Chinese officials in a Tibetan-populated region of Sichuan have arrested two Tibetans for celebrating the 86th birthday this month of exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, Tibetan sources say.
The pair, a man named Kunchok Tashi and a woman named Dzapo, both in their 40s, were taken into custody in Kardze (in Chinese, Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture’s Kyaglung town, said Golog Jigme, a former political prisoner now living in Switzerland.
”They were arrested on suspicion of being part of a group on social media that shared images and documents, and encouraged the reciting of Tibetan prayers on the birthday of His Holiness the Dalai Lama,” Golog Jigme said, citing sources in the region.
No details were immediately available on the date of the pair’s arrest or where they are currently being held.
Another 20 to 30 Tibetans were also arrested this year for celebrating the Dalai Lama’s July 6 birthday, “but due to strict restrictions on communications in the region, nothing more is known about their names or where [they were arrested],” Golog Jigme said.
“However, they were all arrested sometime around His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s birthday,” he said.
The Dalai Lama fled Tibet into exile in India in the midst of a failed 1959 Tibetan national uprising against rule by China, which marched into the formerly independent Himalayan country in 1950.
Displays by Tibetans of the Dalai Lama’s photo, public celebrations of his birthday, and the sharing of his teachings on mobile phones or other social media are often harshly punished.
Chinese authorities maintain a tight grip on Tibet and on Tibetan-populated regions of western China, restricting Tibetans’ political activities and peaceful expression of cultural and religious identity, and subjecting Tibetans to imprisonment, torture, and extrajudicial killings.
Reported by Lobe for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Richard Finney.
An internationally recognized expert in Uyghur folklore and ethnographer who disappeared in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) more than three years ago has been confirmed as being imprisoned by authorities, according to her former co-workers at Xinjiang University.
Rahile Dawut, 55, created and directed the university’s Minorities Folklore Research Center and wrote dozens of articles in international journals and a number of books, including studies on Islamic sacred sites in Central Asia, and presented her work at conferences around the world.
An anthropologist by training, she disappeared in December 2017, believed to be arrested and detained in one of the many internment camps in a mass incarceration campaign launched that year by Chinese authorities, who to date have not provided information on her whereabouts or the charges against her.
Rahile was in fact detained along with other members of the Uyghur intellectual and cultural elite, sentenced, and is now in prison, RFA’s Uyghur Service discovered early this month through a series of interviews with employees of Xinjiang University.
Rahile, one of many Uyghur intellectuals silenced by Chinese authorities as part of a campaign to remove influential educators, disappeared suddenly from public life, along with Tashpolat Teyip, Arslan Abdulla, and other prominent professors at Xinijang University in the XUAR’s capital Urumqi (in Chinese, Wulumuqi).
A female staffer in the administrative office at Xinjiang University told RFA that Rahile had been out of work for some time, and that authorities had notified the university that she had been sentenced to prison.
“Yes, they notified us,” she said.
The staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case, also told RFA that the university issued an internal notice to the faculty about Rahile’s sentencing at the end of 2020.
Another official surnamed Zhao from the university’s Department of Propaganda confirmed that Rahile had been arrested but said he could not provide further information.
‘I could no longer be silent’
Akida Polat, Rahile’s daughter who is now based in the United States, told RFA that the last time they spoke in December 2017, her mother told her she was taking a very urgent trip to Beijing for a conference. Akida has not been able to reach her since then.
“The last time I spoke with my mom, talked with her, was December 12, 2017,” she said. “That day, my mom was in a rush and told me she was going to Beijing and she would call me back once she got to Beijing. Then she disappeared without a trace.”
With detentions of Uyghurs widespread in the XUAR at the time, Akida said she felt uneasy about her mother attending a conference but tried to console herself by telling herself that there must have been some kind of misunderstanding. But that exchange was the last she heard from her mother.
“News about them taking Uyghurs into camps had just started to come out at the time, so a week later, after I still hadn’t been able to find any trace of my mom, I got a bit suspicious and wondered whether they had taken her to a camp as well, but I decided to wait a bit,” she said. “One month later, I still hadn’t gotten any news about my mom, and so I felt certain they had detained her.”
