Xinjiang, China: What You Need to Know About US Sanctioning Chinese Officials for Alleged Uyghur Abuse

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The U.S. State Department estimates that up to 2 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have gone through an extensive network of detention centers throughout the region, where former detainees report being subjected to intense political indoctrination. , forced labor, torture and even sexual abuse.

Human rights groups and Uighur activists abroad have also accused the Chinese government of forced cultural assimilation and coercion of birth control and sterilization against Uighurs.

The former Trump administration has officially determined that China commits genocide and crimes against humanity against Uighur Muslims.

China vehemently denies allegations of human rights abuses, and insists the camps are voluntary “vocational training centers” designed to end religious extremism and terrorism.

This week, the United States, along with the European Union, Canada and the United Kingdom, announced sanctions on Chinese officials for human rights violations in Xinjiang. In a joint statement, the group denounced the alleged “use of forced labor from China, mass detention in internment camps, forced sterilizations and the concerted destruction of Uyghur heritage.”

China responded almost immediately by imposing heavy sanctions, travel and business bans on 10 EU politicians and four entities. The two sides have doubled, European leaders accuse China of “confrontation” and Beijing accuses the EU of “seriously interfering” in its internal affairs.

This is what you need to know about Xinjiang and the allegations of atrocities.

Where is Xinjiang and who lives there?

Xinjiang, officially the Uyghur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, is an extensive and remote region in the far west of China. It stretches for 1.6 million square kilometers (640,000 square miles) from the Tibetan plateau in the southeast to Kazakhstan, on the northwestern border, and is by far the largest administrative region in the world. China, but one of the least populated.

An ethnically diverse region, it hosts several ethnic minority groups, including the Hui, Kazakhs, and the largest group, the Uighurs, who speak a language closely related to Turkish and have a culture of their own.

Beijing's crackdown on Xinjiang has separated thousands of children from their parents, according to a new report. CNN found two

Xinjiang is rich in natural resources, especially oil and natural gas. The central government has made a concerted effort to develop the region’s economy, which has led to a large-scale influx of China’s ethnic-majority population in recent decades.

Historically, Uighurs had been the majority in the region. They now account for just under half of Xinjiang’s total population of 22 million, and many of them live in rural and southern Xinjiang.

The region is geographically strategic for Beijing. Xinjiang is China’s gateway to Central Asia, bordering Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, as well as Mongolia and Russia to the north and Pakistan and India to the south.

What caused the repression?

Xinjiang’s minority groups have felt marginalized and have been left out of the economic boom for a long time, claiming widespread discrimination in employment in state-controlled industries that have dominated the local economy.

Restrictions supported by the government in practice and religious customs, fundamental to its Islamic identity since the 1990s, have also served to provoke interethnic tensions and occasional violence.

In recent years, Beijing has strengthened its region. A turning point came in 2009, when ethnic unrest in Urumqi, the regional capital, killed at least one person. 197 people, which led to a reduction in government that imposed widespread and lasting restrictions on Muslim minority groups.

The government has also linked the Uyghurs to attacks in Xinjiang and other parts of China. Beijing has blamed Islamist militants and separatists for the violence, although it is debated how many of these incidents are related to or led by overseas militant groups.

In recent years, Beijing has intensified restrictions on Islam in the name of fighting terrorism. The crackdown includes a ban on veils, long beards and Islamic names, crackdown on Koranic study groups and the prevention of Muslim authorities fasting for Ramadan.

The reduction has further increased after Chen Quanguo, a member of the Communist Party’s hard-line party, took over as leader of Xinjiang in 2016. Chen, the party’s former leader in neighboring Tibet’s autonomous region, launched a series of measures. security, installing a network of manned checkpoints and artificial intelligence. Powered surveillance cameras to keep track of people’s daily routines. Authorities also collected biometric data from residents and conducted spot checks on their phones to look for content that was deemed problematic or suspicious.

What are detention camps?

The biggest step China has taken in its crackdown is its network of detention camps across the region. Former detainees have described having experienced political indoctrination and abuse in the camps, such as food and sleep deprivation, forced injections, forced sterilizations, abortions and mass rapes.

They were chained and forced to live in poor conditions; one detainee said she was put in a cell with 20 other women and was only allowed to use the toilet once a day for three to five minutes. Those that took longer were electrocuted with shock batons, he said.
Allegations of chained students and mass rapes in China's detention camps
In a report released in March, Amnesty International estimated that there may be thousands of Uighur children who have been separated from their parents for years as a result of the government’s tightening in Xinjiang.

Initially, Beijing flatly denied the existence of the camps. But he later claimed the facilities are voluntary “vocational training centers” where people learn job skills, Chinese language and law. Now the government insists the camps are necessary to prevent religious extremism and terrorism.

Chinese government leaked documents, however, reveal that people can be sent to a detention center to simply “wear a veil” or grow “a long beard.” Among those missing in the camps are also Uyghur intellectuals and artists, people who would not need professional training, as claimed by the Chinese government.

The documents, along with other first-hand reports, paint an alarming picture of what appears to be a strategic campaign by Beijing to strip Uighurs of their cultural and religious identity and suppress behavior considered unpatriotic.

The Chinese government has challenged the authenticity of the leaked records.

How has the world responded?

The treatment of Uighurs and other minorities in Xinjiang has been widely condemned by the international community. In July 2019, 22 countries signed a letter urging China to end its “mass arbitrary arrests and related violations” and called on Beijing to allow UN experts access to the region. .

But many Muslim-majority countries have remained silent about China’s repression in Xinjiang, and some have even expressed support for Beijing. Just four days after the letter condemning Xinjiang’s Chinese policies was presented to the United Nations, 37 countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Syria, Russia and North Korea, wrote to the United Nations and congratulated the United Nations. China for its “remarkable achievements in the fields of human rights” in Xinjiang.

In January this year, the United States officially determined that China was committing genocide and crimes against humanity against the Uighurs. A month later, the Dutch and Canadian parliaments passed similar motions despite opposition from their leaders.

The US also banned imports of cotton products and tomatoes produced in Xinjiang for reasons of forced labor.

United States and allies announce sanctions against Chinese officials for
In March, a non-governmental organization conducted an independent legal analysis of the allegations of genocide – and what responsibility Beijing may assume – for the first time. The report, conducted by more than 50 global experts, concludes that the alleged actions of the Chinese government have violated all provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Genocide of the United Nations.

Days before the report was released, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the allegations of genocide “could not be more absurd.” The Chinese government has repeatedly defended its actions in Xinjiang, saying citizens now enjoy a high standard of living and has called the allegations a defamation campaign by foreign forces.

The sanctions declared this week are some of the strongest and most unified actions taken in protest of the treatment of Uyghurs, who appear to seek to isolate and pressure Beijing.

The United States went against Wang Junzheng, the secretary of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps Party Committee, and Chen Mingguo, director of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau. Meanwhile, the EU sanctioned Zhu Hailun, a former head of the Uyghur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, and three other senior officials, for overseeing the detention and indoctrination program.

But none of the sanctions so far have mentioned Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful leader in decades, who has considered his government’s policy in Xinjiang to be “completely correct.”

CNN’s Ben Westcott contributed to this report.

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