Inside the Chinese jail behind the Christmas card scandal

Former inmates at the prison where a plea was smuggled out in festive cards for Tesco say they faced forced labour and torture
By Lily Kuo
Qingpu prison in Shanghai. Former inmates have told the Observer of conditions inside the jail. 

For over three years, Leo spent his days at the Qingpu prison in Shanghai silently packaging sticky notes, face masks, gift bags and labels while guards kept close watch.
If he refused, he would be punished – barred from reducing his prison sentence, making phone calls home, or worse.
This Christmas, a cry for help from Leo and other foreign inmates of Qingpu was smuggled out, hidden in a Tesco greetings card.
Now the Observer has gathered testimony from six former inmates of Qingpu prison who describe in unprecedented detail the conditions they were forced to endure during their incarceration in China.
These include being forced to work for a pittance and in some cases tortured for disobeying prison authorities.
“If you don’t work you would be an enemy. If you don’t work, you would become a target,” said Leo, who says he was one of two inmates who wrote a total of 10 cards calling for attention to the plight of Qingpu’s prisoners.
“They will deprive you of so many things,” he said.
Leo, who provided his prison ID, court verdict and notice of his sentence, completed earlier this year, has asked to not reveal his real name for fear of retribution in his home country, where he believes Chinese influence is strong.
The name of the other inmate who he refers to, who is still in Qingpu, is being withheld to protect his safety.

Florence Widdicombe, six, who found the inmates’ plea for help in a Tesco Christmas card at her home in Tooting, south London.

China has one of the largest penal labour systems in the world, one that human rights advocates say has flouted international standards against forced labour for decades. 
Beijing maintains that prison labour, legal in China, is done in accordance with the law.
The ministry of foreign affairs did not respond to a request for a comment on this story.
The six former inmates, all released from Qingpu in the last two years, said they witnessed authorities forcing prisoners to work.
Four of the six, including Leo, described having to work between five and six hours a day, sometimes seven days a week, for as little as 30 yuan (£3.20) a month.
Two of the group said they refused to work and were punished in a range of ways, including not being allowed to buy clothes, soap, slippers or food to supplement the meagre meals provided, all items that had to be purchased from the prison.
Two inmates, one of whom refused to work, described being tortured through sleep deprivation, being strapped to a wooden plank, and in one case, waterboarding. 
The prison did not respond to requests for comment.
“Their prison system is meant to destroy rather than to reform,” said Peter Mbanasor, 42, a trader from Nigeria who spent more than two years in Qingpu after being convicted for concealing criminal income.
“People were forced to work because they don’t want to fall in [the guards’] hands.”
Qingpu, established in 1994 on about 8 square miles of land on the outskirts of Shanghai, holds 200 foreign inmates and describes itself as a “first-class prison” that cultivates “pride in work”.
In the last week, state media have released reports highlighting its “productive labour” on things such as jade and bamboo carvings done by inmates, to an orchestra and a Christmas musical production.
Former inmates paint a markedly different picture.
Wednesdays, reserved for “training”, usually consist of watching propaganda videos.
The work is menial and educational opportunities are few.

Peter Mbanasor. He was tied to a wooden plank in the prison.

“Nobody wants to do this kind of work. Some people want to learn new things, like fish farming, carpentry, making clothes or shoes. They are not teaching us,” said Leo.
Inmates said punishment – usually psychological, such as sending prisoners to solitary confinement – could be extremely cruel.
Mbanasor said he was sent to solitary for 21 days after he insisted on hosting church gatherings and Bible studies against guards’ orders.
In July 2017, he said he was tear-gassed and dragged from his cell to the “confinement” hall of small windowless rooms.
In 40°C heat, he was given hot water and barred from removing his clothing.
When he began praying aloud, a group of guards tied him to a wooden plank and left him for 24 hours.
Unable to move or get up to use the bathroom, he wet himself.
“All these things together are to destroy you. When it was happening, it was unspeakable,” he said.
Pedro Godoi, 45, a Brazilian businessman who served five years in Qingpu after being convicted of visa fraud, went on hunger strike over what he saw as mistreatment of prisoners.
He was also denied privileges when he refused to work.
He said he was strapped to a wooden plank for 12 days in solitary last year. 
A loudspeaker broadcast Chinese propaganda next to his head.
Inmates keeping watch woke him up every 20 minutes.
One former inmate said he saw Godoi being force-fed by doctors while tied to the wooden bed.
Godoi was waterboarded three times by Chinese inmates under orders from the prison authorities.
“Qingpu is a meat-grinder. It’s to destroy a person,” said Godoi, who was released in May.
“The idea of Qingpu is to show the people outside you can’t mess with the government. It’s a big labour camp. Arresting people in China is an industry. It’s a business.”
Three days before Christmas, Leo was watching the evening news when he saw the familiar Tesco card, featuring a kitten in a Santa hat.
Half a year earlier, as other inmates blocked the view of surveillance cameras in the workshop, Leo had hid five or six Tesco cards in his clothes.
Back in his cell, he nervously wrote on them and later slipped them back into the pile of cards destined for the UK.
Now, he was shocked to see one those notes being broadcast around the world.
“I was crying. I was really crying. I can’t believe it,” he said.
“My hope is that those people who are in prison can be treated as human beings. Just because someone committed a crime does not mean that should be the end of their life.”

China's crimes against humanity

Chinese Propaganda: Muslim Concentration Camp Survivor Arrested for ‘Inciting Hatred,’ Had Syphilis

By Frances Martel

The Chinese state propaganda outlet Global Times published an interview with a communist official in East Turkestan, home to most of the nation’s ethnic Uyghur Muslims, on Wednesday asserting that the concentration camps there are “schools” and all escaped prisoners are lying.
The attacks targeted two escapees in particular: Mihrigul Tursun, who fled to the United States and says Chinese government officials used electroshock torture on her, sterilized her, and killed her infant son; and Sayragul Sauytbay, who exposed the fact that China is imprisoning thousands of ethnic Kazakhs along with Uyghurs and uses rape and drugs to torture prisoners.
Tursun, the East Turkestan official claimed, was arrested for “inciting hatred” and was carrying syphilis when arrested. 

The official did not address Tursun’s allegation that concentration camp workers killed the oldest of her infant triplets, instead addressing Tursun’s claim that the Chinese government killed her brother by denying it and printing an alleged quote by him.
Sauytbay, the official claimed, was an incompetent teacher and a criminal fraud.
The Global Times did not offer evidence for any of its claims, such as a criminal or medical record for either woman.
China has for years attempted to subjugate the Uyghur, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz ethnic populations of East Turkestan, limiting the open practice of Islam and splitting children from devout families. 

In early 2018, however, reports began to surface that China had escalated its repression and begun building concentration camps to indoctrinate, torture, and enslave locals. 