China has held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs in a network of detention camps since 2017, with and smaller numbers of Kazakhs and Kyrgyz, fellow Turkic speaking people, also been incarcerated in the system. Beijing says the camps are vocational training or re-education centers aimed at combating extremism in the XUAR.
By late 2018, Akida received information that her mother was being held in custody. Realizing that her year of silence on the matter had been useless, Akida decided to go public about the situation in late 2019 when she published a website with information about her mother.
“I learned through acquaintances that they [Chinese authorities] had detained my mom, she said. … In the process of looking for her I had read so many things about Uyghurs in the news and began to sense that we were facing a genocide. In summer 2019, I decided I could no longer be silent and that I would testify about my mother.”
The U.S. State Department, in a report to Congress on Monday, put China on a short list of countries including Myanmar, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, and South Sudan that are experiencing atrocities and crimes against humanity, reiterating Washington’s six-month-old determination of genocide in the XUAR.
“Secretary (Antony) Blinken affirmed in January 2021 that the People’s Republic of China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs, who are predominantly Muslim, and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang. The crimes against humanity include imprisonment, torture, enforced sterilization, and persecution,” the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act report stated.
Akida told RFA that her anger about her mother’s imprisonment at the hands of the Chinese government serves as motivation for her advocacy.
“I was so angry when I heard the news about my mother, but the anger made me even stronger. I will never stop [fighting for] my mother’s cause, and I will continue it even stronger,” she said.
In January this year, Akida began working for the U.S.-based Campaign for Uyghurs, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the democratic rights and freedoms of Uyghurs in the XUAR and elsewhere, to further her mother’s cause.
Rahile’s disappearance had been reported by the international media, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Diplomat. Chinese authorities have yet to provide any information to either Akida or concerned members of the international community.
Uyghur professor Rakhile Dawut in an undated photo. Credit: Akida Polat/freemymom.org
Keeping her case under wraps
At several news conferences over the past two years, Chinese authorities have tried to rebut the testimony of some Uyghurs abroad by disclosing partial information about their missing family members. But they have never mentioned Rahile Dawut at the media events.
Some reports on social media have suggested that Rahile has serious health problems due to torture or psychological strain she has suffered in prison, and that authorities are keeping her case under wraps for this reason.
The lack of information about Rahile from Chinese authorities has raised the visibility of her case among members of the international community. Following her disappearance, scholarly societies issued letters and statements about her, and she received several international academic awards in absentia.
The Open Society University Network named her an honorary professor in the humanities in December 2020, and New York-based Scholars at Risk, an international network of institutions and individuals whose mission is to protect scholars and promote academic freedom, awarded her the Courage to Think Award in November 2020. Both groups have issued statements to the Chinese government asking for information about Rahile and calling for her immediately release to no effect.
Rahile likely was arrested because of her research into mazars (shrines) and the manner in which she dealt with local and autonomous region-level authorities to resolve issues that posed obstacles to her work, said a Xinjiang University police officer who declined to give his name.
The officer contacted by RFA said he had received a special notice about Rahile’s supposed “crime,” stating that the scholar had caused social “provocations,” between farmers and the government. The officer said he didn’t remember the length of Rahile’s prison sentence.
When asked where Rahile was serving her sentence, he said, “They told us not to talk about this with other people and that we should be careful with what we heard.”
Mehriay Mamteli, an independent researcher living in the U.S. and one of Rahile’s former colleagues, said that authorities might have used the professor’s research into Uyghur shrines as evidence for the charges.
Although Rahile received national grants and worked under the guidance of the well-known ethnic Han researcher Zhong Jinwen at Beijing Normal University in the Chinese capital, she still encountered obstacles when researching shrines in the XUAR’s Tarim Basin because of long-standing restrictions and crackdowns on religious and cultural customs throughout the Uyghur region, said Mehriay.
“In the process of research, she encountered a lot of restrictions from the local governments and offices responsible for managing religious matters wherever she went for her fieldwork,” she said, adding that Rahile proceeded with her on-site research only after receiving official permission.
When Rahile explained the importance of her research to officials at the local and autonomous region levels, she told them that restrictions on certain sites and customs were misguided, Mehriay said.
“For the Chinese government to put this woman in prison and punish her for things [the government] approved itself, a researcher it trained itself, and to call her perhaps a ‘reactionary revolutionary’ or whatever excuse they have decided on, is a violation of China’s own laws,” Mehriay said.
