China's crimes against humanity

Uyghurs urge action against China in Washington

By Jennifer Hansler

Zeynep Ablajan said she hasn't been able to speak to her husband, Yalkun Rozi, in over two years. He is a Uyghur scholar and textbook author who was detained in East Turkestan, China in October 2016.
That was the last time she heard his voice.
"It is torturing looking back," she told CNN through a translator.
"I didn't expect that would be my last contact with my husband."
Ablajan said that he was accused of "disseminating separatist ideology" and sentenced in 2018 to 15 years in prison -- a sentence Ablajan said was predetermined and came after a "sham trial."
Ablajan said she doesn't know where her husband is.
"I'm very concerned about his health," she told CNN, adding that she wants to "hear his voice" and "know if he's okay."

'Everything that makes the Uyghurs unique has been targeted'Ablajan was one of dozens of members of the Uyghur community, advocates and lawmakers who gathered on Capitol Hill in Washington Monday to recognize the plight of the Uyghurs and other persecuted minorities being detained in China.
The evening reception capped a day of activism on the Hill organized by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.
The US State Department, according to its most recent Human Rights Report, estimates that China has "arbitrarily detained 800,000 to more than two million Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and other Muslims in internment camps designed to erase religious and ethnic identities."
"International media, human rights organizations, and former detainees reported security officials in the camps abused, tortured, and killed some detainees," the report noted.
Rushan Abbas, a Uyghur-American activist and founder of Campaign for Uyghurs, said that even living in the US has not protected her from being a target.
Days after she spoke out about the Uyghur crisis in September 2018, she said, her sister and her aunt were abducted.
"I have been a proud citizen of the United States for 25 years, yet the long arm of the Chinese Communist regime has extended its reach across the borders to ravage my heart by jailing the only close family I have," she said.
She accused the Chinese government of targeting the Uyghurs' "right to live."
"Everything that makes the Uyghurs unique has been targeted and treated as abnormality: language, culture, religion, history and ethnic identity. All normal activities in Islam are being banned and labeled as 'religious extremism' as part of a 'war on terror,'" she said.

'Where is the outrage?'
Members of the Trump administration and many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have been outspoken about the crimes being committed against the Uyghurs.
"We need to push aggressively on the plight of the Uyghurs," said US Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, who also addressed the issue in a briefing last week.
However, many at Monday's event called for more to be done.
"I am saddened by the timid response of the world community, world leaders, who should be defenders of the freedom and democracy," Abbas said.
"Where is the outrage against such horrendous, repugnant catastrophe that's happening on our watch?" she said.
"Isn't anyone seeing that Uyghurs are facing cultural and physical genocide today because of their identity and religion?"
She told CNN she believed that the US should consider sanctions.
Legislation introduced by Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) in the Senate and by Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Thomas Suozzi (D-NY) in the House, calls for the application of Global Magnitsky and related sanctions, among other measures.
The House version had 43 co-sponsors, according to Congress.gov; the Senate version, 28 co-sponsors.
Participants on Monday urged more lawmakers to sign on.
On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Rubio, Menendez, Smith and Rep. James McGovern (D-MA) sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross urging them to impose Global Magnitsky Sanctions on Chinese government and Communist Party officials.
The letter, signed by 22 other senators and 17 other representatives, also called on the Commerce Department "to strengthen export controls to ensure that US companies are not assisting the Chinese Government in creating the vast civilian surveillance or big-data predictive policing systems used in East Turkestan."
"Despite the Chinese government's obfuscations and its slanderous attacks on critics of its abusive policies, there is mounting global concern regarding China's treatment of its minority populations—human rights abuses that may constitute crimes against humanity," the letter said.
"We are disappointed with the Administration's failure so far to impose any sanctions related to the ongoing systemic and egregious human rights abuses in East Turkestan."
At Monday's event, there were also calls for Donald Trump to speak out against the abuses in conversations with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and other Chinese officials.
Trump will meet with the Vice Premier of China on Thursday.
"I would urge Trump to bring this up in his bilateral discussions as a higher priority than it is right now. There's nothing more important than, at the end of the day, celebrating what makes America exceptional and that is our commitment to human rights and to dignity and to freedom," Rep. Raja Krishnamoorth said.
"And if we can't uphold those values abroad, then where are we as a country? The day that we do not mention this in our bilateral discussion with any other countries is the day that we've lost our way," the Illinois Democrat said.

