Day: April 25, 2022

Uyghur survivors of China’s internment camps began a weeklong rally outside the United Nations compound in Geneva on Monday, seeking a meeting with the U.N. human rights chief and urging her to issue an overdue report detailing rights abuses in Xinjiang.

Qelbinur Sidiq, Gulbahar Jelilova, Gulbahar Haitiwaji and Omir Bekali have requested a meeting with Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights. She announced last month that she had reached agreement with the Chinese government for a visit in May, including the turbulent western China region.

The Uyghur women want Bachelet to release the human rights report before she visits China. They offered to accompany the former Chilean president on the trip.

“I’d be happy to take them to the camps and prisons in Urumqi,” Gulbahar Jelilova said, referring to Xinjiang’s capital. “If we don’t accompany them, China will play a lot of games not to show them the reality. That’s why we’re requesting to go on this trip.”

Gulbahar Jelilova said she could show the U.N. team a location where Uyghurs were executed and a hospital that removed organs from dead prisoners.

Jelilova said she was detained on accusations of “aiding terrorism” while on a business trip to Urumqi and put into three different camps over a period of 15 months beginning in May 2017.

She returned to Kazakhstan in September 2018, as a direct result of appeals from her two children in Kazakhstan, who sought diplomatic assistance from the Kazakh government.

Jelilova has since alleged since that she witnessed a number of atrocities inside the camps, including the torture and the deaths of innocent people.

Bachelet’s office has been under pressure from rights activists to issue an overdue report on rights violations by Chinese authorities targeting Uyghurs and other Turkic communities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).

Up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and others have been held in a vast network of internment camps operated by the Chinese government under the pretext of preventing religious extremism and terrorism among the mostly Muslim groups.

“We hope she discloses the truth to the world after her return,” said Qelbinur Sidiq, 52, who is also known as Kalbinur Sidik.

The Xinjiang regional government has published statements discrediting Sidiq and other former Uyghur female detainees, who have testified about the abuse they endured or witnessed in internment camps in Xinjiang.

“We’re all fully aware that China is a very crafty and deceptive country extremely skillful at choreographing fake people and fake stages,” said Gulbahar Haitiwaji.

“What worries me most is that it’s really not useful but damaging if Michelle Bachelet does not see the real genocide and real repression, but only meets with the people and fake stages set up by China,” she told RFA.

Haitiwaji was arrested in January 2017, around the time authorities began to detain Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities en masse, accusing them of “religious extremism” and other allegedly phony charges.

She later wrote about her brutal living conditions in prison after she was released and returned to her family France in August 2019.

“If she fails to see the real genocide and real repression in our homeland but report something not truthful, then Michelle Bachelet will become complicit with China’s genocide against Uyghurs,” Haitiwaji said.

A ‘first solid step’

Omir Bekali, a Uyghur of Kazakh decent who said he was tortured by authorities during the nine months he spent in three camps on allegations of terrorist activities, said the demonstration outside U.N. headquarters was “one of the first solid steps we have taken to end the ongoing genocide of our people and to free them sooner.”

“We decided to launch this campaign with the hope of getting more attention from international institutions and media,” he said. “We’re hoping to expand it later to include the European Union. We also hope that camp survivors in the U.S. hold the same rally in front of the U.N. [in New York].”

The United States government and the parliaments of some Western nations have declared that the Chinese government’s abuses in Xinjiang constitute genocide and crimes against humanity.

Monday’s action comes on the heels of tweet by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield on April 20 that Bachelet to release the report on Xinjiang, which the human rights chief previously said would be finished in September 2021.

Bachelet first announced that her office sought an unfettered access to the Uyghur region in September 2018, shortly after she stepped into her current role. But the trip has been delayed over questions about her freedom of movement through the region.

International rights groups have said that Bachelet’s visit to Xinjiang must be independent and unhindered to be credible.

Also on Monday, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released its annual report, recommending that 15 countries, including China, Myanmar, North Korea and Vietnam, be designated by the State Department as “countries of particular concern” because their governments engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing and egregious violations” of religious freedom.