Today, the United States government believes China is holding as many as 3 million people over 1,200 concentration camps across the country’s largest and westernmost state.
The Global Times repeated the Communist Party line that the camps are necessary to “train” individuals tempted to join jihadist groups and that they are a revolutionary way of eradicating "terrorism".
The official responding to the Global Times’ questions is an unnamed “spokesperson” for the East Turkestan government, a mouthpiece for the people running the concentration camps.
“I’d like to stress again that the "education and training centers" in East Turkestan are school in nature, set up according to law. They were never the so-called ‘concentration camps’ at all,” the spokesperson said. 

“Clinics are available in all the centers and professional doctors are there to provide 24-hour free medical service to trainees. Minor ailments are treated at the clinic. In the case of major and acute illnesses, trainees will be sent to hospital. The alleged nine female deaths are pure fabrications.”

In the interview, the official admits, using Orwellian Chinese communist language, that the camps serve two purposes: indoctrinating Muslims into worshipping dictator Xi Jinping and his authoritarian state, and using detainees as slaves. 

Or, in the language of a East Turkestan government spokesperson: “theoretical studies taught in classrooms and actual skills practiced in workshops.”
All those in "vocational camps", the official alleges, have some ties to "terrorism", ranging from being solicited to engage in terrorist activity to actually executing terrorist attacks.
The spokesperson claimed that no foreign citizens have ever been detained in the camp, despite Sauytbay’s testimony that as many as 2,500 ethnic Kazakhs – some, presumably, citizens of Kazakhstan – were in the camp authorities imprisoned her in. 

The government of Australia has also confirmed that some Australian citizens have landed in the camps.
The spokesperson accused Tursun of “instigating ethnic hatred and ethnic discrimination” and claimed that she did not face time in prison due to “humanitarian considerations,” because she had allegedly contracted “syphilis and other infectious diseases.” 

The spokesperson also offered a quote allegedly from brother Erkbar Tursun, who Mihrigul alleges the Chinese government murdered: “my sister is always telling lies. She not only said I died, but also lied about others’ deaths.”
The interview does not address Tursun’s infant son.
Sauytbay, the spokesperson alleged, was a schoolteacher. 

The spokesperson claimed she held a grudge against the government because she was caught “seeking performance bonuses through cheating.”
The official claimed that neither woman ever set foot in a camp, but provided no evidence of their alleged wrongdoing. 

The claims against Tursun appeared especially difficult to corroborate given that China significantly represses dissidents and defines “hate speech” as anything that jeopardizes the supremacy of the Communist Party.
Tursun began speaking out a year ago, when she arrived in Washington, DC. 

Her version of events significantly deviates from the Chinese regime’s. 

She told reporters at the National Press Club last year that authorities imprisoned her because she traveled to Egypt, her husband’s native country, once with her family. 

Once in the camps, she was subject to indoctrination, torture, and later confirmed sterilization.
“The authorities put a helmet-like thing on my head, and each time I was electrocuted, my whole body would shake violently and I would feel the pain in my veins,” Tursun described. 

“I begged them to kill me.”
Chinese media has previously claimed that Chinese people “laughed” when they heard her testimony.
Like Tursun, Sauytbay described the prison Chinese authorities locked her in as a concentration camp, calling it “much more horrifying than prison.” 

She saw detainees taken to a “black room” where they were raped and tortured and described the widespread use of drugs to make detainees more docile.
Their testimonies align with those of other survivors. 

Nearly all survivors are either ethnic Kazakhs who could appeal to the government of Kazakhstan for help or married to foreign citizens who appealed for their freedom.
“Any woman or man under age 35 was raped and sexually abused,” Ruqiye Perhat, a student arrested in East Turkestan in 2009 for four years, told the Washington Post in October. 

Perhat said violent forced abortions were common following the mass rape.
Other survivors have testified to enslavement, force-feeding of pork and alcohol to devout Muslims, and evidence of the harvesting of organs for sale on the black market.

Chinese State Terrorism

Former British consulate worker tells of torture by China over Hong Kong

By Simon Denyer 

A protester holds a poster at a rally in August supporting Simon Cheng, a British Consulate employee who was detained while returning from a trip to China.

HONG KONG — A former employee of the British Consulate in Hong Kong said Wednesday that he was repeatedly tortured by Chinese secret police over 15 days in August and was accused of inciting pro-democracy protests in the territory on behalf of the British government.
Simon Cheng, 29, in his first public account of his treatment published on Facebook, described being handcuffed and shackled, blindfolded and hooded, deprived of sleep, made to sit absolutely still or hung in an uncomfortable spread-eagle position for hours on end, and constantly threatened during incessant interrogations.
British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said his government was shocked and appalled by the “brutal and disgraceful treatment” that Cheng said he was subjected to after being detained during a business trip to Shenzhen in mainland China in August, and said it had summoned the Chinese ambassador in London to protest.
But China said its ambassador would never accept Britain’s “false allegations.”
Cheng’s detention reflects the growing bitterness between China and the West over the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, but his treatment also reflects Beijing’s increasing willingness to flout diplomatic norms as it becomes more assertive in projecting its power worldwide.
Meanwhile in Hong Kong, police and protesters braced for a final showdown at a university in Hong Kong on Wednesday as a small group of anti-government demonstrators continued to hold out against a police encirclement.

Cheng’s account was released just a day after the U.S. Senate unanimously passed legislation aimed at protecting human rights in Hong Kong and threatening sanctions against officials who have violated human rights there.
Cheng said he was arrested at the border between Hong Kong and mainland China, accused of inciting the protests. 

He was then shackled to a steel “tiger chair” unable to move his arms or legs, and threatened with indefinite criminal detention, while being denied access to a lawyer and not allowed to contact relatives.
He was later transferred to the secret police, when he was handcuffed, shackled, blindfolded and hooded.
“I was hung (handcuffed and shackled) on a steep X-Cross doing a spread-eagled pose for hours after hours,” he wrote. 

“I was forced to keep my hands up, so blood cannot be pumped up my arms. It felt extremely painful.”
Cheng said they forced him to do “stress test” exercises for hours on end, beat him with what felt like a sharpened baton if he did not do so, including on his “vulnerable and shivering body parts,” such as his knee.
His treatment left him seriously bruised on his ankles, thighs, wrists and knees, he said.
“Sometimes, they instructed me to stand still (handcuffed, shackled, blindfolded, and hooded) for hours after hours,” Cheng wrote. 

“I was not allowed to move and fall asleep, and if I did, then I would be punished by being forced to sing the Chinese national anthem, which they said can ‘wake me up.’ This was the nonphysical torture — sleep deprivation — they used against me.”
Cheng said the British Consulate had asked him to collect information about the protests in Hong Kong, to evaluate travel alerts and ascertain whether British citizens were involved. 

