Uyghur activist calls for help to end 'genocide' in China
Jan 19, 2021
New Delhi [India], January 19 : With the COVID-19 pandemic causing Uyghurs to be subjected to an even more brutal crackdown in China, a human rights activist called the world for help to end the 'genocide' against the community.
Rushan Abbas, an Uyghur activist based in the United States, whose sister has been placed in a camp by Chinese authorities, urged governments around the world to "actually do something to hold China accountable" reported SBS News.
"Many countries continue to do business with China," she said.
"It reminds me of the Holocaust because when Nazi Germany was holding millions of Jewish people in the concentration camps, many countries continued to do business with Nazi Germany. And for the sake of the economy, the same thing is happening as back then when the country tried to claim ignorance."
"None of the leaders in the western world today can claim such ignorance - they have the information, they know what's happening. So for the sake of economic advantage, trying to continue to do economic business with China is being complicit with genocide," she said.
Rushan Abbas also urged celebrities who attach themselves to social causes to include the plight of Uyghurs in their efforts.
"Women are being subjected to sexual abuse. Where are the leading voices for feminism and women's rights? Hollywood celebrities are always very vocal about any kind of social injustice - what about the Uighur women, and what they're facing?
"My message to the world is 'wake up'. Wake up and stop China before it's too late," she said as quoted by SBS News.
In September last year, the Australian government publicly slammed the Xi Jinping-led government for enforcing "repressive measures" against Uyghurs.
In a speech to the UN's human rights council, Foreign Minister Marise Payne called for accountability from Chinese authorities on the crackdown in Xinjiang.
"More remains to be done to address these, including concerning reports of repressive measures enforced against Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang," she said.
China possibly carried out "genocide" against Uyghurs and other minority Muslims in its western region of Xinjiang said a commission of the United States Congress in a new report.
The report, released by The Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), stated that the Chinese government and Communist Party have taken unprecedented steps to extend their repressive policies through censorship, intimidation, and the detention of people in China for exercising their fundamental human rights.
China has been rebuked globally for cracking down on Uyghur Muslims by sending them to mass detention camps, interfering in their religious activities and sending members of the community to undergo some form of forcible re-education or indoctrination.
Beijing, on the other hand, has vehemently denied that it is engaged in human rights abuses against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang while reports from journalists, NGOs and former detainees have surfaced, highlighting the Chinese Communist Party's brutal crackdown on the ethnic community, according to a report.
Genocide is a serious crime under international law and the US government has adopted the term on rare occasions only after extensive documentation.
Some experts said reports of mass surveillance, torture, arbitrary detentions and forced detentions employed by China against Uyghurs amount to "demographic genocide".
