China: Stop Religious Persecution against the Uyghurs!

China: Stop Religious Persecution against the Uyghurs!

Started
June 9, 2018
Petition to
Donald J. Trump (President of the United States) and 21 others
Signatures: 75,086Next Goal: 150,000
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Why this petition matters

Started by Torchlight Uyghur Group

Torchlight Uyghur Group

(Mesheluyghur@gmail.com)

This Petition Is Also Available In The Following Languages: Turkish (Turkçe),French (Français)Uyghur (ئۇيغۇرچە), Uyghur Latinche, Uyghur Kirilche, Arabic (عربى) , Chinese (Simplified),Japanese (日本語),Russian(Pусский)

May 9th, 2018

 According to one European researcher, at this very moment, “at least several hundred thousand, and possibly just over one million (Uyghurs), are or have been interned in political re-education facilities” in East Turkestan (known as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China). That means one out of every Uyghur family has likely been taken forcibly into one of these camps. The crackdown has focused on young Uyghur men, so if you’re a male and between the age of 20 and 40, the odds are you will find yourself locked up in a camp.  

(https://www.dailyo.in/politics/china-islam-uighurs-xinjiang-pakistan/story/1/24358.html In these Nazi style concentration camps, Uyghurs are being forced to denounce their religious belief and to eat pork. In addition to these Uyghurs held in the concentration camps, more than half a million Uyghurs were imprisoned since April 2017 for keeping religious contents on their phones or reading religious books .

 The Chinese authorities are convinced that the religious belief of the Uyghurs is one of the main obstacles to assimilate them, and thus now openly launched anti-religion campaign against the Uyghur people in East Turkestan, reaching the highest level ever seen since the Cultural Revolution. Fasting in Ramadan is a serious crime and not having alcoholic drinks is a sign of extremism for the Uyghurs now in East Turkestan. The campaign targets all Uyghur population and it actually is part of China’s ethnic cleansing policy against the Uyghurs. The Chinese government has frequently been condemned by the Uyghur people and global rights groups for committing genocide against the Uyghurs and crimes against humanity.

 Now in East Turkestan:

•    More than one million Uyghurs are languishing in China’s Nazi style concentration camps and forced to give up their religious belief.

•    Uyghurs are no longer allowed to say some Arabic words such as “ Allah” and “Assalamu alaykum”. Using these kinds of words has become part of the Uyghur customs for many centuries.

•    Most mosques are being demolished or turned into entertainment facilities.

•    Traditional customs like naming children and marriage ceremony with Islamic way are prohibited.

•    Some Uyghurs girls are forced to marry Chinese men by the arrangement of the Chinese authorities.

•     Chinese men are installed in Uyghur homes whose male family members have been detained.  

•    Islamic clothing and beards are forbidden as a sign of extremism.

•    The usage of “Halal” labels for food production has been criminalized. 

•    The Uyghur government officials are being forced to sign for cremation instead of Islamic burial.

•    Islamic books including Holy Qur’an and praying mats were burned. Praying and Fasting are banned.

•    Chinese national flag and the portraits of Xi Jinping are placed in mosques.

•    Most Uyghurs in diaspora have not been able to communicate with their family members in East Turkestan since mid 2016.

 A large number of Uyghurs who studied abroad or visited some Islamic countries such as Egypt were imprisoned in 2017 without any trial. The Chinese government requested all Uyghur students studying abroad, especially those in Turkey and Egypt, to come back to China immediately. The authorities arrested returned students in airports and their whereabouts are still unclear. The Chinese government arrested family members of the students who did not return. Also, the Chinese government carried out an operation for hunting thousands of Uyghur students in Egypt at the end of 2017 and many students fled to other countries for saving their lives. Thousands of religious scholars and influential public figures have been arrested and some of them, such Muhammed Salih, a prominent Uyghur religious scholar,  is known to have died during the interrogation. (https://uhrp.org/press-release/uyghur-human-rights-project-condemns-death-custody-scholar-muhammad-salih-hajim.html

 “The Chinese government’s restrictions on Uyghur Muslims are an attempt to assimilate a besieged religious and ethnic minority,” said United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Chairman Daniel Mark. “By installing Communist Party cadres in Uighur homes and detaining countless innocent Uyghurs in extrajudicial ‘re-education camps’, the Chinese government has created a culture of fear, suspicion, and mistrust throughout Xinjiang. Indeed, the government’s actions are disrupting entire communities as they try to live their lives and practice their faith in peace.”