The commission is an independent, bipartisan federal government entity created in 1998 to monitor and report on religious freedom abroad and make recommendation to the U.S. administration and Congress.

The report noted that the U.S. government had implemented USCIRF recommendations, including the use of targeted sanctions on religious freedom violators and genocide determinations for atrocities perpetrated by the Chinese government against Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims.

“Throughout the past year, the U.S. government continued to condemn abuses of religious freedom and hold perpetrators accountable through targeted sanctions and other tools at its disposal,” said USCIRF vice chair Nury Turkel in a statement. “Moving forward, the United States should take additional steps to support freedom of religion or belief around the world. USCIRF’s 2022 Annual Report makes recommendations on how Congress and the Executive Branch can further advance this universal, fundamental human right.”

Translated by Alim Seytoff for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Malaysia’s top diplomat has revealed he’s had contact with the Burmese shadow government, the first ASEAN country to acknowledge such an interaction, as activists lambasted the bloc on the anniversary of its failed five-point plan to restore democracy in Myanmar.

Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah was responding Sunday to an open letter from a Southeast Asian parliamentarians’ group to the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. In it, they urged the bloc to “immediately and publicly meet with the NUG” – Myanmar’s parallel, civilian National Unity Government.

“I have informally met [through virtual conference] the NUG Myanmar foreign minister and the NUCC chairman before the last ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Retreat. Let’s meet and discuss,” Saifuddin said via Twitter, referring to a ministerial retreat that took place in a hybrid format in mid-February after being postponed from an earlier scheduled date amid reports of differences among member-states.

Myanmar’s National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC) includes representatives of the NUG, civil society groups, ethnic armed organizations, and civil disobedience groups.

In the tweet, Saifuddin tagged the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR), the group that sent the open letter on Sunday, the anniversary of the day when Southeast Asian leaders and the Burmese junta chief, agreed during an emergency summit to a so-called Five-Point Consensus for action on post-coup Myanmar.

Last October, Malaysia’s outspoken foreign minister had said he would open talks with the NUG if the Burmese junta kept stonewalling in cooperating with ASEAN’s conflict resolution efforts.

RFA contacted the foreign ministry of Cambodia, this year’s ASEAN chair, for comment but did not immediately hear back.

Meanwhile, Bo Hla Tint, the NUG’s special representative to ASEAN, questioned the Southeast Asian bloc’s seriousness in solving the Myanmar crisis.

“They have failed to implement, during the past year, the basic point of the ASEAN Common Agreements – to end the violence. And then, they failed to comply with the second point – systematic distribution of humanitarian aid,” he told RFA.

“I’d say the ASEAN leadership does not take seriously the policy or framework set down by the ASEAN leadership itself, if the leaders do not take any effective action [against the junta].”

‘A five-point failure’

In Malaysia, two analysts praised Saifuddin for breaking from ASEAN and initiating separate action.

“Malaysia takes lead on call to review ASEAN’s approach to Myanmar (after a year of failed ASEAN five-point consensus), acknowledging informal meetings with NUG Myanmar,” Bridget Welsh, a political analyst with the University of Nottingham Malaysia, tweeted.

Another analyst, Aizat Khairi, a senior lecturer at Universiti Kuala Lumpur, agreed.

“Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah’s reaction to the APHR open letter is something refreshing,” he told BenarNews.

The five-point agreement reached between ASEAN’s leaders and Burmese military chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing on April 24 last year included an end to violence, the provision of humanitarian assistance, an ASEAN envoy’s appointment, all-party dialogue, and mediation by the envoy.

ASEAN has not succeeded in implementing any of these points, said Joshua Kurlantzick, senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington think-tank.

“I think there is no doubt every part of [the consensus] has failed, and with Cambodia as the chair and the junta increasingly backed by China, there is no way the consensus will succeed, or that ASEAN will do anything at all serious about Myanmar,” Kurlantzick told BenarNews.