That work involved joining messaging and discussion groups and establishing contacts with protesters.
However, that appeared to have drawn the attention of China’s surveillance state. 

Cheng was accused of being a British spy and an enemy of the Chinese state, and told to confess that the British government was instigating the protests in Hong Kong by donating money, materials and equipment.
Cheng said that he had a massage in Shenzhen “for relaxation” after finishing work there and that China accused him of soliciting prostitution. 

He said he was ultimately forced to record a video confession admitting to this offense, as well as a separate confession for “betraying the motherland.”
Britain’s Raab described Cheng as a “valued member” of the consulate’s team. 

“We were shocked and appalled by the mistreatment he suffered while in Chinese detention, which amounts to torture,” he said in a statement.
Since being released, Cheng has negotiated his exit from the British Foreign Service and is applying for asylum in an undisclosed location.

Police detained protesters and students who tried to flee the Hong Kong Polytechnic University campus late Tuesday. 

A diplomatic showdown was also brewing between China and the United States over the Senate bill passed Monday.
The bill would require the secretary of state to certify annually whether Hong Kong is sufficiently autonomous from China to justify its special trading status.
Failure to do so would effectively deal a massive blow to Hong Kong’s status as a global financial and trading hub, and the American Chamber of Commerce warned of possible “unintended, counterproductive” consequences that could undermine the territory’s unique place in the world.
Protesters camp out in a gymnasium at Hong Kong Polytechnic University on Nov. 20. 

To become law, the measure must be combined with a separate bill passed by the House, and then President Trump must sign it.

Perfidious and Ungrateful Albion

UK criticised for its treatment of worker tortured in China
Simon Cheng, a former UK consular employee, has only been offered a two-year visa
By Emma Graham-Harrison and Verna Yu in Hong Kong

Simon Cheng had been tasked with monitoring the protests in Hong Kong for the British embassy. 

Questions have been raised about Britain’s treatment of a former UK consular worker from Hong Kong, who said he was asked to resign after being detained and tortured on a work trip to mainland China.
Simon Cheng has been offered a two-year UK visa, but sources said it is a “working holiday” type, which only allows him to spend 12 months employed and leaves him without a path to permanent residency.
It raises the prospect that even if he moves to Britain, he could eventually be forced to return to Hong Kong, where he said he no longer feels safe, in 2021. 

Critics say Britain should do more to protect ex-diplomatic staff.
“The details of what Mr Cheng says happened to him are heartbreaking and extraordinary: a kidnapping and a forced confession obtained by brutal torture,” said Lord Alton, vice chair of the cross-party Westminster Friends of Hong Kong group.
“The UK government must begin immediately preparing targeted sanctions, while offering asylum to those seeking to escape the iron grip of dictatorship like Simon Cheng.”
Cheng was seized at the border in late August, on his way back from a work trip to the Chinese border city of Shenzhen. 

He had been tasked with monitoring the protests in Hong Kong for the British embassy, in addition to his main job promoting trade.
He went public this week with an account of the torture that followed. 

Over 15 days of detention, it included stress positions, beating and psychological abuse, when he was accused of being a British agent.
He was so frightened after his ordeal that he initially refused to even let the UK consulate issue a statement condemning his treatment, he told the BBC, and has since fled Hong Kong.
Despite initially being granted compassionate leave, he said the UK had come to see him as a security risk because of his long interrogation, and this month he was asked to leave his post. 

“I was asked to resign on November 2019, which ended my roughly two-year service and employment.”
The British government claims that Cheng left his position voluntarily, and foreign secretary Dominic Raab said supporting the 29-year-old was his “over-riding concern”. 

He described Cheng’s ordeal as “disgraceful” and has summoned the Chinese ambassador to demand Beijing hold those responsible to account.
But the UK has offered Cheng only a two-year visa, and foreigners need to spend five years in the UK to be eligible for permanent residency.
After Cheng was released in September, he said he felt unsafe in Hong Kong because of threats from Chinese security officials who had originally detained him.
The Chinese authorities warned they could “abduct me back to mainland China in Hong Kong anytime if I don’t behave myself, such as exposing their hidden political motivation and agenda behind my detention to anyone”, he wrote.
Cheng said that he also did a full debrief with senior UK consulate officials after he was freed, and was warned to look out for suspicious people following him. 

He has now fled to a third country, while other activists are rallying international support.
“That someone could be tortured by a dictatorship and then effectively fired by the UK government is horrific and twisted,” said pro-democracy group Stand with Hong Kong. 

Asking someone to resign is hardly different to sacking them, not to mention treating Simon as a security risk after his ordeal, they said.
It also called on the government to prepare targeted sanctions like ones passed by the US.

Despicable China

Ex-Worker at U.K. Consulate in Hong Kong Tortured by China 
Simon Cheng spoke out publicly for the first time since he was detained in early August at the end of a business trip from Hong Kong to mainland China. 
By Amy Qin

Protesters outside the British Consulate in Hong Kong expressing support for Simon Cheng in August.

BEIJING — A former employee of Britain’s consulate in Hong Kong said on Wednesday that the Chinese police ortured and beat him, deprived him of sleep and hung him in a spread-eagled pose for hours as they sought information about what they alleged was foreign interference in the protests that have convulsed the city.

In a statement posted on Facebook, Simon Cheng spoke out publicly for the first time since he was detained in early August at the end of a business trip from Hong Kong to mainland China. 

When he was released after 15 days, the Chinese authorities said Mr. Cheng had confessed to unlawful activities.
“I was handcuffed, shackled, blindfolded and hooded,” Mr. Cheng, 29, said in his statement. 

“I speak out now because the case is relevant to the public interest on knowing the flawed judicial process in mainland China.”
Responding to the allegations, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab of Britain said he had summoned the Chinese ambassador in the United Kingdom to express outrage at what he called “the brutal and disgraceful treatment of Simon in violation of China’s international obligations.”
“Simon Cheng was a valued member of our team. We were shocked and appalled by the mistreatment he suffered while in Chinese detention, which amounts to torture,” Mr. Raab said, according to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Mr. Cheng’s accusations of extrajudicial torture of a Hong Konger could further inflame the protests, which began in June as a demonstration against an unpopular bill that would have allowed extraditions to the mainland. 

The protests have since morphed into a pitched battle between protesters, the police and the government over the future of the city.
Mr. Cheng’s disappearance prompted fears that China had detained him as a warning to protesters, or to Britain, which has expressed support for the pro-democracy movement.
Mr. Cheng traveled to Shenzhen, a mainland city that borders Hong Kong, to attend a business conference on Aug. 8. 

As he was making his way back he wrote to his girlfriend on WeChat, the Chinese messaging app, on a high-speed train. 

