Day: January 12, 2022

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

Tech company raises millions

The Guardian reports that U.S. sanctions have had minimal impact on SenseTime, a Chinese facial recognition company that was able to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from non-U.S. investors. Now on the Hong Kong stock exchange, the company is accused of the surveillance of Uyghurs.

Uyghur teacher of Islam gets prison term

Radio Free Asia confirmed from Chinese officials that a Uyghur woman who disappeared more than four years ago was taken by police and sentenced to 14 years in prison for teaching Islam to children and hiding two copies of the Quran.

Skater speaks of Chinese abuses

USA Today reported that U.S. pairs skater Timothy LeDuc described the treatment of Uyghurs in China as “horrifying human rights abuses” weeks ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. LeDuc said there are also violations of human rights in the U.S.

Uyghur memoir to be published

A memoir by Gulbahar Haitiwaji, a Uyghur who was detained in a Chinese reeducation camp for three years in Xinjiang, will be published in English in February during the Winter Olympics in Beijing.

Asylum-seekers still waiting

Roughly 800 Uyghurs in the U.S. are caught in a backlog of the U.S. asylum system that goes back years.

Intel deletes forced labor reference

Reuters reported that U.S. chipmaker Intel deleted any reference to not using labor or resources from Xinjiang in a letter to suppliers after Chinese social media slammed the company’s letter published on its website. Human rights groups and many Western countries accuse China of human rights abuses against the Uyghurs of Xinjiang, which China has denied.

Embassy Twitter account still locked

An official Twitter account of the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. remains locked more than a year after a tweet about birth rates in the Xinjiang region and Uyghurs, which the social media company said violated the company’s “policy against dehumanization.”

News in brief

— A retired Uyghur government post office worker died weeks after being released from an internment camp. Ghiyasidin Abla, 69, from southern Xinjiang in China, was held for more than three years on suspicion of religious extremism for growing a beard and attending a religious ceremony, according to RFA.

Quote of note

“Whatever you think of the way we are governed in Britain, and the West, we are hugely fortunate to live in a free society. The Uyghurs in China aren’t so lucky. One of the world’s superpowers is using a variety of tactics, including the latest DNA technology and a covert network of remote jails, to wipe an entire culture off the face of the Earth.” — Martin Hickman, Canbury Press, publisher of a Uyghur memoir, How I Survived A Chinese ‘Re-education’ Camp.

Source: Voice of America

The United States is proposing more international sanctions against North Korea, as part of a wider effort to ramp up pressure on Pyongyang following its most recent missile tests.

The United States Wednesday strengthened its own sanctions against North Korea, designating five North Koreans it alleges are responsible for securing goods for Pyongyang’s weapons programs.

On top of those measures, the United States wants the United Nations Security Council to impose stronger sanctions, according to a tweet from Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

She did not offer any more details.

There was no immediate reaction from China and Russia, which are permanent members of the Security Council and would need to approve any sanctions. Both have recently called for North Korea sanctions to be relaxed rather than strengthened.

North Korea is already barred from a wide range of economic activity under a series of Security Council resolutions. China and Russia agreed to many of those sanctions following North Korea’s 2017 nuclear and long-range missile tests.

Since then, North Korea has refrained from nuclear tests or intercontinental ballistic missile launches. In 2019, though, the North resumed launches of shorter-range weapons. It has since unveiled several new systems, including many designed to evade the missile defenses of the U.S. and its allies.

Already this year North Korea has conducted two tests of what it described as hypersonic missiles. The missiles feature maneuverable reentry vehicles that detach in flight and are theoretically harder to intercept.

U.S. officials condemned the launches, pointing out that North Korea is banned from ballistic missile activity by existing U.N. sanctions.

On Wednesday, the United States went a step further. The Treasury Department sanctioned four China-based North Koreans and a Russia-based North Korean, accusing them of procuring materials for North Korea’s weapons programs.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States “will use every appropriate tool” to address North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs, “which constitute a serious threat to international peace and security and undermine the global nonproliferation regime.”

Taken together, the moves suggest the United States is taking a firmer stance on North Korean missile tests. Since 2019, the United States has played down North Korea’s short-range launches, presumably to preserve the possibility for future talks.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Wednesday that the U.S. approach toward North Korea “remains unchanged.”

“I would strenuously object to the idea that these sanctions indicate anything other than a genuine effort to constrain North Korea’s – in this case, their ballistic missile programs,” Price said at a regular press briefing. The United States remains “willing, ready, and able” to engage in diplomacy with North Korea, he added.

North Korea walked away from nuclear talks in 2019 and has said it will not rejoin them until the United States drops its “hostile policy.”

The United States appears to be balancing the need to respond to North Korea’s tests against its goal of keeping the door open to negotiations, Eric Brewer, a former White House National Security Council official, said.

“It seems they are framing this in strictly counterproliferation terms and avoiding some of the language that would suggest a larger pressure-centric effort is in the offing,” said Brewer, who now focuses on nuclear policy at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Despite the apparent inability of existing sanctions to prevent North Korea from developing its nuclear weapons program, U.S. officials have defended the approach, saying it is important to set a precedent for other nations considering acquiring nuclear weapons.

“We continue to enact measures that put constraints on these WMD and ballistic missile programs, that hold proliferators and other bad actors accountable for their activity,” Price said Wednesday. “We’ll continue to do that.”

Source: Voice of America

PYONGYANG– It is confirmed in a report today that, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) had test-fired a hypersonic missile yesterday.

The test-fire was conducted by the Academy of Defence Science yesterday, the report said.

“The test-fire was aimed at the final verification of overall technical specifications of the developed hypersonic weapon system,” it added.

Kim Jong Un, top leader of the DPRK, watched the test-fire, before which, he was briefed on the hypersonic missile weapon system, according to the report.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK