This is mass rape’: China slammed over program that ‘appoints’ men to sleep with Uighur women

[xizhimen]

‘This is mass rape’: China slammed over program that ‘appoints’ men to sleep with Uighur women
One of China’s most disturbing policies shocked the world when it made headlines. The full extent of it is even worse than we imagined.

Radio Free Asia

DECEMBER 23, 2019

Western coverage of one of China’s worst human rights abuses – the mass detainment of over a million Muslim Uighurs – has increased over the past year.

Satellite images revealed the Government destroying scores of traditional burial grounds belonging to Uighurs in northwest Xinjiang; drone footage revealed hundreds of blindfolded and shackled men being transferred to detention camps; and just last month, secret Chinese Government documents revealed how the regime was instructed to deal with the ethnic minority.

But lesser reported on is a disturbing policy implemented in the northwest region – a forced-living arrangement between Han Chinese men and Uighur women that’s been likened to “mass rape”.

The Government claims it’s designed to promote harmony between the different cultural groups. But activists tell a different story.

‘MASS RAPE’: CHINA’S SHOCKING ‘PAIR UP’ PROGRAM

In November, various Western media outlets reported that Han Chinese men had been assigned to monitor the homes of Uighur women whose husbands had been detained in prison camps.

The reports came out after an anonymous Chinese official gave an interview with Radio Free Asia, confirming the program but denying there was anything sinister about it.

As part of the “Pair Up and Become Family” program, Han Chinese men stay with and sleep in the same beds as Uighur women.

According to the Chinese Government, the program is designed to “promote ethnic unity”.

But to Rushan Abbas, a Uighur activist whose family members have been detained in the Xinjiang camps for more than a year, it’s nothing more than systemised rape – part of the Government's brutal ongoing crackdown against the country’s ethnic minority.

“This is mass rape,” she told news.com.au. “The Government is offering money, housing and jobs to Han people to come and marry Uighur people.

“Neither the girls nor their families can reject such a marriage because they will be viewed (by Chinese authorities) as Islamic extremists for not wanting to marry atheist Han Chinese. They have no choice but to marry them.

“(The Han Chinese) have been raping Uighur women in the name of marriage for years. It took more than a year for the media to pick that up.”


While the Chinese Government claims the program is about promoting unity, it also allows officials to keep a close eye on the Uighurs who have spent decades living under increased surveillance.

Human rights organisations have slammed the program, saying there is “no evidence that families can refuse such visits” and describing it as “deeply invasive forced assimilation practices”.

Last month, a Chinese official told Radio Free Asia the purpose of the program was to “help the families with their ideology, bringing new ideas … they talk to them about life, during which time they develop feelings for one another”.

“Normally one or two people sleep in one bed, and if the weather is cold, three people sleep together,” he said, adding “it is now considered normal for females to sleep on the same platform with their paired male ‘relatives’”.

They claimed the “relatives” and their female hosts sleep at least a metre apart at all times and that male Communist Party officials have never tried to take advantage of women.

Ms Abbas says this is all lies. “Tons of pregnancies are coming up,” she said. “Tons of forced abortions. This is mass rape disguised as ‘marriage’. Uighur girls are forced to marry Han Chinese men with government gratifications.”

WHY IS THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT TARGETING XINJIANG?

Hostility towards the Uighur people stems back decades but has increased sharply under China’s current leader Xi Jinping.

The crackdown on Xinjiang is partly fuelled by Islamophobia. Mr Xi’s government is increasingly cracking down on religious worship across the country, but Muslims have been especially targeted.

The crackdown is also economic. Mr Xi has a grand plan in motion to put his country at the economic and political centre of the world.

These ambitions are best summed up by the Belt and Road Initiative, a trillion-dollar project that seeks to connect countries across continents on trade, with China at its centre.

Geographically, Urumqi – the capital of Xinjiang – is a crucial intersection point in the “Belt” part of the project.

It also shares several international borders: Mongolia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.


The last thing the Chinese Government wants for such a crucial region in this plan is unrest or the loss of control. And that’s where the intense security crackdown comes in.

