Day: June 9, 2022

A Uyghur student who had attended university in southeastern China was arrested last December during an internship in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region and sentenced up to five years in prison, his family told RFA.

Chinese police arbitrarily arrested Zulyar Yasin, 25, at his parents’ home in Urumqi (in Chinese, Wulumuqi) on Dec. 14, said his aunt, Raziye Jalalidin, who now resides in the Netherlands.

“On May 30 of this year, I learned that my nephew, Zulyar Yasin, had been arrested,” she told RFA.

“In September 2014, he went to study economics at Istanbul University in Turkey, but he returned to Urumqi in 2016 after he was not able to adjust to life in Istanbul.”

The following year, Yasin took China’s national college entrance exam, receiving a high score and gaining admission to Fujian Agricultural and Forestry University in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian province on China’s southeastern coast, Jalalidin said.

“He returned to Urumqi in July 2021 and began his college internship in the city, but on Dec. 14, he was arrested by police at his home for no apparent reason,” his aunt said.

“He was arrested while he was an intern,” she said, adding that the police initially said Jalalidin would be returned home in two days.

“My older sister didn’t even have the right to ask why they arrested him,” she said.

Jalalidin said she learned from her relatives in Urumqi on May 30 that a Chinese government police officer called Yasin’s home on Feb. 14 and informed his parents that he had been sentenced to three to five years in prison on the charge of “attempting to divide the country.”

The Chinese government has targeted Yasin because he comes from a family of intellectuals, Jalalidin said.

“The Chinese government is only arresting our bright youth like my nephew because they are damn afraid of their own insecurities,” she said. “What was his crime? What is our crime? Our crime is just being Uyghur. In the eyes of this Chinese regime, our being Uyghur is our crime — nothing else.”

Chinese authorities have arrested numerous Uyghur intellectuals, businessmen, and cultural and religious figures in Xinjiang as part of a campaign to control members of the mostly Muslim minority group and, purportedly, to prevent religious extremism and terrorist activities.

More than 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities are believed to have been held in a network of detention camps in Xinjiang since 2017. Beijing has said that the camps are vocational training centers and has denied widespread and documented allegations that it has mistreated Muslims living in in the region.

The purges are among the abusive and repressive Chinese government policies that have been determined by the United States and some legislatures of Western countries as constituting genocide and crimes against humanity against the Uyghurs.

“Will our talented young children be destroyed under this injustice?” Jalalidin asked. “Why can’t we live like other free people in democratic countries?”

“Why has the world been silent, even after declaring genocide?” she asked.

Abduweli Ayup, a Norway-based Uyghur rights activist who tracks missing and detained Uyghurs, said Chinese authorities are still continuing to abduct members of the mostly Muslim minority group.

They began targeting Uyghur students studying in mainland China in September 2021, he said.

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Members of the European Parliament on Thursday easily passed a resolution calling the Chinese government’s systemic human rights abuses against the mostly Muslim Uyghur minority “crimes against humanity and a serious risk of genocide.”

The EU condemned “in the strongest possible terms that the Uyghurs have been systematically oppressed by brutal measures including mass deportation, political indoctrination, family separation, restrictions of religious freedom, cultural destruction, and extensive use of surveillance.”

The resolution said “credible evidence about birth prevention measures and the separation of Uyghur children from their families amount to crimes against humanity and represent a serious risk of genocide.”

Lawmakers also passed a separate resolution to ban products made using forced labor into the EU market, expected to take effect in September, and pushed for new sanctions against high-level Chinese officials responsible for policy in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

The Parliament also demanded that U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, who recently traveled to Xinjiang, release a long-awaited report on human rights violations in the region, saying that she “failed to clearly hold the Chinese government accountable.”

That measure followed the release of “Xinjiang Police Files,” leaked police records from internment camps in the XUAR with details about more than 20,000 detained Uyghurs. The files were released in May by German researcher Adrian Zenz, who is an expert on internal Chinese government documents and the Xinjiang internment campaign.

“The Xinjiang Police Files have clearly been a wake-up call for the European Parliament to sense the urgency of the situation and the need for effective action,” said Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), in a statement issued Thursday. “The EU and its member states must now act upon these calls and do everything they can, in cooperation with governments and civil society worldwide, to end the Uyghur genocide.”

