by Heba Al-fayez Reading between the lines of China’s newest attempt to suppress interest in the Xinjiang region reveals the scope of the country’s ethnic cleansing operation. Image from @Nrg8000 on Twitter BEIJING, China — On September 17th, three days after the U.S announced an import ban on several companies within the Xinjiang region suspected of using forced Uyghur labour, China released a white paper that attempts to frame the labour operation as an effort “to safeguard human dignity and human rights.”
Released by China’s State Council Information Office, a white paper is a public legislative document that explains and supports a certain political position. The nearly 8,000-word report outlines the region’s “proactive labor and employment policies” that have “continuously improved the people’s material and cultural lives.” The scale of the operation and the data that it presents as proof of their success doesn’t necessarily achieve the intended effect and instead corroborates the evidence of human rights activists who testify to large scale human rights violations being committed by the government. The Uyghurs are an ethnic minority residing in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China who have been subjected to countless human rights violations in China’s effort to forcibly assimilate the Muslim minority into Chinese society. Several investigations have presented evidence that Uyghurs are being forcibly removed from their homes and sent to “re-education camps” where they are forced into labour and made to forsake their cultural and religious values for traditional Chinese lessons while facing constant abuse and torture. A report from the Associated Press based on government statistics, state documents, and interviews with more than 30 people has revealed China’s practice of forced sterilization to suppress the growth of the Uyghur population. Even more unspeakable horrors have been testified to by human rights activists, investigative reporters and former detainees. China’s white paper reports an average of 1.29 million workers including 415 400 from southern Xinjiang who undergo “vocational” training in Chinese camps each year — southern Xinjiang being an area stated to be of particular focus in the report and a place of cultural significance to Uyghur communities. This supports the findings of the China Human Rights Defenders (based in Hong Kong and Washington DC) and the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Descrimination who estimate over a million Uyghur Muslims being held in internment camps with many more being surveilled and forced to attend “re-education” classes during the day. While praising the success of Xinjiang’s employment policy, the paper provides insight into how deeply China has been forcibly reshaping Uyghur communities. The white paper describes the disappearances as “relocations of surplus rural labor” amounted to an annual average of 2.76 million people, “of whom nearly 1.68 million, or over 60%, were in southern Xinjiang.” In an interview with The Guardian, Senior Program Officer for Advocacy & Communications at Uyghur Human Rights Project Peter Irwin, says that China often releases white papers “when they feel threatened by increased reporting on issues they deem sensitive.” This week’s white paper is the seventh released on the topic of the Uyghur Muslims since 2015. In the first chapter of the report, an outline of the initial status of employment in the Xinjiang region is given. The report identifies the area as one of extreme poverty and unemployment brought on by the people’s “outdated ideas.” Stating that “terrorists, separatists and religious extremists have long preached that ‘the afterlife is fated’ and that ‘religious teachings are superior to state laws’, inciting the public to resist learning the standard spoken and written Chinese language, reject modern science, and refuse to improve their vocational skills, economic conditions, and the ability to better their own lives.” While this white paper justifies the enslavement of Uyghur Muslims as employment policy, previous white papers focus on doing the same with vocational education (Aug. 2019), historical proof of the region’s rightful place within China (July. 2019), counterterrorism (March 2018), cultural protection (Nov. 2018), human rights (July 2017), freedom of religious belief (Jun. 2016), and ethnic equality, unity, and development (Sep. 2015). Zumretay Arkin of the World Uyghur Congress said in an interview with The Guardian, “The white paper references poverty and joblessness in the region, but this exists to a large extent due to discrimination from the CCP in its hiring. Han Chinese settlers are awarded all high-profile jobs in big companies, while Uyghurs are being forced to work in menial jobs for little or no pay.” Although the United States has proved to be an unlikely ally for the Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region, any country’s position on China - the global economic superpower - is undoubtably complicated by factors less savoury than altruistic duty. This is made clear by the statements made in a book written by former national security advisor John Bolton that claim Donald Trump told Chinese President Xi Jinping at a G-20 summit in June 2019 that the construction of internment camps for some Uyghurs was the “right thing to do.” Only a month later, in response to a letter signed by 22 mostly western countries including Canada and Australia (excluding the US) that called on China “to refrain from the arbitrary detention and restriction on freedom of movement of Uighurs, and other minority communities in XInjiang,” 37 other countries, including ones with muslim majorities defended China’s “people-centered development philosophy.” The language used in defense of China is both a quote from last year’s official letter and from the preface of China’s white paper on “Employment and Labor Rights in Xinjiang.” In the summer of 2019, even the United States prioritised its trade agreements with China over the potential human rights violations they would be allowing. The 37 countries defending China’s actions at this time were well aware of the political and economic repercussions of speaking out against China. A year later, after COVID-19 and its economic repercussions began its spread in China and the case of Chinese Meng Wanzhou, senior Huawei executive fighting extradition from Canada to the US, continues to unfold, China is no longer beyond reproach. On September 18th, Canada announced that it has shelved negotiations over a free-trade deal with China. Canada has issued multiple condemnations of China’s internment camps in Xinjiang and after abandoning other negotiations over China’s handling of Hong Kong and the arbitrary detention of two Canadians since December 2018 in retaliation for Canada’s involvement with Meng Wanzhou’s arrest, Canada has adopted a more aggressive approach to Beijing — one more aligned with that of the US, Australia, and parts of the European Union. In an interview with The Globe and Mail concerning this free-trade announcement, Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne criticized China’s “assertive, coercive diplomacy.” China’s white paper on “Employment and Labor Rights in Xinjiang” was released and translated into five languages; a signal that China’s message is intended for audiences far beyond their internal reach. Following the release of each white paper, China’s State Council Information Office releases an information bulletin quoting the critical points of the white paper verbatim. This bulletin is posted on the same website but under the sub-page of “News.” September 17th’s bulletin about the new white paper was under the banner “Top News.”
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