“Pray for me.”

China’s attacks on Uighur women are crimes against humanity

By Elizabeth M. Lynch
A Uighur demonstrator wears a mask during a protest in Istanbul on Oct. 1. 

Sitting in a hearing room in Congress, in a gray plaid hijab, her dark blond hair poking out, Mihrigul Tursun begins to cry. 

She is there to share the plight of her fellow Uighurs in East Turkestan. 

Her translator reads aloud Tursun’s prepared statement about her three separate detentions by the Chinese government in East Turkestan’s concentration camps. 

As the translator recounts Tursun’s first detention — upon her release, she learned that one of her 4-month-old triplets had died — Tursun struggles to hold back tears. 

But when the translator recounts the torture — little food, a tiger chair, electric shock treatment and a liquid that stopped her menstrual cycle and likely resulted in her sterilization, which has been confirmed by U.S. doctors — Tursun can’t hold back any longer. 

She starts to sob.
As Tursun’s translator, Zubayra Shamseden, who is also the outreach coordinator for the U.S.-based Uyghur Human Rights Project, wrote in an essay back in April, the Chinese government “wants to erase Uighur culture and identity by remaking its women.” 

Shamseden’s take — that if you want to eradicate a people, you must destroy its women — was not lost on the drafters of the Genocide Convention or the lawyers who shaped the doctrine of crimes against humanity. 

Both include nonlethal atrocities that are disproportionately perpetrated against women. 

Acts designed to prevent births and forcibly transfer children from their families could constitute genocide. 

Similarly, rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization and sexual violence each constitute a crime against humanity.
Though international law recognizes the gendered nature of mass atrocities, the world has paid little attention to the gender disparities of China’s campaign against the Uighurs. 

While women likely make up only an estimated 27 percent of the 1.5 million Uighur and other Turkic Muslims detained in East Turkestan’s concentration camps, their treatment has an outsize impact on Uighur culture. 

By targeting women, China is attempting to dilute the Uighur population and destroy its culture.
Tursun’s testimony was the first time the international community heard that women in East Turkestan’s concentration camps were forced to undergo treatment that disrupts their menstrual cycles. 

Since then, others have said the same thing. 

Gulbahar Jelilova, a businesswoman and another Uighur internment victim who was held in a cell with 40 other women, also stated that female inmates were injected weekly with a substance that stopped their periods.
Allegations of rape in the camps have surfaced, too. 

Sayragul Sauytbay, an ethnic Kazakh who was forced to work in one of the women’s camps in East Turkestan, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that every evening, the guards would take the pretty inmates with them, returning them in the morning. 

She also saw incidents of gang rape, including of one female inmate while other inmates were forced to watch. 

Shamseden told me that she too has heard that rape is common in the camps — as well as outside of the camps, where Uighur women are forced into situations where sexual harassment and sexual assault by their Han Chinese male bosses are prevalent.
In 2018, the government ramped up a program for Communist Party cadres to stay with a Uighur’s family home for five days every two months to “teach” the Uighurs about national unity. 

But this is another opportunity for Han Chinese men to take advantage of Uighur women. 

When I told Australian genocide expert Deborah Mayersen about these home visits, she immediately likened the situation to Ottoman Empire soldiers staying in Armenian homes prior to the Armenian genocide, where they were able to rape Armenian women with impunity.
Then there are the Chinese government’s efforts to minimize Uighur births and remove their children from their care. 

As gender studies expert Leta Hong Fincher highlighted in her recent book, the government has offered incentives for Uighur couples to have fewer children and for Uighur women to marry outside of their race. 

A large number of Uighur children have also been removed from their families and placed in boarding schools, according to a recent report, leaving the Chinese state to raise them.
The sexual violence against and forced sterilization of Uighur women and removal of Uighur children constitute crimes against humanity. 

So why isn’t the international community taking a stand? 

Why isn’t more attention paid to eyewitness accounts from women held in different camps that are eerily similar and mounting up? 

Especially since China has resisted international attempts to freely investigate what is happening in East Turkestan.
The United States is one of the few countries trying to do something. 

Last month, in a rare show of bipartisan support, the Senate passed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, and this month the administration issued a flurry of sanctions on Chinese companies and citizens. 

But there has been no mention of the stories of rape, forced sterilization or sexual harassment in any of these responses.
Even if the camps are disbanded, China’s gendered policies would remain. 

In addition to demanding that the Chinese government close the concentration camps, the U.S. government — and the rest of the world — must insist that the government end the abuse of Uighur women as well.

US leads China condemnation over barbaric East Turkestan repression

International community pushes for access to China's far western colony
https://www.aljazeera.com
The UN says at least one million Uighurs have been detained in what China calls "recreational education centres". This one is in Dabancheng and was still under construction at the time the photo was taken on September 4, 2018.

The United States led more than 30 countries on Tuesday in condemning what it called China's "horrific campaign of repression" against Muslims in the western colony of East Turkestan at an event on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly.
In highlighting abuses against ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims in China, Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan said the United Nations and its member states had "a singular responsibility to speak up when survivor after survivor recounts the horrors of state repression."
Sullivan said it was incumbent on UN-member states to ensure the world body was able to closely monitor human rights abuses by China and added that it must seek "immediate, unhindered, and unmonitored" access to East Turkestan for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Sullivan said Tuesday's event was co-sponsored by Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Britain, and was joined by more than 30 UN states, representatives of the European Union and more than 20 nongovernmental organisations, as well as Uighurs themselves.
"We invite others to join the international effort to demand and compel an immediate end to China’s horrific campaign of repression," he said. 

"History will judge the international community for how we respond to this attack on human rights and fundamental freedoms."

Negotiating access
Paola Pampaloni, deputy managing director for Asia of the European External Action Service, said the EU was "alarmed" by the situation and also urged "meaningful" access to East Turkestan.
"We are concerned about ... information about mistreatment and torture," she said. 

"China is always inviting us to the camps under their conditions, we are in negotiations right now for terms and conditions for free access."
On Monday, Donald Trump had called for an end to religious persecution at another event on the sidelines of the UN gathering. 

He repeated his comments in a speech on Tuesday.
Trump, who has been cautious about upsetting China on human rights issues while making a major trade deal with Beijing a major priority, said religious freedom was under growing threat around the world but fell short of specifically mentioning the situation in East Turkestan.
"Volume is coming up at a pace that we hope that the Beijing government recognises not only US but the global concern about this situation," David Stilwell, US Assistant Secretary, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs told reporters at a briefing.
"We will see how that plays out and how Beijing reacts and take it from there."

