China is facing condemnation over its illegal persecution of Muslim marginal groups in the country, large Uighurs numbers allegedly being held in imprisonment camps.
The Uighurs community is Muslims, and number about 11 million in western China’s Xinjiang region. The community- culturally and ethnically close to Central Asian nations, and their language is similar to Turkish.
In the current era, there’s been a mass migration of Han Chinese (China’s ethnic majority) to Xinjiang, and the Uighurs feel their culture, tradition, and livelihoods are under peril.
UN committee in August 2018, reported that up to one million Uighur Muslims and other Muslim groups could be being apprehended in the western Xinjiang region, where they’re said to be undergoing re-education programs especially diversion of thinking and mind.
Human Rights committee says Uighur people, in particular, are subject to intense inspection and are made to give DNA and biometric samples. Those with relatives in 26 sensitive countries have reportedly been rounded up, and up to a million arrested.
Rights groups say people in camps are made to learn official Chinese and criticize or relinquish their faith. International rights groups accuse that the Chinese government is actually engaging in mass illogical imprisonment, torture and exploitation of Uighurs in Xinjiang. Human Rights Watch, a nonprofit group based in New York, has accused extensive abuses, including torture.
The New York Times and the International Association of Investigative Journalists of internal policy documents of the Chinese Communist Party regarding the issue on the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in China’s western region of Xinjiang radically shift the discussion on this issue.
They lay bare what is clearly a intentional and calculated drive of cultural genocide—launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping and driven to its current extreme implementation by Xinjiang’s local party boss, Chen Quanguo, a Han Chinese nationalist hard-liner who led successful efforts at so-called pacification in Tibet before being transferred over to the western region.
Prime Minister Imran Khan and Federal Minister for Human Rights Dr Shireen Mazari dodged a question on the alleged incarceration of more than two million Muslims in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, saying they “didn’t know much” about the issue.
Persecution of Muslims in both occupied Kashmir and China
In fact, Pak-China friendship is an example for the whole world. Pakistan attaches great importance to its relations with neighboring China, which is probably why no strong statement has been made by the Government of Pakistan in favor of Uighur Muslims and against China.
Today is the 141 day of the curfew imposed in Kashmir, which we will see on every media channel, but Uighur’s issue does not raise.
On February 11 this year, Turkey declared the oppression of minority Uighur Muslims as shameful for humanity. Turkey demanded China to immediately shut down concentration camps for Muslims.
Pakistan raises its voice against oppression everywhere in the world, including occupied Jammu and Kashmir and Palestine. Pakistan also has to consider Uighur Muslims as human beings.
It is the duty of every human being to raise a voice against any person in any part of the world. The UN Charter contains a long list of human rights whereby religious, social and political freedom is the basic right of every human being.