Another source claiming familiarity with the situation, who requested anonymity out of fear of reprisal, said that many people were moved and encouraged by Rahile’s willingness to use research as a way of raising issues that farmers themselves dared not discuss with the relevant authorities.
But even though her concerns impressed some local officials, they raised suspicions in others, which Mehriay believes formed the basis of the accusations against Rahile.
An attack on China’s plan
Though Rahile’s research into Uyghur shrines was not directly related to politics, its close relationship to the spiritual heritage and ethnic identity of the Uyghurs could be perceived as an attack on China’s plan to eliminate Uyghur ethnic identity, said Alimcan Inayet, a Uyghur professor at Ege University in Turkey.
“As is known, our ethnic historical works and cultural heritage are very important in strengthening our ethnic consciousness and identity,” he told RFA. “The Chinese state is perhaps uneasy over this, or even afraid.”
“The Chinese state, which has made the assimilation of the Uyghurs its goal, has long been attempting to weaken Uyghur ethnic consciousness and Uyghur ethnic identity,” he said. “Things like banning books about our ethnic history, demolishing ancient structures, and destroying statues of important historical Uyghur figures, among others, demonstrate this very clearly.”
Another source familiar with the situation said that by targeting the professor, Chinese authorities tried to create a climate of isolation, intimidation, and eventual alienation from Uyghur cultural heritage among Uyghurs themselves.
Lisa Ross, an American photographer and visual artist currently based in the U.S., met Rahile at a Uyghur studies conference in London in 2004. They then collaborated on a photographic survey of Uyghur shrines and became close friends.
Ross told RFA that she was saddened to hear the confirmation of Rahile’s conviction, and that she now has a clearer idea of what must be done to secure her release.
“Because of her work, many people will continue to know and remember what and who the Uyghur people always have been for hundreds of years, and what their collective memory is, and so our job is to fight for her release,” Ross said.
Rachel Harris, an ethnomusicologist at SOAS at the University of London whose research focuses on Uyghur music, has known Rahile for more than 20 years. She told RFA she was impressed not only by Rahile’s academic credentials but also by her sincerity, humanity, and virtue.
“My hope is always that national governments will come together as a group and make a strong statement about what’s going on,” Harris said. “I have put pressure on my own university to raise a case.”
Reported by Shohret Hoshur and Gulchehra Hoja for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Translated by the Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
A Spanish environmentalist who led a campaign against a controversial dam project on Tuesday accused Cambodia’s courts of violating national and international law because judicial authorities plan to hold a case against him in absentia while he is prevented by the government from re-entering the country to stand trial.
Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, the Khmer-speaking former director of the NGO Mother Nature Cambodia, was deported from the Southeast Asian nation in February 2015 following the government’s refusal to renew his visa.
Opposition groups and local NGOs said Gonzalez-Davidson was expelled for to prevent him from organizing further opposition to the planned Chhay Areng hydropower dam in Koh Kong province. The U.S. $400-million China-led project backed by a ruling Cambodian People’s Party lawmaker would have forced hundreds of ethnic minority families off of their ancestral land and destroyed the habitats of endangered animals, they said.
The project was halted in 2017 by Prime Minister Hun Sen due to strong opposition to it.
Gonzalez-Davidson has been refused re-entry to Cambodia, though on May 5 he was convicted in absentia along with three other Mother Nature activists — Long Kunthea, 22, Phuon Keorasmey, 19, and Thun Ratha, 29 — and sentenced to up to 20 months in prison on incitement charges related to their activism.
In June, Gonzalez-Davidson was charged by the same court with plotting against and insulting the country’s king when authorities arrested three of his Mother Nature colleagues — Sun Ratha, Yim Leanghy, and Ly Chandaravuth — who were placed in pre-trial detention. The court has yet to set a hearing on the charge against Gonzalez-Davidson.
Deputy prosecutor Soeu Lundy of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court sent Gonzalez-Davidson a summons dated July 1, ordering the 40-year-old Spanish national to appear for a July 26 hearing to face charges of “incitement to cause serious social chaos” in Cambodia between 2013 and 2020.