China's Final Solution

US legal residents are being held in Chinese concentration camps

By Michelle Kosinski and Jennifer Hansler

State Department sources say they know American residents -- either US citizens or people with legal status in the United States -- are being held in detention camps in East Turkestan, China.
When asked if there were many, one of the sources said, "No, a few."
They were unable to disclose more details due to privacy concerns, for the time being.
At a State Department briefing Thursday, Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback said he had a new report about a man in California whose father, a legal US resident, had not been heard from since returning to East Turkestan.
"He had legal status being here, traveled back to East Turkestan after being here with his son in California. And then has not been heard from since. And he's deeply concerned about whether, what his treatment is. He has a number of chronic illnesses, he's a 75-year-old man and an intellectual," Brownback said.
The 2018 State Department Human Rights report estimated that China arbitrarily detained 800,000 to possibly more than two million Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and other Muslims in concentration camps designed to erase religious and ethnic identities.
Uyghur refugee tells of death and fear inside China's East Turkestan camps

"International media, human rights organizations, and former detainees reported security officials in the camps abused, tortured, and killed some detainees," the report noted.
"And it's not just the camps anymore. Entire villages are being encased and people limited on their movement in and out, of the villages in that region that's occurring as well. The situation appears to be escalating, not de-escalating," Brownback said Thursday.
Former detainees say they were forced to endure intensive brainwashing sessions, including close studies of Communist Party propaganda. 

The Chinese government has defended these camps as a means of fighting what they claim is a rising tide of extremism in East Turkestan.
The Chinese government claims that the camps are "vocational and educational training centers for counter-terrorism and de-radicalization purposes."

Brownback said he raised the issue a few weeks ago with Chinese officials at the UN, who first denied anything was happening and then said they were "vocational training camps."
"To which I said, 'I get and have lists of names, hundreds of names that are sent to me, that can't find their relatives,'" he said.
"We are advocating strongly against these actions that the Chinese government is doing and continues to do," Brownback said.
The State Department on Thursday night reiterated its travel advisory for US citizens going to China, warning specifically of "extra security measures in the East Turkestan colony."
"We are committed to providing all possible consular assistance to US citizens in need abroad," a State Department spokesman said. 

"However, China does not recognize dual nationality. This means that China may prevent the US Embassy from providing consular services in some cases, and US-Chinese citizens and US citizens of Chinese heritage may be subject to additional scrutiny and harassment."
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who this week met with Uyghur refugee Mihrigul Tursun and several other members of the Uyghur community, has denounced the human rights violations in China.
"This is one of the worst human rights countries that we've seen since the 1930s," he said in a mid-March interview.

President Trump vs. Evil Empire

Religious freedom is a growing theme of President Donald Trump’s confrontation with Beijing, and it's resonating with Christian leaders.

By NAHAL TOOSI

Vice President Mike Pence infuriated Beijing when he gave a speech in October warning that China had become a dangerous rival to the United States. 

While he focused on familiar issues such as China’s trade policies and cyber espionage, Pence also denounced the country’s “avowedly atheist Communist Party.”
Citing a crackdown on organized religion in the country, Pence noted that Chinese authorities “are tearing down crosses, burning Bibles and imprisoning believers.”
“For China’s Christians,” Pence said, “these are desperate times.”
Pence’s remarks, which also addressed the repression of Chinese Buddhists and Muslims, illustrated how religious freedom is a growing theme of President Donald Trump’s confrontation with Beijing, which some foreign policy insiders warn could develop into a new Cold War.
It is a subject that resonates in the U.S. heartland, some Christian leaders say — parts of which, including rural areas, are disproportionately at risk of fallout from Trump’s trade fight with the Asian giant.
The issue has gained new resonance with Beijing’s arrest this month of a prominent Christian pastor and more than 100 members of his congregation.
The arrests have drawn close coverage from evangelical outlets such as Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), whose website published an open letter by the jailed pastor, Wang Yi, declaring his “anger and disgust at the persecution of the church by this Communist regime.”
Days after the arrests, Trump’s ambassador for international religious freedom, former Republican Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, decried the crackdown and said that in the weeks since Pence’s speech, religious freedom concerns “have only grown.”
While China’s religious persecution draws less media attention than issues like soybean tariffs and cyber espionage, it is closely tracked by conservative Christian activists and outlets like CBN, where a typical headline recently reported: “Chinese Government Destroys Christian Church, Bills Pastor for Demolition.”
In September, Providence Magazine, which covers U.S. foreign policy from a Christian perspective, wrote that in 2018 China’s religious repression has reached “a sustained intensity not seen since the Cultural Revolution.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly criticized China on such grounds.
In a report on international religious freedom released earlier this year, the State Department noted that throughout China there were reports of “deaths in detention of religious adherents as well as reports the government physically abused, detained, arrested, tortured, sentenced to prison, or harassed adherents of both registered and unregistered religious groups for activities related to their religious beliefs and practices.“
Religious activists note that Pence, Brownback, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other top Trump aides are people of faith with genuine concerns about religious freedom. 