“Suspend Myanmar from ASEAN until a return to democratic rule. … But ASEAN won’t do that.”

He was referring to Beijing’s support for Naypyidaw at international forums, including at the United Nations, since Min Aung Hlaing toppled the elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government on Feb. 1, 2021.  

Under ASEAN’s long-standing policy that its 10 members take all decisions collectively through consensus, if one member-state opposes a proposed move, it is shelved. And not every ASEAN member is on board with stricter action against Myanmar other than barring junta representatives from attending top ASEAN meetings, analysts have noted.

A “five-point failure” is what the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M), a group of independent international experts, calls ASEAN’s consensus.

“The junta has not held to a single point of the five-point consensus. The agreement has failed and a change of course from ASEAN is needed,” SAC-M member Marzuki Darusman said in a statement issued Friday.

In fact, since joining the consensus, Min Aung Hlaing has escalated the military’s attack on the people of Myanmar, and continued to target and detain political opponents, SAC-M said. Nearly 1,800 people, mostly pro-democracy protesters, have been killed by Burmese security forces, since the coup.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news service.

Meanwhile, the pro-CCP Ta Kung Pao published an opinion article titled “dissolution is the only solution for the HKJA.”

“If the HKJA thinks that it can continue to destroy Hong Kong with the support of foreign forces, then it’s on a fool’s errand,” the paper said.

The association has previously been a vocal critic of police restrictions on journalists, particularly during the 2019 protest movement, which culminated in the police force refusing to tolerate the presence of anyone it decided was a “fake journalist.”

Leung said city officials have demanded the HKJA “provide relevant information on activities not conforming to its articles of association,” but the organization hadn’t immediately complied, suggesting it had “ghosts” it was avoiding.

Dwindling freedom

Shoppers flooded stores and supermarkets in Beijing Monday amid rising COVID-19 cases, as the authorities sealed off a number of residential districts in the central Chaoyang district.

Store shelves in the Chinese capital were rapidly emptying of basic foodstuffs, fresh fruit and vegetables, sanitary supplies and Coca-Cola, as people scrambled to lay in stores for prolonged restrictions on their freedom of movement.

Pork, steak and burgers, onion, ginger and coriander were among the first to go, as online posts suggested buying a second refrigerator or freezer to store food in for the long haul.

Chaoyang district has launched a program of district-wide mass COVID-19 testing, to be repeated three times over the next week, a local resident surnamed Sun told RFA.

“There was an infection source traced to Chuiyangliu in Chaoyang district,” he said.

“All staff will undergo PCR testing today, and again on Wednesday and Friday, three times in all,” Sun said. “A lot of people are now buying food.”

Another resident said many store shelves now stand empty.

“Residents rushed to buy food at various supermarkets in Beijing yesterday, all the food is gone, and the shelves are empty,” the resident said.

Current affairs commentator Li Ang said the authorities have shown in their handling of the Shanghai lockdown that they are less concerned about COVID-19 than they are about potential social unrest.

“The main point is to strengthen their control of society in an all-round way, to prevent trouble, any unexpected incidents from happening,” Li said. “The first thing they consider is the stability of the regime, and the second is the security of the regime.”

“That is the top priority, and nothing else is seen as a problem.”

Lockdowns were imposed on 14 areas in Chaoyang late Monday, with another 14 areas subject to less stringent restrictions on people’s movements.

Beijing preparing for closure

In Shanghai, meanwhile, the creator of a viral video about the Shanghai lockdown–a montage of audio clips, video and still photos of the past few weeks of life under the zero-COVID policy, said he has deleted it, and dismissed reports of his detention as untrue.

“Shanghai is not under lockdown, and doesn’t need to be,” an official voice is heard saying at the start, followed by images of deserted streets and soundbites about overcrowded hospitals and ambulances that never come and deleted complaints posted to social media.