Gonzalez-Davidson said he wants to return to Cambodia to face off with prosecutors at the hearing on the charge for which he could face imprisonment of up to two years and a fine of up to four million riels (U.S. $969).
“I want to make the following public statement, with the intention of making it very clear to the PP [Phnom Penh] court that I regard their plans to go ahead with my trial this coming 26th of July, 2021 as a complete violation of my rights, the Cambodian constitution as well as national and international law,” he wrote on his Facebook page on Tuesday.
Gonzalez-Davidson argued that a trial in absentia can only take place when the accused person is in hiding and cannot be found, which is not the case with him because he has made it clear that he is willing to attend the trial proceedings to defend himself against “non-existing crimes.”
“So, if my trial goes ahead this coming 26th of July, it will highlight one more time how the very same people who are in theory in charge of upholding the law are the ones who are violating it,” he said. “It will also make even more clear in the face of Cambodians and the international community that charges against me and the six other environmental activists in jail are a complete fabrication and are political in nature.”
Neither Y Rin, spokesman for the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, nor Chin Malin, spokesman for the Justice Ministry, could be reached Tuesday for comment.
Both Cambodian and international law recognize the rights of an accused person and the court’s obligation to provide opportunities for him to defend himself in accordance with court procedures.
Article 38 of Cambodia’s constitution stipulates that every individual has the right to defense through judicial recourse. Article 14(3)(d) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by Cambodia, says that all persons are equal before courts and tribunals and have the right to be tried in person, and to defend themselves in person or through legal assistance of his own choosing;
Ny Sokha, human rights monitoring director at the domestic NGO the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (ADHOC), said that when an accused person states his intention to attend a hearing, authorities must coordinate and facilitate for him to do so.
“Basically, the accused must be present in the court to defend his rights during the hearing,” he said. “If the accused states clearly about his intention to present himself during the hearing and to respond to any questions posed by the court, and authorities in turn do not provide proper means for him to do so, [it] is a violation of his rights to enjoy being treated equally before the court.”
Reported by RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Sovannarith Keo. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Lao migrant workers are coming home in large numbers from Thailand but are bringing COVID-19 with them, driving up new infections in Laos, which has recently seen a drop in the number of domestic cases, Lao sources say.
Up to 246,757 Lao workers have returned from Thailand since the pandemic began, with around 150,000 coming back in 2020 and their numbers now increasing day by day, Lao and Thai labor officials confirmed in a virtual meeting held on July 9.
Around 893 returned to Laos on July 11, Sisavath Southanilaxay—Deputy Director General of the Department of Communicable Disease Control—told a news conference that day, while an official in southern Laos’ Champassak province said on July 8 that around 200 workers had crossed each day into his province in the last five days.
Many of those returning home are bringing COVID-19 with them, accounting for large increases in the numbers of new cases reported in Laos, Sisavath Southanilaxay told reporters in a second conference on July 12.
“On Saturday, there were 93 new COVID-19 cases in Laos, with 91 of these imported from Thailand. On Sunday, there were 86 new cases, of which 81 were imported. And on Monday, there were 106 new cases, of which 104 were imported,” Sisavath said.
A Lao health worker in the capital Vientiane confirmed the trend. “There has been almost no infection in our community at all, so most of these new cases are imported, and are coming from Thailand to Savannakhet and Champassak provinces in the south,” he said.
“The actual number of COVID-19 infections in Laos is getting lower,” agreed a member of the Lao National Taskforce for COVID-19 Control and Prevention, “but the number of imported cases is rising.”
Unmonitored movements across the border with Thailand are now a particular concern, the taskforce official said.
“We’re concerned about the illegal crossings of Lao workers from Thailand, with many of them sneaking in by small boat across the Mekong River,” he added.
“We’re campaigning against illegal entry and are patrolling the border with Thailand around the clock,” the official said.
To handle the growing numbers of workers coming home, officials in Savannakhet have converted the provincial stadium to a quarantine center housing more than a thousand people, while the governor of Champassak is in talks with the central government to expand the provincial quarantine center and hospital, sources in the provinces said.
“The governor is proposing that we use the Southern Finance College as a new quarantine center,” one official in Champassak said, adding, “We also want to disperse the returnees to other provinces.”
“Another problem is the shortage of food, so for now we’re asking parents and families to provide food for their relatives who have returned,” he said.