The UN says at least one million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims have been detained in what China describes as "recreational training centres" to give people new skills.
Sullivan said the US had received "credible reports of deaths, forced labour, torture, and other cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment" in the camps.
He said that the Chinese government forced detainees to renounce their ethnic identities as well as their culture and religion.
Though US officials have ramped up criticism of China's measures in East Turkestan, it has refrained from responding with sanctions, amid on-again, off-again talks to resolve a bitter, costly trade war.
At the same time, it has criticised other countries, including some Muslim states, for not doing enough or for backing China's approach in East Turkestan.
Rishat Abbas, the brother of Uighur physician Gulshan Abbas, who was abducted from her home in Urumqi in September 2018, told Tuesday's event that "millions of Uighurs are becoming collateral damage to international trade policies, enabling China to continue to threaten our freedoms around the world, enable it to continue its police state.”
UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet has repeatedly pushed China to grant the UN access to investigate reports of disappearances and arbitrary detentions, particularly of Muslims in East Turkestan.
China's envoy in Geneva said in June that he hoped Bachelet would visit China, including East Turkestan. 

Bachelet's office said in June that it was discussing "full access".

Chinazism: Hong Kong becomes a police state

The Hong Kong government is using its police force as a tool to abuse the public power and to torture the people

Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON, United States – Hong Kong is a police state where officers – once dubbed "Asia's finest" – are conducting abuses in the service of the city's pro-Beijing leadership, prominent voices in the global financial hub's weeks-long protest movement told AFP Saturday, September 21.
The comments came as riot police and demonstrators in Hong Kong fought brief skirmishes Saturday near the Chinese border.
They were the latest clashes during more than 3 months of demonstrations to protest stuttering freedoms in the semi-autonomous territory.
"Within these 3-and-a-half months, we have seen the police in Hong Kong getting totally out of control," activist and pop star Denise Ho said in an interview with AFP.
"Hong Kong has become a police state where the government is hiding behind the police force and refusing to find solutions to the present crisis," she added.
Well-known figures in the leaderless protest movement have visited the United States, Germany, Taiwan, and Australia to raise awareness.
"Our police system has been corrupted into a personal tool for Carrie Lam to maintain her power and to abuse the public power to torture the people, to silence the people," another activist, Brian Leung, said in the AFP interview.
He was referring to the leader of the former British colony, who was not directly elected but appointed by an overwhelmingly Beijing-friendly committee.
On Friday, September 20, Amnesty International accused Hong Kong police of using excessive force.
"In an apparent thirst for retaliation, Hong Kong's security forces have engaged in a disturbing pattern of reckless and unlawful tactics against people during the protests," said Nicholas Bequelin, the watchdog's East Asia Director.
"This has included arbitrary arrests and retaliatory violence against arrested persons in custody, some of which has amounted to torture," he added.
Leung told AFP, "There are countless incidents of such brutality and the worst of the situation is the police has systematically concealed their identity, are not showing their faces... which makes accountability impossible."
He alleged that some injured protesters do not go to the hospital because they fear that could lead to police getting information about them.
"So we do not know the exact scale and numbers of those injuries and we are sure that the police, if they continue such brutality, it will be only a matter of time before some citizen might suffer from fatal injuries," Leung added.
Millions took to Hong Kong's streets beginning in June, but small groups of hardcore protesters have set fires, stormed the city's legislature, and hurled rocks and petrol bombs at officers, who have fired back with tear gas and rubber bullets.
Joshua Wong, another activist, said he is one of 200 among the 1,500 arrested to face prosecution.
A 12-year-old child was also detained, and "even [a] first aider, doctors, or [a] nurse in the protest zone, they will still be arrested by riot police without any legitimate reason," he said.
"Hong Kong [has] transformed from a modern global city to a police state with police violence," Wong told AFP.
Among their demands, activists want an independent probe of police brutality.
The protests began against a now-scrapped plan to allow extraditions to the authoritarian Chinese mainland, but grew into a wider campaign for democracy, fuelled by animosity towards the police.
Under a deal that outlined Hong Kong's return to China from British colonial rule in 1997, Hong Kong enjoys liberties and rights not seen on the mainland, but freedoms are being eroded by Beijing.

Chinazism

ARBITRARY ARRESTS, BRUTAL BEATINGS AND TORTURE IN HONG KONG POLICE DETENTIONS REVEALED

Amnesty International

A new Amnesty International field investigation has documented an alarming pattern of the Hong Kong Police Force deploying reckless and indiscriminate tactics, including while arresting people at protests, as well as exclusive evidence of torture and other ill-treatment in detention.
After interviewing nearly two dozen arrested persons and gathering corroborating evidence and testimonies from lawyers, health workers and others, the organization is demanding a prompt and independent investigation into the violations, which appear to have escalated in severity since the mass protests began in June.
“The Hong Kong police’s heavy-handed crowd-control response on the streets has been livestreamed for the world to see. Much less visible is the plethora of police abuses against protesters that take place out of sight,” said Nicholas Bequelin, East Asia Director at Amnesty International.
“The evidence leaves little room for doubt – in an apparent thirst for retaliation, Hong Kong’s security forces have engaged in a disturbing pattern of reckless and unlawful tactics against people during the protests. This has included arbitrary arrests and retaliatory violence against arrested persons in custody, some of which has amounted to torture.”
More than 1,300 people have been arrested in the context of the mass protests that started over proposed legislative amendments that would have allowed for extradition to mainland China. 

While the vast majority of protesters have been peaceful, there has been violence, which appears to be escalating alongside excessive use of force by the police. 

Most people who spoke to Amnesty International requested anonymity, citing fears of reprisals from the authorities amid a climate of impunity.
Interviews of arrested persons and lawyers by Amnesty International show that police violence most commonly occurred before and during arrest. 

In several cases, detained protesters have also been severely beaten in custody and suffered other ill-treatment amounting to torture. 

In multiple instances, the abuse appears to have been meted out as “punishment” for talking back or appearing uncooperative.
A man detained at a police station following his arrest at a protest in the New Territories in August told Amnesty International that after he refused to answer a police intake question, several officers took him to another room. 

There, they beat him severely and threatened to break his hands if he tried to protect himself.
“I felt my legs hit with something really hard. Then one [officer] flipped me over and put his knees on my chest. I felt the pain in my bones and couldn’t breathe. I tried to shout but I couldn’t breathe and couldn’t talk,” he said.

As the man was pinned to the ground, a police officer forced open the man’s eye and shined a laser pen into it, asking, “Don’t you like to point this at people?” 

This was an apparent reprisal for some protesters’ use of laser pens amid the protests. 

The man was later hospitalized for several days with a bone fracture and internal bleeding.
Amnesty International interviewed a different man who was arrested on another day in August in Sham Shui Po. 

The arresting officer repeatedly asked him to unlock his phone for inspection; angry at the refusals, the officer threatened to electrocute the man’s genitals. 

