Uyghur concentration camp victims demand UN release over genocide in China OLASMEDIA TV NEWSThis is what we have for you today:
Former inmates in Chinese concentration camps, members of East Turkistan’s oppressed Uyghur community and supporters gathered in New York on Tuesday to urge the United Nations to release a report based on human rights chief Michelle Bachelet’s visit to the region in May.
The protesters also demanded recognition of China’s ongoing genocide against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other indigenous peoples in East Turkistan, whom the Communist Party has ousted for decades to repopulate the region it calls Xinjiang with China’s ethnic Han majority. . Multiple countries, human rights experts and international organizations have concluded that the Communist Party’s policy of incarcerating, enslaving and sterilizing Turkish people in the region fits within the legal definition of genocide.
TUESDAY – JULY 26, 2022: Peaceful demonstration, in front of the United Nations Headquarters in New York, calling on the UN to release its report on China’s ongoing genocide against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other Turkic peoples in the occupied East -Turkistan.
Posted by East Turkistan National Awakening Movement on Tuesday 26 July 2022
The protesters chose the United Nations headquarters to protest in light of Bachelet, officially the High Commissioner for Human Rights, who visited East Turkistan and other parts of China in May. The visit, which she insisted was “not an investigation,” was in part intended in response to years of vocal protests by human rights groups over the ongoing genocide.
Bachelet’s office has not yet issued a written report on the situation in the region based on what she saw during her visit, but the top official claimed shortly before his departure from China that the Communist Party had dismantled all its concentration camps and praised dictator Xi. Jinping for China’s alleged “huge achievements” on human rights. She reportedly has not met with political dissident groups or representatives of oppressed minorities other than those chosen by the party.
“I spent 15 months in prison simply because I’m Kazakh,” Gulzire Awalqun, a survivor of the concentration camp system, said during Tuesday’s protest. “All the people in the prisons in occupied East Turkistan are Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other Turkic peoples. When we go to these prisons, they forcibly inject us with drugs.”
Awalqun held a poster with photos of some of the many people from East Turkistan who went missing and are believed to be trapped in the camps. At their peak, the United States government estimates that as many as 3 million people are imprisoned in the camps.
Awalqun testified to the documented use of concentration camp inmates as slave labor to fuel China’s status as the world’s most productive manufacturing powerhouse and urged listeners to boycott Chinese products.
“We ask that you do not buy products that the Chinese government and Chinese companies make using the forced labor of those in prison,” Awalqun said, concluding: “I ask the international community, including human rights organizations, to act to stop Xi Jinping’s ongoing genocide against Turkic peoples in East Turkistan.”
Another concentration camp survivor, Tursunay Ziawudun, noted that Xi Jinping personally visited East Turkistan two weeks ago in an effort to produce propaganda obscuring the genocide. Ziawudun noted that during the visit, Xi attended events that allegedly showcased Uyghur culture, in which he, she said, “forced Turkish people to dance in front of the cameras.”
Visited President Xi Jinping #Xinjiang. He spent a wonderful time with the residents, artists and students of different ethnic groups in Xinjiang. pic.twitter.com/rvNv1tKXso
— Wang Lutong (@WangLutongMFA) July 15, 2022
“We are the living witnesses here who show and tell what is really happening in East Turkistan. We ask everyone not to be misled by Xi Jinping…the concentration camps are not closed contrary to what the Chinese government claims,” Ziawudun said. “If they have been, we ask that you prove it by allowing us to return there to show the world that” [the system] is indeed closed and shows us the whereabouts of all these people.”
Ziawudun also urged the United Nations not to fly the flag of communist China as long as the country is engaged in genocide, saying she is “disgusted” by her presence outside UN headquarters.
Earlier today, Uyghurs and Kazakhs, including survivors of the Gulzire Awalqun and Tursunay Ziyawudun concentration camps, led…
Posted by East Turkistan National Awakening Movement On Tuesday 26 July 2022
Salih Hudayar, the prime minister of the government of East Turkistan in exile, who helped organize the event, demanded against the protest that Bachelet release a report on her findings in the region and that the United Nations recognize East Turkistan as a “occupied land” and not a legitimate province of China. East Turkistan was a sovereign republic first in 1933 and then from 1944 to 1949, when it was colonized by Mao Zedong’s China after a mysterious plane crash killed some of its most important leaders and paved the way for Chinese conquest.
Recognizing East Turkistan as an occupied sovereign nation would lead to international legal protocols separate from obligations to hold political leaders accountable for other crimes such as genocide.
“The United Nations today is ignoring China’s 21st-century Holocaust-like genocide,” Hudayar denounced. “The inaction of the United Nations Human Rights Council, the United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Security Council has enabled the fascist, racist Chinese government to commit genocide with impunity for the past eight years and to continue .”
Hudayar accused Bachelet of failing to “not only investigate, but also condemn the ongoing genocide of the People’s Republic of China”.
Bachelet’s findings in East Turkistan remain largely a mystery. Last week, Reuters reported, to claim obtained private correspondence indicating that the Chinese government is actively pressuring Bachelet’s office not to publish a report on human rights violations in the region.
Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.