But even they acknowledge the subject happens to be a potent political message for religious conservatives and may help rally them behind Trump’s confrontational China policy.
Some religious leaders even hear an echo of history: Cold War-era denunciations of godless Soviet communism by past U.S. presidents, notably Ronald Reagan.

“In the great heartland of America, where there tend to be higher levels of people who care about faith, reminding people that a regime — whether then the Soviet Union or today’s communist China — rejects God and has an official policy of atheism is helpful in getting them to understand why our government is taking certain actions in the foreign policy area,” said Gary Bauer, a longtime conservative Christian leader whom President Trump appointed to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
“Evil empire” was the famous label then-President Reagan applied to the Soviet Union in 1983. 

Less remembered is the fact that Reagan was addressing the National Association of Evangelicals.
Reagan vowed at the time that the Soviets “must be made to understand: … We will never abandon our belief in God.”
President Trump himself rarely addresses religious freedom or human rights, and when it comes to China he focuses mainly on Beijing’s trade practices. 

But his administration — backed by an evangelical base that stood for President Trump in 2016 and continues to support him enthusiastically — has strongly emphasized international religious freedom.

Earlier this year, for instance, the State Department hosted a first-ever gathering of foreign ministers devoted to the subject. (China was not invited and was targeted in a joint statement signed by a handful of countries, including the U.S.)
“This administration is putting this in the matrix of all of our policy,” said Tony Perkins, another prominent Christian conservative who serves on the religious freedom commission and is close to the White House. 

“It’s more than just the throwaway line.”
Pompeo, a former Republican congressman from Kansas, has also assailed Beijing for religious persecution, including at a September speech at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, an event affiliated with the Perkins-led Family Research Council.
During an appearance, Pompeo decried “an intense new government crackdown on Christians in China, which includes heinous actions like closing churches, burning Bibles, and ordering followers to sign papers renouncing their faith.”
Like Pence, Pompeo also dwelled on the plight of China’s Muslim population, particularly ethnic Uighurs from the Chinese colony of East Turkestan. 

A State Department official recently testified before lawmakers that up to 2 million Muslims are now confined to concentration camps in China.
“Their religious beliefs are decimated,” Pompeo told Values Voter Summit attendees.
The Chinese government, which often casts Uighur Muslims as potential "terrorists", says the camps are designed to teach vocational and life skills. 

But the State Department official, Scott Busby, said the goal is “forcing detainees to renounce Islam and embrace the Chinese Communist Party.”
While evangelical groups active in Washington tend to focus primarily on the persecution of Christians in China and elsewhere, some make sure to point out that they care about religious freedom for all faith groups, including Muslims. 

In a past interview with POLITICO, Brownback stressed that he also wants to protect people’s right to have “no religion at all.”
The Trump administration may unveil a set of human rights-related sanctions targeting officials in a range of countries in the coming weeks. 

Some China observers are hopeful the list will include Chen Quanguo, a top Communist Party official said to have orchestrated the anti-Muslim crackdown and to have had a role in repressing Tibetan Buddhists.
“It’s a critical moment,” said Bob Fu, a U.S.-based pastor and founder of ChinaAid, a group that advocates for religious freedom in China.
Brownback did not offer comment for this story, and a spokesman for Pompeo did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

A White House spokesperson said of Pence that “religious freedom throughout the world is a top priority for the vice president and the administration as a whole.”
Bauer predicted that evangelicals and other voters in the U.S. heartland will continue to support President Trump even if he expands his trade war with China. 

The administration, cognizant of the potential pain for its supporters, has taken some steps to cushion the blow, such as offering farming subsidies.
By retaliating against particular U.S. industries, such as soybean farmers, China is trying to pressure the administration. 

“I think China will fail in this effort and support for the Trump-Pence policies will remain strong,“ Bauer said.
When it comes to pleasing the religious right, the Trump administration has been willing to make some dicey moves.
This past summer, to the shock of the foreign policy establishment, Trump imposed economic sanctions on two Cabinet officials in Turkey — an important U.S. ally and fellow NATO member — due to the questionable imprisonment of an American pastor, Andrew Brunson.

Brunson, whose cause was championed by evangelicals, was eventually freed and the sanctions lifted.
How far the administration will push Beijing on religious freedom could come down to the president himself and what China is willing to do to assuage his concerns on trade.
Trump, after all, has been willing to drop talk of human rights issues when it seems he’s making progress on other fronts — that's what has happened in his dealings with North Korea.
The Chinese in particular are highly sensitive to their global image, and, like the Soviet Union, China cannot be ignored.