Systematic oppression and torture grips the Uighur Muslim community in China

By Laura Gooding, Article 10 Content Officer for Human Rights

Photo source @businessinsider

Who are the Uighur Muslim community?

The indigenous Uighur Muslims are considered an ethnic minority in China.

With Turkish speaking origins, the group is composed of 11 million within the Chinese community of North-western Xinjiang.

The Uighur people closely follow their culture in line with Central Asian countries bordering Xinjiang; such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Islamic festivals such as the Corban Festival, celebrating the Uighur people's faith and thankfulness for their religion and Allah, are practised by the minority group in China.

What is happening to the Uighur Muslims in China?

Approximately one million Uighur Muslims are currently being detained in "re-education camps" in Xinjiang, China.

The Chinese government consistently maintains these camps, instated under CPC General Secretary Xi Jinping's office are for the purpose of suppressing extremists of the Uighur minority, are not inhumane, nor have any human rights of this peoples been violated.

In 2019, the head of Xinjiang's government went so far as to classify the attacks on the camps as partaking in torture and degrading conditions as nothing more than "crude meddling in China's internal affairs."

However, latest footage released by the BBC last week completely sub verses China's attempts to brush the camps' activity under the rug as merely "re-education".

The footage depicted former Uighur fashion model Merdan Ghappar, filming himself confined in a dank room in one of Xinjiang's detention camps, wearing filthy clothing with swollen red limbs.

The BBC additionally secured text messages sent by Mr Ghappar, who described an occasion where inmates were playing a ball game outside and were punished senselessly, "beaten until they screamed like babies, the skin on their buttocks split open and they couldn't sit down."

In July, Human Rights Watch confirmed the USA has since issued an intervention into the Uighur peoples systematic mistreatment at the hands of the Xinjiang government.

Financial sanctions were invoked and imposed on four Xinjiang officials under the 2012 Global Magnitsky Act. These authorities’ assets issued by America were frozen, alongside movement sanctions in banning their entrance into the USA.

The Act, which came into force in 2012 under President Barack Obama's office, confers authority onto the US to sanction countries and their officials considered to be human rights violators internally or across seas.

Why are the Uighur peoples being punished by the Xinjiang Government?

A variety of rationales have been raised by academics and human rights activists to discover China’s real basis behind detaining the Uighur Muslims. However evidence suggests the grounds are basis of primarily religious discrimination.

A leaked Chinese government document dated February 2020 named the “Karakax List” reveals the Uighur inmates of Xinjiang’s detention camps are being extensively imprisoned for “crimes” which do not in any regard warrant labelling the ethnic minority as a danger to China.

The document issued to various international media outlets such as CNN, the Financial Times and the Guardian detailed records of some 2,800 inmates.

Spanning from 2017, the Karakax list contains various alleged offences committed by Uighur detainees ranging from “having too many children”, being married in a traditional Uighur religious wedding ceremony or merely having a lengthy beard.

Key legal notes and relevant human rights

• The right to a fair trial

Art 10. International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights- The right to a fair trial

However, China is not yet legally bound under international law to ensure this right by being solely a signatory to the treaty as opposed to ratifying the international agreement. (entering it into force in China)

• The right to health

Article 12. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

China is legally bound under international law as of its ratification in March 2001, to respect and ensure its citizens are enabled access to the highest possible standard of physical and mental health in the country.

However, texts from former Uighur fashion model Mr Ghappan (mentioned above) provides evidence that Chinese authorities are indeed grossly infringing this right, which is even more potent during the current COVID-19 context.

Mr Ghappan's messages described inmates riddled with lice, who were forced to share eating utensils and eat food made from the officers’ leftover meals.

• Prohibition of torture

Convention against Torture, or Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of Punishment

China is legally bound under international law pursuant to its ratification of the Convention in October 1988 to ensure all tortuous practices and degrading treatment is prohibited in China. Reports of former inmates in the Chinese detainment centres have told of intense psychological torture, beatings and rape.

***We at Article 10 stand with the UN, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch in condemning the actions of the Chinese Xinjiang government’s sub-human treatment of the Uighur peoples and implore their release from detainment and reuniting with family and friends.***