The actions by EU Members of Parliament (MEP) follow declarations from the U.S. and other Western governments that Chinese repression in Xinjiang is a crime against humanity and meets the legal definition of a genocide.

“The Uyghurs around the world — we are on your side, so we have a strong resolution today in this parliament, so stay strong,” said German MEP Engin Eroglu, a resolution cosponsor, after the vote. “We fight with you for the human rights.”

“It’s very important to name the crime, and so today is a historic day, and not only because of the resolution on the genocide, but also because we voted for the import bans,” said French MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, another cosponsor of the resolution.

“We will strike a heavy blow at this crackdown machine of the Chinese Communist Party, and this is only the beginning of the struggle,” he said. “You are not alone. We stand with you. Europe stands with you.”

‘What are they waiting for?’

At least 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities are believed to have been held in a network of detention camps in Xinjiang since 2017, purportedly to prevent religious extremism and terrorist activities.

Beijing has said that the camps are vocational training centers. The government has denied repeated allegations from multiple sources that it has tortured people in the camps or mistreated other Muslims living in Xinjiang.

“Today we have a feeling that we are not alone,” Dolkun Isa said at the European Parliament building in Strasbourg, France, following the vote. “We have a lot of supporters.”

U.S.-based Campaign for Uyghurs (CFU) said it supports “the robust, direct and solid action of the European Parliament to hold the Chinese accountable for their genocide” in Xinjiang.

“The Chinese regime’s claims that the so-called vocational training centers are for reeducation are proven false by the ‘Xinjiang Police Files,’” said CFU’s executive director Rushan Abbas in a statement.

“Uyghurs and other Turkic groups in East Turkestan have been subject to totalitarian oppression for years as the evidence in these most recent papers further proves,” she said, using Uyghurs’ preferred name for Xinjiang.

U.S.-based Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) called on EU member states to take steps to ensure that the atrocities are subject to relevant international accountability mechanisms.

“There is no better time to finally bring the case to an international court to adjudicate the evidence of atrocities,” said Omer Kanat, UHRP’s executive director. “The European Parliament just affirmed the EU’s own obligation to prevent genocide — what are they waiting for?”

88 Generation leader Ko Jimmy and former National League for Democracy lawmaker Phyo Zeyar Thaw were sentenced to death by a military tribunal on Jan. 21 for violating Myanmar’s Anti-Terrorism Law. They and two other men on death row — Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw — lost appeals of their cases last week. A junta spokesperson on Tuesday rejected the possibility of a pardon in response to international and domestic condemnation of the sentences, meaning that the four men may end up being the first to be executed in Myanmar in 34 years. Speaking to RFA’s Burmese Service on Thursday, Ko Jimmy’s wife Nilar Thein vowed that the junta will not escape punishment if it proceeds with the execution of her husband.

RFA: The military council has issued an execution order for Ko Jimmy, who was sentenced to death. The junta’s spokesperson said the appeal process is complete and the Prison Department is now in charge of his case. What else do you know about the process?

Nilar Thein: Ever since Ko Jimmy’s arrest, we received no contact or information from the junta. Likewise, we didn’t get a chance to consult with an attorney to submit appeals for him. That’s why the junta’s decision must be incorrect. We never got a chance to work with the authorities for Ko Jimmy’s case.

RFA: What is your response to Ko Jimmy’s death sentence?

Nilar Thein: The junta will be held accountable for all its actions and statements at some point. They will have to take responsibility for what they did, regardless of who they did it to. This day will come.

RFA: Ko Jimmy has been charged under the counter-terrorism law. Do you think he was really involved in terrorist activities?

Nilar Thein: Everyone knows who is committing violent terrorist acts and who has become the victims of these acts. We have the right to defend ourselves from aggression and injustice … we have become the victims of the junta’s violent tactics. We are exercising our right to defend ourselves – to protect our lives, homes, and properties from these acts.

RFA: The military council has stated that they will move forward to execution in Ko Jimmy’s case. Do you believe they will carry out the execution order?