This explains why the crackdown escalated around five years ago, in line with the Belt and Road Initiative taking off.

‘MY FAMILY DISAPPEARED’

Ms Abbas has long spoken out against the human rights abuses in Xinjiang – a move that has had disastrous consequences for her family in China.

In September last year, she spoke about the conditions in the camps while seated on a panel hosted by a Washington think tank.

Six days later, her aunt and sister both disappeared at the same time – despite living 1400 kilometres away from each other.

“My sister is a medical doctor. Their ‘vocational training’ shouldn’t apply to her. My aunt is a retired schoolteacher. Both of them went to Chinese school and speak fluent Chinese. They shouldn’t have been targets,” Ms Abbas said.

Even from her home in Virginia, US, Ms Abbas says she feels unsafe. “There’s always that concern. But we all live once and we all die someday. If I only think about my own safety and my own life, who will do the right thing and speak up about this atrocity? If my sister is sitting in some cell block facing torture and abuse, I’m sure she is hoping that I will be doing something to save her and other millions of Uighurs, so I have to keep doing what I’m doing.”

‘MASS EXTERMINATION IS NEXT’

The camps in Xinijang are given various names in the media. Some refer to them as “mass internment camps”. Others call them “surveillance facilities”, “re-education camps” or simply “detention centres”.

But Ms Abbas repeatedly refers to them as “concentration camps” and warns if the Western world doesn’t intervene, the mass detention will turn into mass murder.

“Our children are unable to speak our language and understand our culture,” she said. “They are taken to state-run orphanages and are completely indoctrinated.

“I’m afraid this will turn into mass extermination. There’s nothing better to describe what’s happening in Xinjiang than concentration camps. What are we waiting for? Mass executions and gas chambers before we take action? What is it going to take to have the leaders of world communities – particularly Western democratic countries like Australia – to act? Executions? Is that what it’s going to come down to?”

A WARNING TO AUSTRALIA

The Morrison Government has spoken out against China’s treatment of Uighurs in recent months.

Last month, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he had “directly raised these issues as great human rights abuses and concerns”.

In a speech to the US Studies Centre in October, Foreign Minister Marise Payne warned Australia would not hesitate to call out China’s human rights abuses.

“We must respect each other’s sovereignty but we will consistently continue to raise issues such as human rights, including with China,” Senator Payne said.

Beijing hit back later that week, with Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang saying Senator Payne’s comments showed “total disregard of facts to serve political purposes”.

“Such ill-advised remarks will not help to improve or grow relations with China. We have lodged stern representations to the Australian side and pointed out the inappropriate nature of her conduct,” Mr Geng said.

“We have repeatedly stated that a sound and stable China-Australia relationship serves the fundamental interests of both peoples. We hope the Australian side will learn from recent setbacks in our relations and meet China halfway rather than take one step forward and two steps backward.”


But Ms Abbas says statements like this aren’t sufficient, imploring Canberra to withhold trade with the Chinese Government until it addresses its human rights atrocities.

“The Uighur atrocity should be included in every trade negotiation and every foreign policy decision that Australia has with China,” she said.

“The Chinese Government is not only exterminating the Uighur people and their culture. This is their vision for the world. China is a huge threat to Australia’s national security.

“Pretty soon this is going to become the new normal. People get used to it, like cooking a frog in warm water.

“They’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, it happened in Xinjiang. Then it happened across China. Now it’s happening here in Australia’.”


https://www.news.com.au/world/asia/...Z82MU51re4WRE56GVkh3bDW2genc0AV98Id7eqQrh61Yk

 

[xizhimen]

• Muslims urged to boycott Chinese products over Uighur 'abuses'

At summit in Malaysia, influential preacher says leaders from Muslim world should exert more pressure on Beijing.

by Ted Regencia
20 Dec 2019

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - Muslim countries should initiate a boycott of Chinese products, an influential Malaysian preacher has said, calling for an end to the detention of ethnic Uighurs, at least a million of whom are reportedly held against their will in China's Xinjiang province.