The man told Amnesty International he was “scared” the officer might follow through, “as the times are so crazy, I suppose anything is possible.”
While detained in a police station common room, the same man witnessed police officers force a boy to shine a laser pen into his own eye for about 20 seconds. 

“It seems he used the laser pen to shine at the police station,” the man recalled. 

“They said, ‘If you like to point the pen at us so much, why don’t you do it to yourself?’”
Amnesty International also documented a clear pattern of police officers using unnecessary and excessive force during arrests of protesters, with anti-riot police and a Special Tactical Squad (STS), commonly known as “raptors”, responsible for the worst violence. 

Almost every arrested person interviewed described being beaten with batons and fists during their arrest, even when they posed no resistance.
A young woman arrested at a protest in Sheung Wan in July was one of many protesters who described being clubbed from behind with a police baton as she was running away from a police charge; she was knocked to the ground and police officers continued to beat her after her hands were zip-tied.
Similarly, a man arrested at a protest in Tsim Sha Tsui in August described retreating and then running as police charged at the assembled protesters. 

He told Amnesty International that “raptors” caught up to him and hit him from behind with their batons on his neck and shoulder. 

He said: “Immediately I was beaten to the ground. Three of them got on me and pressed my face hard to the ground. A second later, they kicked my face … The same three STS kept putting pressure on my body. I started to have difficulty breathing, and I felt severe pain in my left ribcage … They said to me, ‘Just shut up, stop making noise.’”
According to medical records, he was hospitalized for two days and treated for a fractured rib and other injuries. 

In more than 85% of cases investigated by Amnesty International (18 out of 21), the arrested person was hospitalized as a result of their beating, with three of them spending at least five days in a hospital.
“Time and again, police officers meted out violence prior to and during arrests, even when the individual had been restrained or detained. The use of force was therefore clearly excessive, violating international human rights law,” said Nicholas Bequelin.
Amnesty International also documented multiple instances of arbitrary and unlawful arrests, as well as numerous cases where police denied or delayed access to lawyers and medical care to detainees. 

Providing timely access to lawyers, family members and medical professionals for persons in custody is an important safeguard against torture and other ill-treatment.
The findings come after a group of UN experts expressed alarm about the Hong Kong police’s pattern of attacks on and arrests of protesters.
“Given the pervasiveness of the abuses we found, it is clear that the Hong Kong Police Force is no longer in a position to investigate itself and remedy the widespread unlawful suppression of protesters. Amnesty International is urgently calling for an independent, impartial investigation aimed at delivering prosecutions, justice and reparation, as there is little trust in existing internal mechanisms such as the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC),” said Nicholas Bequelin.

In Hong Kong, the Freedom to Publish Is Under Attack

If the extradition law is eventually forced through the Hong Kong legislature, censorship of books will become commonplace in what has long been a bastion of publishing freedom.
BY JAMES TAGER
A general view shows Harcourt Road after it was cleared in Hong Kong early on June 22 after protests on June 21. 

For most of the world’s publishers, it would be very unusual for editors to take into account a country’s extradition laws before greenlighting a book. 

And yet, publishers and booksellers based in Hong Kong may well have to do so, due to a proposed new extradition policy that would have painful and chilling effects on the climate for free expression, press freedom, and the freedom to publish in the city.
Today, the future of the policy, which would allow those arrested in Hong Kong to be extradited to mainland China, stands on a knife’s edge: The bill has been so unpopular that it has been the target of a series of historically massive demonstrations, with hundreds of thousands of protesters taking to the streets. 

On June 15, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced that the bill was indefinitely suspended, but she has so far refused to withdraw it entirely. 

The next few days may determine whether this bill lurches forward or dies entirely as protesters gear up for another round of demonstrations.
Publishers across the globe should be paying very close attention, as their rights are among those at stake. 

If passed, such a law could force publishers with a presence in Hong Kong to choose between risking the safety of their staff or submitting to China’s harsh political censorship system under which criminal charges can lead to prison.
If passed, such a law could force publishers with a presence in Hong Kong to choose between risking the safety of their staff or submitting to China’s harsh political censorship system under which criminal charges can lead to prison.
Although Hong Kong is Chinese territory, it has a separate legal system from the rest of China, as a consequence of the 1997 handover from British control. 

This legal distinction means Hong Kong cannot at the moment turn over criminal suspects to China without a formalized extradition agreement between the two—which, to this day, China and Hong Kong do not have.
This may sound insignificant, but it is actually critical to guaranteeing the rights of Hong Kong’s people. 

In Hong Kong, the judiciary is independent from authorities, and fair trial rights are generally guaranteed. 

In mainland China—whose courts have a conviction rate of over 99 percent—the picture is dramatically different: Torture and coerced confessions are systemic, closed-door show trials are not uncommon, and the courts follow the mandate of Chinese Communist Party officials. 

The Chinese wield the courts as a weapon against political dissidents, criminalizing vast categories of political expression.
This is why large segments of Hong Kong society have reacted with such alarm to the news that Hong Kong’s legislature was attempting to ram through a sweeping legal change—one that would grant broad new powers to Hong Kong’s chief executive to authorize the extradition of any person in Hong Kong on the so-called request of mainland authorities.
Over the past couple weeks, Hong Kongers have protested in massive numbers: Organizers have estimated that a demonstration on June 16 saw almost 2 million demonstrators taking to the streets— in a city of less than 8 million people. 

The artistic community has also responded, with art galleries closing their doors in an act of protest. 

Business leaders have also expressed concerns, causing a dip in the Hong Kong stock market, and earlier this month 3,000 lawyers participated in a rare silent protestthrough the city streets.
International publishers should similarly be deeply concerned: If the extradition bill passes, no publisher in Hong Kong will be free from the threat of criminal charges.

The amendments apply to foreigners as well as citizens, meaning that anyone within—or even passing through—Hong Kong’s borders would be a potential target for extradition to the mainland. International publishers and booksellers with a presence in Hong Kong are able to produce and sell books there that would never be published in the mainland for reasons of censorship, and some Hong Kong-sold books eventually end up back in mainland China through individuals who buy them while traveling for work or on vacation. 

This is certainly enough for mainland authorities to view this entire sector with a prosecutorial—and persecutory—eye.
Hong Kong would rubber-stamp any extradition request from the mainland. 

Beijing handpicks nominees for the position of Hong Kong’s chief executive. 

It’s naive to think that the chief executive, Lam, would reject an extradition request from the same authorities who picked her for the job. 

And the decision to extradite would essentially be hers alone. 

The Hong Kong legislature—with a large majority of pro-Beijing stalwarts sitting alongside a nonetheless sizable minority of pro-democracy delegates—would have no authority to scrutinize extradition requests.
Similarly, Hong Kong courts would have little say in the matter: A Hong Kong judge would be required to approve extradition as long as there was sufficient prima-facie evidence to result in an indictment. 