Nilar Thein: This is entirely up to them. Under the law and from the perspective of the human rights community, they should not carry out this death sentence. Death sentences have not been carried out in Myanmar for a long time. It is a blatant violation of human rights even to state that they intend to carry out the execution order, to kill a human being like killing a bird or chicken … Regardless of what they will do, I want them to know they will be accountable for their decisions. Their acts will not be forgotten.

RFA: What are you currently working on for him? Are you engaged with any international organizations about his case?

Nilar Thein: I have contacted some international organizations, such as Amnesty International. As soon as the news came out about the execution orders for Ko Jimmy and Ko Phyo Zeyar Thaw, several international organizations and foreign diplomats contacted me and told me that they would protest the decision.

RFA: What do you want to tell Ko Jimmy?

Nilar Thein: I think he has written his history by committing to a cause he believes in. He has his duty done for the people. I want to tell him I am very proud of him.

RFA: What message do you have for the people of Myanmar?

Nilar Thein: No matter how the times have changed, the power of the people will be the deciding factor in our country’s future … Those who have participated have played important roles in the resistance and they will be part of history. Whatever comes next, I trusted in the people’s power. That’s why we all need to stay united and join hands to drive out this military regime.

Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung.

The Philippines said Thursday it had filed a new diplomatic protest against Beijing over the alleged return of a massive Chinese fleet operating “illegally” around Whitsun Reef, within Manila’s exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea. 

The Department of Foreign Affairs made the announcement hours after U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman met in Manila with President-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as well as Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. during a visit that she said was part of “preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

The department said it “protested the return of over 100 Chinese vessels illegally operating in the waters in and around Julian Felipe Reef on 04 April 2022, barely a year after the same swarming incident was protested by the Philippine government.”

In its statement, the department did not say when the diplomatic protest was filed nor if the ships remained at the reef. The department and the Chinese Embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to BenarNews requests for comment late Thursday.

Internationally known as Whitsun Reef, Julian Felipe Reef is described as “a low-tide elevation within the territorial sea of relevant high tide features” in the Kalayaan Islands in the South China Sea, the foreign office said. 

“The lingering unauthorized presence of Chinese fishing and maritime vessels is not only illegal, but is also a source of instability in the region,” it said.

The statement noted that the “persistent swarming” of Chinese ships violated the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and “the final and binding 2016 arbitral award” won by the Philippines over China. Moreover, it was a violation of a regional agreement to avoid actions that could inflame tensions, the department said.

In March and April, Philippine complaints about hundreds of Chinese ships and boats clustering in the waters of Whitsun Reef were the focus of bilateral tensions over the disputed sea.

The announcement about the latest protest came about 10 days after the department summoned a senior Chinese diplomat to protest the alleged harassment by the China Coast Guard of a joint Filipino-Taiwanese research ship in the South China Sea in April.

Sherman-Marcos meeting

Earlier on Thursday, Sherman met with Marcos at his campaign headquarters where they were joined by the Philippine envoy to Washington, Jose Manuel Romualdez, as well as other officials.

Sherman and Marcos “agreed on the importance of partnering together to strengthen our economies,” according to the U.S. State Department.

Topics discussed included the countries’ longtime alliance, the importance of public-private partnership, clean energy, the digital economy, and the importance of human rights and the rule of law. 

“The deputy secretary and the president-elect highlighted the importance of the U.S.-Philippine alliance to security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region and the world,” the U.S. statement said. 

Sherman, the highest ranking State Department official to visit since the pandemic, also paid a courtesy call on Locsin, the country’s top diplomat. 

In a series of posts on Twitter, the Department of Foreign Affairs said Sherman and Locsin discussed “concrete ways to further enhance relations” amid a government transition.

Sherman’s visit to Manila marked the second leg of a four-nation Asian tour, which began in South Korea early this week and will take her to Laos and Vietnam.

During a stop in Hanoi scheduled for this weekend, the issue of China’s plans to build a navy base in Cambodia are likely to be on the agenda of Sherman’s talks with Vietnamese officials, diplomatic sources told RFA.

Chinese-American freestyle skier Eileen Gu, who was lauded by Chinese fans for her patriotism after choosing to represent China at the 2022 Winter Olympics, has announced she will act as goodwill ambassador in support of Salt Lake City’s 2030 Olympics bid.