Mohd Asri bin Zainul Abidin, the top Islamic jurist in Malaysia's Perlis state, said political and religious leaders from the Muslim world should exert more economic and diplomatic pressure on Beijing for its treatment and alleged human rights abuse of the minority Muslim group living in its westernmost province.

"We need to go to the extent of boycotting China's products. They know the strength of our purchasing power," Mohd Asri told Al Jazeera on the sidelines of a summit of Muslim-majority countries in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.

"The decision should be taken at the highest level of Muslim countries and the ulama [religious scholars and guardians]" to address the Uighur issue, said Mohd Asri, who earlier told summit participants that the almost two billion Muslims should flex their economic muscles to influence policies worldwide.

"We should do something, because they [Uighurs] are our brothers and sisters," he added.

Most member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) have been the target of criticism by Uighur rights advocates for their "silence" on the Uighur issue.

In July, more than 20 countries voted for the first time on a resolution before the United Nations Human Rights Council calling for an end to the mass detentions of Uighurs in Xinjiang.

But 14 OIC member states joined 23 other countries in siding with China, praising its "remarkable achievements in the field of human rights".

In November, Dolkun Isa, a senior leader of exiled Uighurs in Europe, said there is no excuse for the world's silence, and also called on countries to cut trade links with Beijing.

On Tuesday, Charles Santiago, a member of the Malaysian Parliament for the ruling coalition, had urged the leaders at the Kuala Lumpur summit to raise the Uighur issue.

Among Muslim-majority countries, Malaysia was the top trading partner of China in 2018, with an estimated $45.8bn in exports, according to the International Trade Centre in Geneva.

Meanwhile China recorded a $76.9bn worth of exports in 2018 to India, which has a Muslim-minority population of 200 million.

According to a UN report, there are an estimated one million Uighurs detained in Xinjiang.

However, Randall Schriver, the top US defence official in charge of Asia, said in May that the figure was "likely closer to three million citizens" - representing almost a third of the total 10 million Uighur population.

Activists and human rights groups have also accused China of trying to erase Uighur language, culture and religion, forcing them to give up Muslim religious traditions and beliefs, such as the use of veil among women and the wearing of facial hair among men. Muslims have also been reportedly banned from fasting during Ramadan.

China has denied that Uighurs are being held against their will. Beijing has described the facilities as "training centres" or "re-education" camps aimed at countering the "terrorist threat" and "extremism" in Xinjiang. Beijing also denies any mistreatment of Uighurs.

Muhamed Ljevakovic, a speaker at the Kuala Lumpur summit from Bosnia Herzegovina, said most of the participating countries are "friends of China", so there is "no chance" to confront Beijing more forcefully on the Uighur issue.

"Friends are supposed to tell each other the truth, and friends are supposed to tell them that what is going on right now is not good for China, and of course not good for the Uighurs. But people are afraid to speak their minds," he told Al Jazeera.

"That is why we did not receive a full resolution here because people are trying to diplomatically say nothing."

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019...s-urged-uighur-treatment-191220122039763.html

 

[xizhimen]

'This is mass rape': Uighur activist condemns program said to pay Chinese men to sleep with Uighur women to promote 'ethnic unity'
Rosie Perper

Dec 24, 2019, 5:25 PM

• A Uighur activist has spoken out against China's "Pair Up and Become Family" program, in which Han Chinese men are sent to live with Uighur women in China's western region of Xinjiang.
• Rushan Abbas, a US-based Uighur activist whose family members have been detained in one of what is believed to be hundreds of detention centers in the region, told the Australian news outlet News.com.au that the program was part of a program of systemic rape against Uighur women.
• Recent reports say Han Chinese men are sent to live with Uighur women and often sleep in the same beds as the women.
• China has been criticized for its detention and surveillance of millions of Uighurs in Xinjiang. The region has a population of about 10 million people, many of whom are Uighur or other ethnic minorities and are believed to be held in these detention centers.

https://www.insider.com/uighur-activists-mass-rape-chinese-men-xinjiang-2019-12

 

[xizhimen]

Inside China's push to turn Muslim minorities into an army of workers
The Communist Party wants to remould Xinjiang's minorities into loyal blue-collar workers
Chris Buckley & Austin Ramzy | NYT | Kashgar (China) Last Updated at January 2, 2020 00:49 IST

The order from Chinese officials was blunt and urgent. Villagers from Muslim minorities should be pushed into jobs, willing or not. Quotas would be set and families penalized if they refused to go along.

