Uyghurs: ‘China Is Obliterating the Future of Our Nation’ – and Corporations Are Helping

Members of the Uyghur and other Turkic communities of East Turkistan organized a protest in front of the White House on Wednesday demanding the U.S. government enact stricter sanctions on China and on businesses that help fund the Chinese government in response to the genocide of their peoples under the Communist Party.

The event marked the 14th anniversary of the Urumqi massacre, the Chinese government mass killing of, some estimates suggest, over 1,000 people after the indigenous people of East Turkistan organized peaceful protests in response to reports of violent beatings of Uyghur slaves in southern Guangdong province. The Chinese government acknowledged 184 deaths and blamed the protesters for the violence.

Speakers at the event on Wednesday, organized by the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement, repeatedly described the 2009 massacre as a precursor to what has become full-scale genocide against Uyghurs, Kyrgyz people, Kazakhs, and other non-Han ethnic communities in East Turkistan. The Chinese Communist Party administers the once-sovereign territory of East Turkistan under the Han name “Xinjiang” and launched a campaign, believed to have begun around 2017, to imprison millions of the region’s indigenous residents in concentration camps. Long before that, however, the Chinese government under current dictator Xi Jinping launched a “people’s war” against terrorism in 2014 nominally meant to eradicate jihadist groups, but in reality meant to erase Muslim-majority communities nationwide. Islam is the dominant religion of East Turkistan.

Imprisonment in concentration camps and killings are a small part of the long list of atrocities that human rights advocates have credibly accused China of committing in the region. As one speaker on Wednesday, Aziz Sulayman, listed, evidence suggests communist China is also engaging in “forced labor, enslavement, mass detentions, forced abortions, forced sterilizations, cultural and physical eradication, summary execution, state-sponsored rape of Uyghur and other Turkic women and heart-wrenching separation of millions of families.” Evidence also exists of China using concentration camps prisoners for live organ harvesting, a grim, lucrative black market industry for Beijing.

Sulayman, a member of the East Turkistan Government-in-Exile’s Parliament, urged the American government to respond to the Uyghur genocide through financial and political sanctions that would realistically affect the Chinese Communist Party’s decision-making.

“We must enact targeted sanctions on those responsible, freezing their assets, imposing travel bans,” Sulayman said. “Governments and corporations must prioritize human life over profits. We cannot allow economic interests to precede over the suffering of an entire population.”

“Companies that turn a blind eye to atrocities in East Turkistan, benefitting from forced labor and other human rights abuses, must be held accountable,” he continued, “Governments must impose strict regulations and sanctions on corporations.”

The list of international corporations that benefit from the Uyghur genocide is long. A 2020 report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), titled “Uyghurs for Sale,” identified 82 such corporations – including household names such as Apple, BMW, Nike, and Nintendo – with links to Chinese suppliers outside of East Turkistan believed to use Uyghur slaves, sold in “batches” by the government online. Some companies, like the electric vehicle maker Tesla and media conglomerate Disney, openly boast of doing business in occupied East Turkistan with perpetrators of genocide.

Haider Jan, advocacy coordinator for the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement, lamented to the crowd assembled outside the White House on Wednesday that China had escaped any significant consequences for its genocide currently.

“Despite global outcry and condemnation, China persists in its ruthless campaign of genocide and occupation, avoiding accountability with alarming ease,” Jan asserted. “Today, we unite to challenge this impunity, reminding the international community of its responsibility to act … We cannot do this alone. We implore the United States government to fulfill its promise of ‘never again’ by taking decisive and meaningful action.”

“Name China accountable and bring an end to the ongoing genocide,” he urged.

“China is obliterating the future of our nation,” Amannissa Mukhlis, the Women and Family Director of the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement, stated, describing the “unspeakable horrors” that Uyghur women face under the genocide: “brutal rape, sterilization, forced abortion, slave labor, forced marriage, and even organ harvesting.”

“As a result of China’s ongoing genocide, over 850,000 Uyghur children have been ripped away from their mothers, torn from their embrace, and sent to boarding schools and orphanages,” she explained. “They are subjected to reeducation, where their identity is forcibly erased and they are molded into loyal Chinese citizens. These innocent children endure unimaginable abuse. China seeks to erase their Uyghur heritage, forcing them to forget their roots.”

The protest occurred in the midst of a foreign policy enacted by the administration of President Joe Biden meant to improve friendly ties between China and America, an attempt to mend relationships severed by China sending an espionage vessel, later identified as a “spy balloon,” into the United States in January. As part of the initiative, Biden sent Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing last month, where reports indicated that the Uyghur genocide was not meaningfully addressed.

In a sour-faced meeting with Xi, the dictator reportedly scolded Blinken about Washington’s mild recognition of the Communist Party’s atrocities, insisting that America “should act with a sense of responsibility for history, for the people and for the world, and handle China-U.S. relations properly.”

 

“He called on the U.S. side to adopt a rational and pragmatic attitude, and work with China in the same direction,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said of Xi.

Blinken left the meeting insisting that the Biden administration was not interested in policies to “decouple” the slavery-tainted Chinese economy from America’s and vowing cooperation on “climate change” and “public health.”

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