This is a low standard of proof, compared to the standard for a criminal conviction. 

And while the courts can reject an extradition request if they find it is politically motivated, the burden is on suspects to prove they are being politically targeted. 

In other words, Hong Kong courts would essentially be taking mainland authorities at their word that they filed an actionable extradition request in good faith.
But authorities in mainland China have a history of bad faith in this regard, and several of the most troubling examples involve the publishing world. 

In the past few years alone, Chinese state agents have abducted several Hong Kong-based booksellers or publishers, putting them through a Kafkaesque legal process. 

In 2014, a Shenzhen court sentenced the Hong Kong publisher Yiu Man-tin to 10 years in prison for “smuggling ordinary goods,” after he planned to publish a book critical of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.
The following year, Chinese agents abducted five Hong Kong booksellers, forcing them to appear on state television to give coerced confessions regarding running an “illegal business” by selling books to mainland China. 

This case, known as the Causeway Bay Books disappearances, is still not resolved: More than three years later, one of the booksellers—the Swedish citizen Gui Minhai — is still detained incommunicado in China as his health worsens.
In fact, mainland authorities have no problem making up spurious legal claims to punish independent voices in the Hong Kong publishing world. 

After Gui was kidnapped from his vacation home in Thailand in October 2015 by Chinese agents, mainland authorities claimed that he had voluntarily returned to China to resolve a decade-old hit-and-run charge against him.
While Hong Kong’s government has claimed that the proposed bill would not enable extradition for political crimes or for various types of commercial crimes, experts have pointed out that this would not stop mainland authorities from using elastically defined charges—like fraud—as a pretext for political censorship. 

After all, if Chinese state agents are willing to egregiously break international law through kidnapping publishers, it is hard to believe they will act with restraint after given this powerful new legal tool.
Protesters have begun demanding that the Hong Kong government withdraw the bill entirely, that Lam resign, and that the government drop charges against those who have been arrested. 

Additional demonstrations are already planned, meaning that the future of this bill could be decided within the next few weeks.
Given the incredible outpouring of protest against this bill, it would be easy to conclude that the threat has already passed. 

After all, Lam has already announced the bill’s suspension. 

But a suspended bill can always arise again. 

Lam has pointedly refused to commit to scrapping the bill entirely, saying she would only proceed with it if the “fears and anxieties” of Hong Kongers could be “adequately addressed.” 

That leaves a lot of wiggle room for the government to propose a new version of this bill down the road, once Lam or top officials in Beijing decide that the people are no longer so anxious.
Publishers and booksellers with staff in Hong Kong (or visiting the city) should be very worried. Hong Kong has traditionally been a bastion of media freedom and uncensored publishing in Asia—accessible to the Chinese market but removed from China’s censorship strictures and its criminal penalties for those who speak truth to power.
The extradition bill and future legislation like it would threaten this freedom, and publishers around the world would need to begin asking themselves, “If I publish this book in Hong Kong, is there a chance that I or a colleague could face criminal charges in a Chinese court?” 

The result will be self-censorship driven by fear as Hong Kong is further stripped of the protections that make it a safe harbor for readers and booksellers alike.

China's crimes against humanity

Security cameras and barbed wire: Living amid fear and oppression in East Turkestan
By Matt Rivers and Lily Lee

East Turkestan -- The small bedroom is frozen in time. The two little girls who used to sleep here left two years ago with their mother and now can't come home.

Their backpacks and school notebooks sit waiting for their return. 

A toy bear lies on the bed. 

Their clothes hang neatly in the closet.
The girls' grandmother says she can't bring herself to change it.
"The clothes still smell like them," she says, her words barely audible through heavy sobs.
Ansila Esten and Nursila Esten, ages 8 and 7, left their home in Almaty, Kazakhstan, with their mother, Adiba Hayrat, in 2017.
The three traveled to China where Adiba Hayrat planned to take a course in makeup application and visit her parents in the western border region of East Turkestan, leaving her husband, Esten Erbol, and then 9-month-old son Nurmeken behind in Kazakhstan, Esten told CNN.
Not long after she arrived, however, she was detained. 

He hasn't heard from her for more than two years.
"My son wasn't even 1 when she left," Esten Erbol said. 

"When he sees young women in the neighborhood, he calls them mama. He doesn't know what his own mother looks like."

Adbia Hayrat's two daughters, Ansila Esten and Nursila Esten, in a family photo kept by their father.

Adiba Hayrat and her two daughters are Chinese citizens, of Kazakh minority descent.
She grew up in China, as did their daughters.
Their young son was born in Almaty.
The family was in the process of becoming citizens of Kazakstan when Adiba Hayrat was taken by Chinese authorities.
Her family in Kazakhstan says she was held in a detention camp in East Turkestan for more than a year, while her children were sent to live with distant relatives.
She has since been released, according to her family.
But Adiba Hayrat is now living with her parents and working in a forced labor facility, earning pitiful wages, unable to contact her family in Kazakhstan for fear of being sent back into detention.
According to the US State Department, up to 2 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyzs and other predominately Muslim ethnic minorities have been held against their will in massive camps in East Turkestan.
An unknown number are working in forced labor facilities, and like Adiba, they are unable to leave China.

'My wife is not a terrorist'
Activists and former detainees allege the East Turkestan concentration camps were built rapidly over the last three years, the latest stage in an ongoing and widespread crackdown against ethnic minorities in the region.
Torture inside the camps is rampant, including in accounts given to CNN by former detainees.
The Chinese government has faced a rising tide of international criticism over its East Turkestan policies, including from the United States.
The camps are Beijing's attempt to eliminate the region's Islamic cultural and religious traditions -- a process of sinicization, by which ethnic minorities are forcibly assimilated into wider majority Han Chinese culture.
Beijing says the camps are "vocational training centers" designed to fight terrorism.
Even if you buy that explanation, Esten Erbol said, it wouldn't apply to his wife.
"My wife is not a terrorist," he said.

Adiba Hayrat and her son Nurmeken, who has been separated from his mother for more than a year.

After Adiba's detention ended, Esten Erbol was told by a friend in the area that his wife had been allowed to live with her parents and children again while she worked in the forced labor facility.
Many ex-detainees are forced to work in such facilities, used by authorities to maintain control over the former detainees.
A US congressional bill introduced in January said there were credible reports that former detainees were made to produce cheap consumer goods in forced work facilities under threat of returning to the detention centers.
Esten Erbol has been told by a friend in the area that officials took his wife's passport, so she and their daughters can't return to Kazakhstan.
The wait is agony.
He has no way to contact her directly, and fears if he traveled to East Turkestan to find her, he could end up in a camp himself.
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not reply to a request for comment when asked about the family's allegations about her detention, or whether she is currently being forced to work.