Hoping to return
Lao workers still in Thailand say they hope to return home soon, and are asking for help from their embassy in the Thai capital Bangkok to bring them back.
“I’ve been infected for several days now, but there are no beds available here in Bangkok,” one 20-year-old Lao worker told RFA on July 12. “I’m having more symptoms like coughing and difficulty breathing, but I’m here illegally. I only have my passport, but no visa or permit to work.”
“I want to go home to Laos where I can be treated right away,” he said.
“The COVID-19 situation in Thailand is getting more critical, and a lockdown has been in place since July 12,” another Lao worker in Thailand said.
“We Lao workers have been laid off and are being quarantined in workers’ camps, and the chances of us getting tested and getting a bed at a hospital are slimmer here than in Laos.”
“If we stay here in Thailand, we have no job and no income, and we have to pay for our rent and our food,” he said. “So it’s better for us to go home.”
“I think the Lao embassy in Bangkok should be helping us to go back home to Laos because there is no treatment at all here in Thailand and because there are almost 9,000 new cases here every day,” another Lao worker said.
Told to stay home
Also speaking to RFA, other Lao workers living in Bangkok described shortages of hospital beds and lack of access to treatment facilities, with one woman saying she and her family, all of them infected, had been told by authorities to remain in their home.
“They said that no beds were available and told us to stay in separate rooms in our apartment and take care of ourselves,” the woman, who had worked as a cloth vendor in a Bangkok market, said. “We’re taking medicine provided by the health care workers who sometimes call to check up on us.”
“We understand the situation. There are no beds available now even for Thai citizens,” she said.
Another Lao worker, a housekeeper at a plastics factory working legally in Thailand, said she is now quarantined in her room.
“I’m covered by the Thai social security system, and I’ve been tested at a hospital. I’m now waiting for the result, which should come in about three to five days. I have no headache or fever, only a little coughing and a sore throat,” she said.
A Lao man working in a Bangkok suburb said that many Lao living in the country have urged their embassy in Bangkok to set up an aid center to help Lao workers, “especially those who are sick, illegal, undocumented, or don’t know what to do.”
“A Lao woman died in Bangkok last month after being infected for days with COVID-19 and not being treated in time,” he said.
“There is infection everywhere, and we can’t tell foreigners or Thais when or where beds might be made available,” a Thai health worker explained, adding that beds in private hospitals are sometimes available, but only for the “rich and famous.”
“It’s overwhelming. We can’t treat everyone who’s sick. There are just too many of them,” he said.
Calls seeking comment from the Lao Embassy in Bangkok rang unanswered this week.
Reported by RFA’s Lao Service. Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Richard Finney.
The U.S. government on Tuesday expanded its warning about doing business in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), citing forced labor and genocide against the Uyghur ethnic group, while the European Union issued new guidelines to halt the import of goods made with suspected forced labor.
The updated Xinjiang Supply Chain Business Advisory was issued in response to China’s “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and the growing evidence of its use of forced labor there,” said a statement issued by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“Businesses, individuals, and other persons, including but not limited to investors, consultants, labor brokers, academic institutions, and research service providers with potential exposure to or connection with operations, supply chains, or laborers from the Xinjiang-region, should be aware of the significant reputational, economic, and legal risks of involvement with entities or individuals in or linked to Xinjiang that engage in human rights abuses,” the U.S. advisory said.
“Given the severity and extent of these abuses, including widespread, state-sponsored forced labor and intrusive surveillance taking place amid ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, businesses and individuals that do not exit supply chains, ventures, and/or investments connected to Xinjiang could run a high risk of violating U.S. law,” it said.
The 36-page advisory, nearly double the length of the same document issued a year ago, was issued by the U.S. State, Treasury, Commerce, and Homeland Security departments and now includes information from the Labor Department and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative as co-signatories.
“Today’s action demonstrates the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to ending forced labor around the world, especially in global supply chains,” said U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai in a separate statement.
The advisory strengthens recommendations for companies about the risks and potential exposure related to supply chains and investment links to the XUAR, and updates the list of U.S. government enforcement actions in and in connection to the region.