“Make people who are hard to employ renounce their selfish ideas,” the labor bureau of Qapqal, a county in the western region of Xinjiang, said in the directive last year.



Such orders are part of an aggressive campaign to remold Xinjiang’s Muslim minorities — mostly Uighurs and Kazakhs — into an army of workers for factories and other big employers. Under pressure from the authorities, poor farmers, small traders and idle villagers of working age attend training and indoctrination courses for weeks or months, and are then assigned to stitch clothes, make shoes, sweep streets or fill other jobs.

These labor programs represent an expanding front in a major effort by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to entrench control over this region, where these minorities make up about half the population. They are crucial to the government’s strategy of social re-engineering alongside the indoctrination camps, which have held one million or more Uighurs and Kazakhs.

The labor bureau of Qapqal ordered that villagers should undergo military-style training to convert them into obedient workers, loyal to employers and the ruling Communist Party. “Turn around their ingrained lazy, lax, slow, sloppy, freewheeling, individualistic ways so they obey company rules,” the directive said.

The government maintains that the Uighur and Kazakh villagers are “rural surplus labor” and are an underemployed population that threatens social stability. Putting them in steady, supervised government-approved work, officials say, will erase poverty and slow the spread of religious extremism and ethnic violence.

The government describes the laborers as volunteers, though critics say they are clearly coerced. Official documents, interviews with experts, and visits by The New York Times to Xinjiang indicate that local plans uproot villagers, restrict their movements and pressure them to stay at jobs.

Experts say those harsh methods can amount to forced labor, potentially tainting the global supply chain that uses Xinjiang workers, particularly for cotton goods. The Japanese retailers Muji and Uniqlo say they have used cotton from the region, while Walmart has bought goods from a company that until recently used workers from Xinjiang.

Given the tight control on Xinjiang, “we have to assume for the moment that there’s a very significant risk of coercion,” said Amy K. Lehr, director of the human rights initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the co-author of a study on Xinjiang’s labor programs.

Forced labor could arise “even if the coercion was implicit or the programs offered workers a decent income,” she added.

The labor programs operate in parallel with the indoctrination camps in Xinjiang, that have drawn condemnation from Western governments. Camp inmates also receive job training, and officials say that many will be sent to work in factories.

Taken collectively, the policies are designed to make the region’s Muslim minorities more secular and urbanized like China’s Han majority. Many Chinese people see that as laudable. Uighur critics see it as ethnic subjugation.

“What they are trying to do is assimilate the Uighur people,” said Mustafa Aksu, a program coordinator at the Uyghur Human Rights Project.

‘Foster a sense of discipline’

The factory run by the Jinfujie Clothing Company on the sandy edge of Kashgar, a city in southern Xinjiang, has been a star in the government’s labor campaign.

Jinfujie, which calls itself Golden Future in English, trained and employed 2,300 workers from villages. It also opened a branch factory in an indoctrination camp, where it would put to work more than 500 inmates, a company executive told officials last year.

The executive, Sun Yijie, a former soldier, said the company ran a tight ship to turn villagers into workers. “Beginning with military drills before they start their jobs, we foster a sense of discipline,” he said.

Video footage posted online shows Jinfujie workers in gray-and-orange uniforms lined up for a pep rally. “A successful future,” they shouted in unison.

The company has said it won an order from Germany to make hundreds of thousands of ski pants. Jinfujie would not answer questions about the claimed order. During a recent visit, Times reporters were barred by guards from visiting the Jinfujie factory or the surrounding industrial zone.

Dozens of factory zones have emerged across Xinjiang, attesting to the government’s ambitions to remake the region. Mr. Xi, China’s leader, has vowed to end poverty nationwide by late 2020, and Xinjiang officials face intense pressure to create jobs.