The video, “April Voices,” continues with audio of crying babies, complaints about undelivered groceries, rotting vegetables by the roadside, the scarcity of basic foodstuffs and water, wails and shouts from the windows of high-rise apartment buildings demanding officials hand out basic supplies.

In the middle is a tearful clip of an exhausted neighborhood committee official who laments the lack of sensible policies or even explanations about why some 25 million people have been confined to their homes since late March and forced to submit to round after round of mass COVID-19 testing, before either being sent to overcrowded and under-resourced quarantine facilities or walled up in their own buildings and apartments, often with welded metal barriers.

“Are they going to kill it? Oh my God!” says one woman, apparently witnessing officials dispatching a pet whose owners have been taken away after testing positive.

“Some nice police officers brought us food, because we hadn’t eaten in several foods,” a man’s voice says, while another man talks about being unable to get admitted for urgent treatment in hospital owing to stringent testing requirements.

“People might not be dying of the virus, but they’re starving to death,” says a man’s voice. “They haven’t even put up beds so we’re sleeping on the floor,” a woman’s voice says.

“Are you locking the door?” shouts a woman. “What if there’s a fire?” a man demands to know.

“I’m sorry to disturb you ma’am but my kid has a fever!” yells another woman.

The blogger and video-maker Strawberry Fields, who described themselves as “Shanghai born and bred,” said via QQ.com that the video had now been deleted.

“There were online comments today about the maker of the video being taken away, and a lot of people have been asking what happened, so I need to clarify things,” the blogger wrote. “My family and I are all fine, at home as usual, and no officials have contacted me.”

“I felt that perhaps the meaning given to the video had been extended by its audience, and it spread far further and faster than is normal, so I deleted it myself at around 3 p.m. today,” they wrote. “I don’t want any more misunderstandings.”

The video’s disappearance came as residents of Pudong and Huangpu protested at officials who had come to seal them into their buildings with steel barriers and fences, which are springing up across the city, sometimes cutting off entire districts from each other by blocking main thoroughfares.

Shanghai authorities reported 51 deaths from COVID-19 in the past day, with 2,680 newly confirmed symptomatic cases and more than 17,000 asymptomatic cases.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Chinese officials in rural areas of Tibet are forcing village leaders to speak in Chinese, as authorities move forward with campaigns aimed at restricting the use by Tibetans of their native language, RFA has learned.

Workshops launched at the end of last year now order local administrators to conduct business only in Chinese, telling them they must support language policies mandated by Beijing and lead the Tibetan public “by example,” according to a source living in Tibet.

“A 10-day workshop was held for local leaders in Kongpo in central-eastern Tibet to promote Chinese, both written and spoken, as their main language of communication,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Six workshops have now already been held in Kongpo’s Gyamda (in Chinese, Gongbujiangda) county, with others conducted in many other regions of Tibet, the source said, adding, “And Tibetan village employees are being required to speak and communicate in Chinese at all times.”

Speaking to RFA, Tibetan researchers living in exile called the move a further push by China to weaken the Tibetan people’s ties to their national culture and identity.

Pema Gyal, a researcher at London-based Tibet Watch, said that recent years have seen China’s government impose the use of Mandarin Chinese in Tibetan schools and religious institutions. “But now these policies are being enforced on all Tibetans.”

“This is an attempt to Sinicize Tibet’s language and culture,” Gyal said.

China’s programs mandating the use of the Chinese language in Tibet’s cities have already taken hold, added Nyiwoe, a researcher at the Dharamsala, India-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.

“So now they are going to implement these policies in the villages and rural areas,” he said.

A new program supported by China’s 5G network has meanwhile been launched to “improve” education in Tibet by the use of Mandarin Chinese in online teaching, research, and communications between schools, according to a Chinese state media report on April 8.

“This program using the 5G network is aimed at expediting and expanding the already harsh ongoing policies of the Chinese government to Sinicize the Tibetan language inside Tibet,” commented Kunga Tashi, an analyst of Tibetan and Chinese affairs now living in New York.

