese campaign as genocide.
Previously a firm supporter of the Uyghurs, Turkey now supports them in a less direct manner, so as not to affect its growing economic relationship with China. China is now Turkey’s third largest trading partner. On June 5, Ankara still asked the Chinese government to protect the cultural values of this minority.
In a 2022 report from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, most of the re-education camps in Xinjiang have indeed been dismantled, but “the laws and policies that underpinned them remain in place” . Around 500,000 people from the Uyghur and Muslim minorities are believed to remain in prison, and surveillance in Xinjiang remains one of the highest in the country, with controls on the use of electricity or entry and exit from homes.
On June 11, Radio Free Asia revealed that the authorities continued to give fines ranging from 700 to 138,000 US dollars to the families of those imprisoned, promising them that these payments could reduce their sentences.
According to Amnesty International, the Chinese government is guilty of violations of the fundamental rights of millions of people in the region, even crimes against humanity. There are allegations of torture, forced sterilization, rape and murder for escape attempts. The regime explains that some of these practices are an “anti-terrorism” and “anti-extremism” campaign, while claiming that the camps were in fact voluntary vocational schools. Yet public government documents revealed by Agence France-Presse in 2018 claimed that the re-education centers served to “break their lineage, break their roots, break their bonds and break their origins” in order to make them good Chinese citizens. . The centers, the document continues, were to “teach like a school, be managed like the army and be defended like a prison.”
Last September, Human Rights Watch reported that Chinese authorities continued to implement a program of fanghuiju, or the pairing of approximately 200,000 Chinese officials with families of Turkish origin in the region to indoctrinate and monitor them. THE fanghuiju would mean “visiting the people, benefiting the people, and gathering the hearts of the people.” The organization found videos showing Muslim minority families appearing grateful to welcome state officials, eating and dancing with them.
It is difficult to get reliable and up-to-date news from people in Xinjiang since the government blocks all external communication, even for people with family members in the region. I will end with these words from the Uyghur poet Tahir Hamut Izgil: “Besieged by these discolored words / in all these disordered moments / the target on my forehead / could not bring me to my knees / and also / night after night / the one after the other / I pronounced the names of the ants I knew. »
This text is part of a series on oppressed peoples around the world.