U.S. firms could be exposed to Chinese human rights abuses in Xinjiang through assisting or investing in the development of surveillance tools and sourcing labor or goods from Xinjiang or other areas of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) tied to the use of Uyghur forced labor, said the advisory.
They also could be exposed by supplying U.S.-origin goods and technology to Chinese entities engaged in surveillance and forced labor practices and helping build or operate internment facilities, it said.
“The United States will continue to promote accountability for the PRC’s atrocities and other abuses through a whole-of-government effort and in close coordination with the private sector and our allies and partners,” the USTR statement said.
Washington issued the original Xinjiang Supply Chain Business Advisory in July 2020 to alert American companies about the economic, legal, and reputational risks associated with operations in the XUAR.
Genocide report, trade blacklist
The advisory comes on the heels of the July 9 update by the U.S. Commerce Department of its blacklist of Chinese companies accused of direct involvement in human rights abuses in the XUAR.
The 14 new Chinese firms added to the Entity List will face restrictions on exports and technology transfers for having “enabled Beijing’s campaign of repression, mass detention, and high-technology surveillance” against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and others, the department said.
The U.S. government in January designated abuses in the XUAR as part of a campaign of genocide, and has since ramped up punishments against China, targeting Chinese firms that manufacture solar-panel material, wigs, electronics, tomatoes, and cotton with suspected forced Uyghur labor.
For years, Chinese authorities have subjected Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in the XUAR to arbitrary arrests, restrictions on religious practice and culture, and a pervasive digitized surveillance system that monitors their every move using facial recognition cameras, mobile phone scans, DNA collection, and an extensive police presence.
Since 2017, Uyghurs accused of having strong religious views and politically incorrect views as well as prominent intellectuals have been jailed or detained in political internment camps in the XUAR, where they are subject to various forms of abuse.
An estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have been locked up in the vast network of internment camps. Studies by the U.S. government indicate that at least 100,000 workers have been subjected to forced labor in factories in industrial areas where the internment camps are located, or transferred to factories in other parts of China.
The U.S. State Department, in a report to Congress on Monday, put China on a short list of countries including Myanmar, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, and South Sudan that are experiencing or risk facing atrocities and crimes against humanity, reiterating Washington’s six-month-old determination of genocide in the XUAR.
“Secretary (Antony) Blinken affirmed in January 2021 that the People’s Republic of China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs, who are predominantly Muslim, and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang. The crimes against humanity include imprisonment, torture, enforced sterilization, and persecution,” the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act report stated.
China has said that the “re-education” camps are vocational training centers set up to prevent religious extremism and terrorism and denied that the Uyghurs and others are subject to maltreatment.
The State Department also will warn U.S. companies this week of the rising risks of operating in Hong Kong as China asserts more control over the financial center, The Financial Times reported Tuesday, citing three people familiar with the plan.
EU sharpens focus on supply chains
The first U.S. business advisory related to Hong Kong comes a little over a year since Beijing imposed a harsh National Security Law on the former British colony, which was followed by the arrests of scores of politicians, activists, and journalists amid sharply deteriorating civil liberties.
At a Chinese Foreign Ministry news conference in Beijing on Tuesday, spokesman Zhao Lijian denounced the U.S. moves on Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
“No matter how some in the U.S. go to great lengths along its misguided course to hype up lies on Xinjiang, their political conspiracy to disrupt Xinjiang and contain China will only end up in failure,” said Zhao.
“We always firmly oppose the U.S. interference in China’s internal affairs under the pretext of the Hong Kong issue,” he said. “The Basic Law of Hong Kong and other relevant laws clearly protect the rights and interests of foreign investors.”
The European Union issued business guidance for that region’s companies on how to identify, prevent, mitigate, and address forced labor in global supply chains. The overview of EU and international instruments on responsible business conduct that are relevant for combating forced labor did not specify regions or countries.
The EU already has mandatory standards in some sectors and promotes the effective implementation of international standards on responsible business conduct, said a statement released Friday by the European Commission (EC).
“There is no room in the world for forced labor,” said Valdis Dombrovskis, the EC’s executive vice-president and commissioner for trade. “The Commission is committed to wiping this blight out as part of our broader work to defend human rights. This is why we put strengthening the resilience and sustainability of EU supply chains at the core of our recent trade strategy.”
