The double standards of the Chinese establishment have been exposed with the country promising the protection of the interests of the Muslim nations at the Organisation of the Islamic Corporation (OIC), whereas the Uyghurs in Xinjiang are exploited in the garb of ‘poverty alleviation’, ‘vocational training’ etc. Recently, the US Govt, taking strong objection, unanimously voted for discontinuing all imports from China’s Xinjiang.
Exploitation of Uyghurs in Xinjiang
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi assured at the recently held OIC conference in Islamabad that China will look after the interests of the Muslim nations; however the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region of China have been subjected to widespread atrocities. Since 2017, the Chinese Govt has detained 1.8 million Uyghurs and scores of other Turkic minorities in multiple ‘re-education camps’ in Xinjiang.
China has also set-up a kind of a security-Industrial complex, where the state has hired over 1000 contractors – Private companies, which will do surveillance to track the behaviour of Uyghurs and Turkic population to diagnose who can be a potential criminal.
International reports condemn China
According to the 870-page report titled Application of International Labour Standards, over 13 mn members of the religious minorities in Xinjiang are targeted in the context of “poverty alleviation”, “vocational training”, “re-education through labor” and “de-extremification”. The abuses take place in prisons and workplaces across Xinjiang and other parts of the country.
The report from the International Labour Organization stressed that China has violated various articles of the Employment Policy Convention of 1964, which Beijing ratified in 1997, including the right to freely choose employment.
US sanctions Chinese companies
A key characteristic of Chinese exploitation is the forced labour of about 1.8 mn Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in the name of ‘re-education’ camps. The US govt stated the over 1mn Uyghurs are being forced to leave their cultural practices and assimilate into the Chinese Han community. The US sanctioned Chinese firm SZ DJI Technology over involvement in doing surveillance in the Xinjiang region, where China is honing new technologies in artificial intelligence and DNA tracking to keep a track of Uyghurs. USA has also taken action against Ziamen Meiya Pico Information for developing a mobile app for tracking files on the mobile and Cloudwalk technology to identify faces of Uyghurs and Tibetans.
IMAGE : AP