The Chinese administration is practising unspeakable things against the Uyghur Muslims as it has effectively turned the city of Xinjiang into a prison. Yet, Islamic nations like Pakistan and Malaysia defend China’s atrocities against the Uyghurs. In the latest series of shocking atrocities by the Chinese, Muslim women are now ‘forced to share beds’ with male Chinese officials after their husbands are detained in internment camps effectively converting the Uyghurs into concubines.
Experts believe that China has deployed over a million spies to keep an eye on the Uyghurs as their atrocities know no bounds and have blurred the line between public and private lives. Since 2018, Uyghur families in Xinjiang have to mandatorily invite government officials into their homes, provide them information about their lives and political views, and comply with political indoctrination. The Chinese administration is trying to ethnically cleanse Xinjiang by practising the “Pair Up and Become Family” programme which involves the country’s Han ethnic majority officers – to stay in Uyghur households every two months as a part of the programme.
The Chinese government describes the spies as ‘relatives’ of the monitored families and have to work, eat, and often share a bed with their ‘hosts’ as the Uyghurs are compulsorily made to stay with their ‘paired relatives’ day and night. A Communist Party officer was quoted, “Normally one or two people sleep in one bed, and if the weather is cold, three people sleep together.” The officer described the spies as “helping” the Uyghur families “with their ideology, bringing new ideas” and “talk to them about life, during which time they develop feelings for one another”.
While the Chinese government continues to maintain that it’s a voluntary exercise, the Uyghurs are well aware that refusing any state-sponsored activity can lead to being branded a potential extremist as recently, an Uyghur woman was sentenced to a detention centre for the ‘crime’ of pursuing her higher education in Egypt. The control has been totalitarian as the ‘relatives’ are now even attending private functions like weddings, funeral and other Uyghur occasions. Human Rights Watch has previously said Uyghur families are given no option to refuse the visits, which it said were an example of “deeply invasive forced assimilation practices” that “not only violate basic rights but are also likely to foster and deepen resentment in the region”.
China’s move to eliminate the identity of Uyghurs by destroying their will to live would have been branded as insane but in the case China, this is the new normal as the country has been attempting to ethnically cleanse Xinjiang since the past three years. The Chinese government is following a “strike hard” security campaign which involves filling up of prisons as China’s judiciary sentenced over 230,000 Uyghurs and Kazakhs to imprisonment or other punishments in the last two years. During 2017 alone, Xinjiang courts sentenced almost 87,000 defendants, 10 times more than the previous year, to prison terms of five years or longer.
Unsurprisingly, the arrests often lack evidence of any wrongdoing and are based on exaggerated charges as the Uyghurs are made to face grave abuses and hard labour in China’s overpopulated prisons. “It’s impossible to imagine that even if a judge in Xinjiang wanted to give a fair hearing to a defendant, that such a thing would be possible,” said Professor Clarke, who specialises in Chinese law, adding, “If they’re not having mass trials, then what they’re having is, essentially, judges giving blank documents to the police or prosecutors so they can just fill in the blanks.”
The stories coming out of Uyghur prison camps are gut-wrenching and it is said that almost every Chinese Uyghur has lost someone to China’s “strike hard” security campaign. Former detainees have alleged that inmates are subjected to torture, medical experiments and gang rape.
In a nerve-wracking revelation, the UN Human Rights Council has been told that the Chinese government is harvesting and selling organs from persecuted ethnic and religious minorities including the Uyghur Muslims, who are being persecuted at an accelerated pace. China has a very low number of voluntary organ donors, at an average of just more than 100 per year. However, the number of organ transplants run into thousands. This number shot up in a big way only after 2004. In fact, a report says that in China, over 60,000 to 100,000 transplants have been taking place annually, to the point that surgeons have ‘lost count’.
Uyghurs have effectively been stripped off their religion and are battling to save their identity as Muslim families across Xinjiang are now literally eating and sleeping under the watchful eye of the state in their own homes. While the Rohingya crisis received huge coverage, the plight of Uyghurs has surprisingly escaped the attention of media and Islamic nations. China is going to create the biggest humanitarian crisis since the turn of the century. The world must wake up now to condemn China’s actions before it’s too late.