In June, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), an international group of lawmakers from democratic countries focused on relations with China and the Chinese Communist Party, called on the leaders at the G7 Summit of industrialized democracies in Cornwall, England, to address Uyghur forced labor.
The G7 countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. – tasked their trade ministers with identifying areas for greater cooperation and collective efforts towards eliminating forced labor in global supply chains, ahead of a G7 Trade Ministers meeting scheduled for October 2021.
In a letter dated July 6 to French Senator Andre Gattolin, an IPAC member, French President Emmanuel Macron said that the position on China that France shares with its partners is very clear.
“The final communiqué of the G7 is in this regard without ambiguity, since it [has] asked this country to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, in particular in Xinjiang, but also the rights, freedoms, and the high degree of autonomy of Hong Kong,” said the letter, signed by Patrick Strzoda, Macron’s chief of staff.
Senior management at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) on Wednesday derecognized the student union after the city’s leader Carrie Lam called for further action over last week’s motion on the suicide of a man who attacked a police officer.
“It was enraging that the Hong Kong University student union unanimously passed a motion offering condolences on such a cold-blooded attack, as if the rioter who did it had sacrificed himself for Hong Kong,” Lam told reporters.
“I am furious about this in my capacity as chief executive, as the chancellor of Hong Kong U, and as an ordinary citizen of Hong Kong,” she said. “I feel ashamed that our university has such a student union, and that so many students have acted in this way.”
She called on HKU and the police to “follow up” on the matter, despite a public apology by the union, the withdrawal of the statement, and the resignations of four committee members.
The HKU responded by hitting out with condemnation of the “serious misconduct” of the union, which it accused of “blatantly whitewashing violence, challenging the moral bottom line of our society, and damaging the reputation and interests of the entire HKU community.”
“The University announces that it no longer recognizes the current role of the HKUSU (as an independent registered association) on campus,” the university said in a statement on its website.
It said the university would launch its own probe into the matter, and take action against the students concerned.
Dire consequences
Former HKU student union leader Kwok Wing-ho told RFA on Wednesday that the government and HKU are looking to destroy the union, and that the consequences for the students involved could be “dire,” if the national security police get involved.
“It’s pretty despicable that they want to carry on with this witch-hunt despite the fact that the union has long since withdrawn the statement, and the committee members have also resigned,” Kwok said.
“I am worried about the possible [consequences] they could face, including expulsion from the university,” he said.
He said that if the university starts a new student union, it will likely be filled with students from mainland China or those with connections with the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The union’s student council on July 8 passed a motion expressing condolences for the suicide of Leung Kin-fai, a 50-year-old Hong Kong man who died after knifing a policeman and stabbing himself outside the Sogo department store on July 1.
The South China Morning Post, which is owned by mainland Chinese company Alibaba, quoted university leader Arthur Li as saying he would “welcome” a national security investigation into the motion.
Academic freedom threatened
One year after the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) imposed a draconian national security law on Hong Kong, academic freedom is on the wane, students and faculty told RFA in recent interviews.
Staff on the University of Hong Kong (HKU) campus tore down posters and messages left on the university’s “democracy walls,” student publications Campus TV and Undergrad reported on Sunday.
Photos posted to social media showed posters bearing the words “Resist, Hongkongers!” and “never forgive the Hong Kong police,” being ripped from walls.
A draconian national security law imposed on Hong Kong by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from July 1, 2020 bans words and deeds deemed subversive or secessionist, or any activities linked to overseas groups, as “collusion with foreign powers,” including public criticism of the Hong Kong government and the CCP, on pain of life imprisonment.
It also bans words deemed to promote or justify acts of “terrorism.”
The trial of Tong Ying-kit, the first defendant to stand trial for “terrorism” and “inciting secession” under the law, after he rode a motorbike while flying a flag bearing the banned slogan “Free Hong Kong! Revolution Now!”, continued in Hong Kong on Wednesday before three judges hand-picked by Lam’s administration, and no jury.
Meanwhile, authorities have begun distributing a textbook on the national security law to kindergartens in the city that was selected for them by Chinese education minister Chen Baosheng.
A video circulating on social media showed Hong Kong kindergarteners carrying out a highly choreographed flag-raising ceremony in the manner of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) daily display on Tiananmen Square.