Gu, who was born in the United States, said she was just 15 when she decided to embrace her Chinese heritage and represent the host nation at the Olympics, taking gold in the big air and halfpipe events, and a silver medal in slopestyle.

Yet Gu, 18, has been unwilling so far to address the issue of patriotic allegiance head on, and has said she is American while in the U.S., and Chinese while in China.

China doesn’t permit dual citizenship, at least not officially, and Gu has never clarified which passport, or passports, she actually now holds. China’s state-controlled media lauded her haul of medals to the skies, but never probed the issue any further.

“Salt Lake specifically wants to become a global destination for athletes everywhere to come train there and they want to incorporate 15 new countries into the Winter Olympics,” Gu told Time Magazine in a recent interview.

“I think that’s something that’s really beautiful and I’ve always stood for that and so I’m really honored to be a part of the whole thing,” she said, adding that it was a “beautiful example of globalism.”

However, Time referred to her as “China’s Eileen Gu,” saying this showed the global influence of a top-level Chinese athlete.

Gu’s involvement in the Salt Lake City bid comes at a time of heightened political tensions between Washington and Beijing.

In April, she attended an assembly of Chinese Olympians at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where she got a special mention from ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping, who ribbed her for her love of Chinese dumplings.

15 million views in China

U.S. Olympic bid spokesman Tom Kelly confirmed to the Associated Press on Tuesday that Gu participated in the bid as an “athlete representative.”

“She is working with us,” Kelly said, “but we haven’t chosen her exact title.”

He said Gu wouldn’t be traveling with the bid’s delegation to Switzerland to meet with International Olympics Committee (IOC) officials, but that U.S. skier Lindsey Vonn would be going.

The topic has blown up the Chinese internet, with more than 15 million views reported on the #EileenGu hashtag on China’s Weibo social media platform alone on Thursday.

“As a sports figure, Eileen Gu is often seen through a screen of commercial hype … but being the U.S. ambassador for the Olympic bid doesn’t mean much,” the @dibaofficialweibo account commented. “Those who scold her for it make themselves look stupid and ignorant.”

@CarShooter responded sarcastically to Gu’s comment in the Time Magazine interview that she had no regrets about representing China, commenting: “Ha ha Chinese athlete Eileen Gu, thank you, really!” adding a “Bye-bye” emoticon.

Former Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin, usually known for his hyper-nationalistic rhetoric, was unexpectedly supportive of Gu, however.

He said Gu had “defined her identity” by choosing to represent China in 2022, and had done nothing yet to suggest she was trying to change that.

User @SisterFei_talks_politics_and_economics took issue with Gu’s critics, who had slammed her as an “exquisite egoist.”

“I can’t understand the disdain and even anger of many people towards Eileen Gu,” the user wrote. “They think she is a person who uses her privilege to have her cake and eat it. I find these ideas ridiculous and narrow-minded.”

Nationality switching

Gu had never claimed to love China, but only to spend some of her time there. She had never tried to tap into any kind of nationalistic rhetoric to win favor, but had instead relied on her own talents and efforts to bring gold and silver medals for China, the user wrote.

“Do we need her more, or does she need us?” they asked.

Weibo user @zhongdongzongzanfeng said China should never have let Gu compete on its Olympic team. “I have nothing against her, but I am against nationality changes just to get more gold medals; gold medals won in this way are worthless,” the user wrote.

Sun Youkui, sports management lecturer at Towson University, said nationality switching is actually quite common among top athletes, and that Chinese athletes have previously served as ambassadors for foreign Olympic bids.

“Naturally, everyone is talking about the question of her nationality again because she just represented China in competition, and now she is helping the United States to bid for the Olympics,” Sun told RFA. “The focus is all on her.”

“But there have also been examples in the past of [bid teams] seeking out top or well-known international athletes to serve as ambassadors for an Olympic bid,” Sun said. “The fact that she isn’t an athlete from that country means nothing.”

“It’s to demonstrate the international reputation of Salt Lake City.”

Chinese diving star Gao Min has served as ambassador for New York’s Olympic bid, while Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo played the same role for South Korea, Ding Junhui for London and Chen Lu for Sochi.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.