(http://www.uscirf.gov/news-room/press-releases-statements/china-uscirf-deeply-concerned-about-increasing-repression-uighur

 “What is happening?” questions Jay Nordlinger, An American journalist and senior editor of National Review, “Up to a million Uyghurs have been rounded up, thrown into a gulag — an archipelago of ‘reeducation’ camps — with no due process whatsoever. Many have simply been ‘disappeared’.”  He also says that “there has not been mass killing yet, but many Uyghurs have been tortured to death. Lots of people fear that this is a pre-genocidal situation — that the mass incarceration is a prelude to mass murder, and to organ harvesting, in particular. (This is one of the evil specialties of the Chinese Communist Party.) The entire Uyghur population, incarcerated or not, has been DNA-sampled.”

(https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/an-emergency/

 The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) conference that took place at the US Congress on  February 26, 2018 highlighted the Chinese government’s draconian restrictions on Uyghurs cultural and religious freedoms. (http://unpo.org/article/20647  Since April 2017, Uyghurs accused of harboring “extremist” and “politically incorrect” views have been detained in political re-education camps throughout East Turkestan. Authorities have relied on a list circulated in early 2017 of “75 Signs of Religious Extremism” to detain Uyghurs amid a string of harsh policies attacking their legitimate rights and freedoms enacted since Communist Party secretary Chen Quanguo was appointed to run the region in August 2016. (http://unpo.org/article/20625

 By analyzing information “from 73 government procurement and construction bids valued at around RMB 680 million (approximately $108 million),” Adrian Zenz, a researcher at the European School of Culture and Theology, conclude in a recent paper that the bids revealed a massive plan to build these massive concentration camps, focusing on Uyghur-majority areas of East Turkestan.

 Life inside these camps is horrifying, according to rare accounts of those who were able to leave and speak to the media. One such account came from a Kazakh national who was swept up into one camp, and then returned to Kazakhstan. Daily brainwashing sessions were held “about the dangers of Islam”. “Do you obey Chinese law or your God?” instructors asked. “Do you understand why religion is dangerous?” Other prisoners were forced to praise Xi Jinping’s greatness instead of God. Before every meal, inmates were forced to chant: “Thank the Party! Thank the Motherland! Thank President Xi!” Daily Mail reported shocking details of the methods revealed by former inmates in these camps that were employed by Chinese agencies to make Muslims in East Turkestan align with communist ideals and give up their Islamic beliefs. According to these former inmates, Muslims in the camps are made to eat pork and drink alcohol among other punishments when they refuse to follow orders from the camp authorities. Upto a million Muslims, mainly from East Turkestan, are reportedly detained in such camps in China. (https://swarajyamag.com/insta/china-forcing-muslims-to-eat-pork-drink-alcohol-as-punishment-in-its-re-education-camps

 Zenz pointed out that “China’s pacification drive in Xinjiang is, more than likely, the country’s most intense campaign of coercive social re-engineering since the end of the Cultural Revolution. The state’s ‘war on terror’ is arguably more and more a euphemism for forced ethnic assimilation.”  (https://www.dailyo.in/politics/china-islam-uighurs-xinjiang-pakistan/story/1/24358.html 

 

A US commission on China had last month described the program as ‘the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today’. (https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/05/16/world/asia/ap-as-china-xis-era-mass-internment.html

 The unforgettable human tragedies of Nazi concentration camps and Soviet gulags taught enough lessons for humanity to vow to prevent similar tragedies from happening again. And yet, under the watchful eyes of the world, the Chinese government has deprived more than a million Uyghurs of their basic rights by placing them in these heinous camps. (https://thediplomat.com/2018/05/uyghurs-victims-of-21st-century-concentration-camps/

 We, the Uyghurs, at the moment are in our fight against the Chinese government’s atrocities, and cannot fight this battle for our survival alone.  We need the support of all the justice-loving people in the world.  If tens of thousands of people from around the world sign our petition, it may be possible that the United Nations will make a commitment and will act to stop the tragedy that the Uyghur people are facing today.

To read the full text of this petition, please click HERE.

Please join us in our fight to end the appalling atrocities happening in East Turkestan. Please spread the word so that people around the world could learn about such a great tragedy that is happening in East Turkestan. Please sign and share this petition. Thank you!   

 You can find more information from the following sites:

https://www.facebook.com/torchuyghur/

https://twitter.com/torch_uyghur

http://blog.freedomsherald.org

http://freedomsherald.org/ET/unb/

 Uyghur Torchlight Group’s previous petitions:

https://www.change.org/search?q=Torchlight%20Uyghur%20Group

 

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Signatures: 75,086Next Goal: 150,000
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