“The offensive to eradicate poverty has reached the crucial stage in a decisive battle,” Chen Quanguo, the Communist Party secretary of Xinjiang, said early this month on a tour of southern Xinjiang. “Transmit the pressure down, level by level.”

The labor programs depend on luring companies from China’s wealthier eastern seaboard, where fewer young people want to work on production lines. Xinjiang has offered manufacturers inexpensive labor, as well as generous tax breaks and subsidies.

“They’re still not as fast as workers from other parts of China,” said He Tan, a businessman who owns a small factory on the outskirts of Hotan, a city in Xinjiang.

The government’s goals are sweeping. One plan issued in 2018 called for putting to work 100,000 people from the poorest parts of southern Xinjiang, a heavily Uighur area, by the end of 2020. The government recently said that target was met a year ahead of schedule. By late 2023, another plan says, Xinjiang wants one million working in its textile and garment industries, up from about 100,000 in 2017.

At Mr. He’s factory, dozens of Uighur women from nearby villages sat wordlessly in rows sewing school uniforms. Guzalnur Mamatjan, a 20-year-old Uighur, said she made about $200 a month.

“I’d like to work here for two or three years and then open my own clothes shop,” she said in a brief interview in the presence of officials.

‘A great deal of pressure’

Jutting out against desert dunes, the new industrial zones in Xinjiang are often surrounded by high walls, barbed wire and security cameras. Some are built near indoctrination camps and employ former inmates.

Xinjiang’s drive to put minorities in jobs often feels less like a jobs fair and more like a military call-up.

Trainee laborers often first attend political courses similar to those used in the indoctrination camps. They practice military drills, learn patriotic Chinese songs, and listen to lectures warning against Islamic zeal and preaching gratitude to the Communist Party. New laborers are sometimes shown in Chinese media reports wearing military-type uniforms and standing to attention as they are escorted to their employers.

Many are separated from their families. A directive from the Qapqal government ordered children of working couples to be put in care — home villages for the young, boarding schools for older ones — so their parents could move for work.

Workers’ movements are highly controlled if they are far from home. In Yanqi County in the region’s north, workers sent from the south are not allowed to quit unless they get written permission from several officials, according to rules by the local government.

Labor recruits undergo “political vetting” to determine if they are a security risk. In Qapqal County, officials imposed rules to grade potential recruits from most to least trustworthy. The least trustworthy had to attend indoctrination classes in the evenings, while only the most trusted could leave the county for work.

“There is a great deal of pressure placed on individuals to sign work contracts,” said Darren Byler, an expert on Xinjiang at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Mr. Byler said many residents believed that resisting work transfers could prompt detention. “The threat of the camps hangs over everyone’s heads, so there is really no resistance to assigned factory work,” he said.

Chinese official media reports that workers make $400 and up a month, a decent income. The reality may differ, especially in smaller, struggling factories. In a township in southern Xinjiang, two thirds of 43 factory employees whose wages were included in online records earned $114 a month, according to Adrian Zenz, an expert on Xinjiang who has studied the labor programs.

Amanzhol Qisa, a 31-year-old Xinjiang resident, spent a year in an indoctrination camp and in April was sent to work at a clothing factory for three months. She was paid $115 a month, less than half the minimum wage, according to her husband, Muhamet Qyzyrbek.

Mr. Qyzyrbek, a Kazakh citizen, said by phone from Shymkent, a city in southern Kazakhstan, that his wife had no choice but to take the job. “After being released, you need to work according to their policies,” he said.

https://www.business-standard.com/a...s-into-an-army-of-workers-120010200015_1.html

 

[aditya10r]

Why are you posting anti china stuff?

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[vishnugupt]

World support China as it is an internal issue of sovereign country. We all respect international laws and treaties unlike, !zlamic Terr@r!st sympathizer like you.
China is not soviet union they have learnt lot from communist down fall in other part of world. They will make sure all Muzl!ms should receive 25 % of Han"s genes in order to push further identity crisis of piglets. (25% Chinese, 25% Uighur, 25% Arab, 25% Genghis khan )