Uighur Times
6-1-2019
US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar tweeted about Uighurs
Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a Democrat who is supporting the House Bill, tweeted: “China is currently inflicting physical and psychological torture on its Uighur population, according to numerous reports. These are the precursors to genocide. The United States must stand against human rights abuses wherever they are committed.”
Read the full story at Twitter.com, May 23, 2019
US Bills target China’s treatment of Uighurs
The Foreign Relations Committee of the United States Senate last Wednesday passed the bipartisan Uighur Human Rights Policy Act, which will require the creation of a position in the State Department to focus and report on China’s crackdown on, and detention of Uighurs in Xinjiang region. A second Bill has also been introduced in the House that, if approved, would, among other things, mandate sanctions against Chinese officials responsible for abuses of the ethnic Uighur population, and also “control the exports of Chinese businesses profiting from the mass surveillance and internment of Uighurs in Xinjiang”.
Read the full story at Straitstimes.com, May 26, 2019
China wages relentless crackdowns on its Muslims. But Saudi Arabia stays quiet as it bolsters ties with Beijing.
Chinese authorities are bullying Uighur Muslims in East Turkestan to eat and drink before sundown — in violation of Islamic rules for Ramadan — with the implicit threat of punishment if they do not, activists say. But Muslim-majority nations have been almost entirely silent — apparently part of calculated policies to avoid angering China, despite widespread denunciations by the West and rights groups over the brutal treatment of ethnic Uighur Muslims. During a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping this month, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman said that the kingdom “is willing to strengthen exchanges with China at all levels,” the Xinhua News Agency reported. His son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, appeared to condone China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims when he visited China this year. “We respect and support China’s rights to take counterterrorism and de-extremism measures to safeguard national security,” Chinese media quoted him as telling Xi.
Read the full story at Washington Post.com, May 27, 2019
US Urges China to Release Uighurs and Other Incarcerated Xinjiang Muslims For Eid
On May 29, the U.S. State Department called on China to release the more than one million Uighurs and other Muslims held in detention camps in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (a.k.a. East Turkestan), urging Beijing to let them reunite with their families for the Eid holiday. “The human rights abuses in Xinjiang must end and they must end now. We call on the Chinese government to release all Uighurs and other Muslim minorities arbitrarily detained throughout Xinjiang so that they may return home to celebrate the Eid holiday with their loved ones,” department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said. In a strongly worded statement a news briefing in Washington, Ortagus said that Eid, the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan which falls on June 4 or 5 this year, made it “important to speak up for the victims of China’s massive campaign of repression against Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.”
Read the full story at epochtimes.com, May 30, 2019
A Tale of Non-Uighur Activists battling for Uighurs’ Freedom
In London, Great Britain, Jews have recently stood publicly, raising their voices against the cultural and ethnic genocide that is smashing another ethnic and religious group – the Uighur Muslims. Jews have famously experienced the tragedy of ethnic cleansing during the Shoah, but these London Jews don’t keep their sorrow and indignation jealousy just for themselves, as if they were the only one allowed to suffer or as if their suffering was of a quality superior to that of others. Quite the opposite, while they perfectly know that every genocide is unique in itself, they can’t resign to let the world burn, dooming others to destruction. The readers will certainly appreciate the intensity of this passionate dedication. Jews defending Muslims: it doesn’t happen every day, but when it does, it is the clear sign of a new day. Yosef Roth is a Jew who thinks that as a Jewish believer he must try to relieve the sorrow of oppressed Muslims. He founded “Uighur Rally” with Corby Johnson.
Read the full story at Bitter Winter.com, May 30, 2019
Does ‘Never Again!’ mean anything if we do nothing about China’s concentration camps?
It was just four months ago that hundreds of thousands of American schoolchildren observed the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day intended to instill the message that the world can never again stand by idly and do nothing about such large-scale crimes against humanity. But the crisis in Xinjiang is showing a generation born long after the Nazi horrors of the 1930s and ’40s that “Never again!” is easier said than done. The escalating campaign of ethnic cleansing that China’s totalitarian government has been waging against the Uighur Muslims – not just a frightening level of surveillance, including dozens of cameras on every street and massive phone and internet monitoring, but now the growing numbers rounded up, detained and indoctrinated at a gulag of concentration camps — isn’t getting nearly the attention it deserves.
Read the full story at Philly.com, May 30, 2019
U.S. Embassy in Ulaanbaatar tweeted about the Uighurs
American Embassy in Ulaanbaatar: We wish for health, hope, and happiness for all Muslims this #Ramadan, and we are especially thinking of those Muslims in #Xinjiang #China, who are persecuted for their faith by the Chinese government. #Ramazan
Read the full story at Twitter.com, May 30, 2019
Rights Group Presses Islamic World Over Xinjiang Camps Ahead of UN Session
The U.S.-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) launched a campaign on May 24 aimed at persuading Islamic countries to end their silence over the more than a million Muslim Uighurs languishing in Chinese detention camps in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (a.k.a. East Turkestan). The “Close the Camps” social media campaign has opened during the Islamic world’s celebration of Ramadan and is focusing on getting the Xinjiang camps on the agenda of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s 41st session, which opens June 24. “All Muslims in Xinjiang face pervasive restrictions on their religious practices and endure other rights violations, including collective punishment, restricted movement, and invasive surveillance,” said HRW.
Read the full story at RFA.com, May 24, 2019
Tibetan Re-Education Camp Journal Tells of China’s Tactics Now Used on Uighurs
Cultural anthropologist, historian and University of Colorado professor, Carole McGranahan, the author of “Arrested History: Tibet, the CIA and Memories of a Forgotten War,” reviewed a Tibetan journal and found it an “authentic recounting of what it is like to be a prisoner in a re-education camp in Tibet.” “The details given correspond to our understanding of what such re-education centers look like, and these re-education camps, detention camps, internment camps are found not only in Tibet but right now, in 2019, there are also many in which Uighurs — Uighur Muslims — are prisoners in Xinjiang as well. So we are seeing this in both Tibet and Xinjiang,” she told VOA. The Tibetan journal recounts brutal practices that continued into 2017, but by that time, Chen Quanguo the camp’s top administrator, had moved on, appointed by Beijing as party secretary of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in 2016. Since then, under his administration, hundreds of thousands of Uighur Muslims have been imprisoned in similar re-education centers as security and surveillance in the region has been tightened using methods Chen employed in Tibet, such as setting up security stations in every intersection in the cities and passport confiscation, according to the South China Morning Post.
Read the full story at VOA.com, May 25, 2019
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