Teaching opportunities

Despite Chinese government policies restricting Tibetan children from learning their own language, many parents in Tibet are now creating teaching opportunities outside the schools, a Tibetan living in Tibet’s regional capital Lhasa said.

“We now have small childcare centers in Lhasa where the children are taught the Tibetan language and Tibetan dances and songs, and where they are encouraged to wear Tibetan clothing,” RFA’s source said, also declining to be named.

“No specific subjects are taught in Tibetan, though, because the Chinese government has imposed very tight restrictions on teaching in Tibetan. At least teaching these children Tibetan songs and dances will help to preserve our culture and language,” he added.

Also speaking to RFA, another Lhasa resident said he has been teaching his child to read and write in Tibetan and also to recite Tibetan prayers. “He can recite his prayers very well now, and he also has very good Tibetan handwriting.”

“I would like to take this opportunity to ask all Tibetans living in exile to preserve our language and to always speak in Tibetan with your children. Without our own language, we will have no identity,” he added.

Chinese Communist Party efforts to supplant local language education with teaching in Chinese have raised anger not only among Tibetans, but also in the Turkic-language-speaking Uyghur community of Xinjiang and in northern China’s Inner Mongolia.

Plans to end the use of the Mongolian language in ethnic Mongolian schools sparked weeks of class boycotts, street protests, and a region-wide crackdown by riot squads and state security police in the fall of 2020, in a process described by ethnic Mongolians as “cultural genocide.”

Formerly an independent nation, Tibet was invaded and incorporated into China by force more than 70 years ago.

Language rights have become a particular focus for Tibetan efforts to assert national identity in recent years, with informally organized language courses in the monasteries and towns deemed “illegal associations” and teachers subject to detention and arrest, sources say.

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.

The Vietnamese Defense Ministry says that a meeting this month with Russia did not discuss a joint military exercise as reported Russian state media but an international military competition.

Vietnam’s version of events published in the official military newspaper Sunday could be intended to distance Vietnam from bilateral military activities with Russia amid international condemnation of the war in Ukraine.

Quan Doi Nhan Dan, the official mouthpiece of Vietnam’s armed forces, reported that on April 15 a Vietnamese delegation led by Maj. Gen. Do Dinh Thanh, commander of Vietnam Army’s Tank Force and Armored Warfare, took part in a virtual meeting with the Russian side to discuss Vietnam’s participation in the Army Games 2022.

The International Army Games, dubbed the War Olympics, is an annual military competition hosted by Russia since 2015, usually at the end of summer. Participating armies compete in different events such as “tank biathlon,” infantry, anti-aircraft artillery and troop intelligence.

China has been a regular participant of the games while Vietnam began taking part in 2018 together with nearly 30 other countries. Analysts say the Army Games aims to showcase the military prowess of Russia and other countries, as well as promote Russian weapons and technologies to prospective buyers.

The report in Quan Doi Nhan Dan said the Vietnamese general had requested that his tank team be allowed to arrive early for training and familiarization “if the Army Games are to take place” this year.

Bilateral military activities

Russia is waging a full-scale war in Ukraine after invading its neighbor on Feb. 24. The invasion, widely condemned by the international community, has caused the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.

On April 19, Russia’s state media reported that Russia and Vietnam were planning to hold a joint military training exercise.

The move was described by analysts as “inappropriate” and likely to “raise eyebrows” in the rest of the region.

Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti said the initial planning meeting for the military training exercise was held virtually between the leaders of Russia’s Eastern Military District and the Vietnamese army.

The news came as the U.S. announced a May 12-13 summit in Washington with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, including Vietnam.

Vietnam considers Russia a traditional ally and a “comprehensive strategic partner,” and has been supportive of Moscow despite international outrage over Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.

Earlier this month, Vietnam voted against a U.S.-led resolution to remove Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council. Before that, Hanoi abstained from voting to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the U.N. General Assembly.

Vietnamese army officials are usually very tight-lipped about international affairs, and the report in the official army newspaper could be viewed as a denial of involvement in bilateral military activities with Russia.