China's 'new territory'
East Turkestan is the largest Chinese colony, a sprawling arid landscape in the country's far west which has a comparatively tiny population of 22 million.
It is home to a variety of minority groups, of which the predominantly Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uyghurs are the largest.
Uyghurs are culturally and linguistically distinct from Han Chinese, the country's dominant ethnic group.
This is due in part to the fact that East Turkestan has only officially been part of China for less than two centuries.
These differences have led Beijing to often take a stricter approach to security in East Turkestan but those policies have become more draconian following violent protests against Han Chinese in July 2009.
The riots saw locals rampage through the capital Urumqi with clubs, knives and stones, resulting in a brutal counterattack by paramilitary police and the Chinese military.
Chinese state media said a total of 197 people were killed.
When CNN travelled through East Turkestan, the signs of an increased police presence were everywhere.
Today, in most cities in East Turkestan, there are facial surveillance cameras about every 150 feet, feeding images back to central command centers, where people's faces and routines are monitored and cross-referenced.
Mobile police checkpoints pop up at random throughout the region, leading to long lines on public roads.
At the checkpoints, and sometimes randomly on the street, police officers stop people to ask for their ID cards and occasionally demand to plug unidentified electronic devices into cellphones to scan them without explanation.
Daily life is much easier in East Turkestan for Han Chinese, the dominant ethnic majority in the rest of China.
At the security checkpoints, Han Chinese are often waived through without being checked or presenting ID.
During a nearly week-long trip to the region CNN did not witness one non-Han Chinese person afforded the same privilege.
For Uyghurs or other residents, the increased surveillance has turned their lives upside down.
A simple trip to the market or to see friends can take hours, due to the unpredictable and intrusive nature of the police checks.
Everyone knows someone who's been detained or at least harassed, activists say.
Behind the walls of East Turkestan's camps, former detainees say even worse awaits those who fall foul of authorities.
State media has produced a constant drum beat of news that the terrorism threat in the region is real and would spin out of control were it not for the strict security measures.
As a result, many local Han Chinese we spoke to support the policies.
"Life has gotten so much safer in the past few years," one Han Chinese taxi driver said, declining to give his name.
He said East Turkestan is safer for everyone now.
"Even if I leave my car on the street unlocked, I don't worry about it getting stolen."

Barbed wire and guard towers
In late March, CNN traveled to East Turkestan for six days to get a first-hand look at the camps, attempting to see three different facilities in three cities hundreds of miles apart.
The Chinese government has repeatedly decried foreign media's reporting on the camps as inaccurate, claiming authorities have been transparent about the facilities.
Beijing has invited diplomats from select countries to tour the camps in a tightly controlled setting. 
The diplomats come from countries with their own circumspect records on human rights, including Pakistan, Russia and Uzbekistan.
A select group of journalists has visited the camps under similar conditions.
Reuters was the only representative of Western media.
CNN has asked repeatedly to be allowed to visit the camps.
All those requests were denied or ignored.
When CNN attempted to visit the camps, there was repeated obstruction by Chinese authorities who blocked attempts to film, to speak to the relatives of inmates and to even travel to certain parts of the region.
The closest CNN got to a camp was in a small city named Artux, not far from the city of Kashgar, in East Turkestan's southwest.

Concentration camp on the outskirts of Kashgar, which CNN tried to enter but was turned away by guards.

The building which China has described as a "voluntary vocational training center" looked far more like a prison. 
The massive facility was ringed by a high wall, barbed wire and guard towers, as well as large numbers of security personnel.
CNN was prevented by authorities at the facility from openly filming it, despite complying with Chinese laws on journalistic activities.
Attempts to speak to the dozens of people bringing food to their family members inside the camp were blocked by nearly 20 security personnel and government officials who pulled up not long after CNN arrived.
When asked, a woman told CNN her mother was "receiving training" inside the camp.
Another man said his brother was being held there for a vague "ID violations."
But when both were pressed for more information, a half-dozen plain-clothed officials shouted at the man and the woman to be quiet and return to their cars.
They didn't fight the order.

'Why are you here?'
More than 1,000 miles to the east of Kashgar lies the city of Turpan.
It's a small town by Chinese standards, just over 600,000 people, surrounded by a fiercely inhospitable desert.
CNN attempted to see another camp in the city, finding a large facility surrounded by a high wall.
But after arriving at the center, the team were greeted by local police, who angrily demanded to know what they were doing there.
When asked what the facility was, one police officer responded angrily, "You don't have to be asking that! Why are you here?"
No further access to the camp was given, and the officer demanded the footage be deleted.

Another concentration camp outside the town of Turpan, which CNN also found to be inaccessible.

Outside Urumqi, a third camp was completely inaccessible.
A police checkpoint blocked the only road leading to the facility, several miles away from the site.
Local drivers were allowed to pass the site, but a police officer told CNN that no foreigners were allowed down the road.
When asked why, he simply shrugged and asked the team to respect "local regulations."
It's unclear what regulations he was referring to.
CNN asked both the East Turkestan government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the obstacles faced when doing legal journalism in East Turkestan.
Neither responded.

China tries to thwart CNN probe into detention camps

'Love of my life'
Hundreds of miles to the north, the town of Toli also turned out to be completely inaccessible.
Esten Erbol, the father of the two missing girls, believes that this town is where his wife and daughters are residing with her parents.
It's also where he and his wife, Adiba Hayrat, first met and fell in love.
CNN tried on two separate occasions to drive to Toli to see the town and try to find Adiba but was blocked by officials both times before reaching its center.
On the first occasion, local government officials at the nearest airport said it would be possible to see the town.
But on the drive there, the road was blocked by police who said there had been a traffic accident up ahead.
No accident was visible for miles down the flat, empty road.
The second time, instead of being allowed to access the town, the CNN team was escorted by police to a small tourist area and forced to attend a banquet that had been hastily arranged inside a makeshift yurt.
Horse and lamb were served as musicians played traditional folk music, to which government officials danced enthusiastically.
Multiple requests to leave and see the town were ignored.
In the end, the team had to drive back to the airport immediately to avoid missing its flight.
Despite multiple attempts, the CNN team didn't locate Adiba or her daughters.
Esten had sent a message to be passed onto his wife, should the team reach her.
"Tell her that her son and I are waiting for her, that we will always wait for her and that she is the love of my life," Esten wrote CNN via text message.
Adiba did not hear those words.
And it's unclear if she ever will.

Rogue Investment

Think twice about your investment portfolio. It likely undermines human rights in China.
By Marion Smith

Rushan Abbas, 51, of Herndon, Va., holds a photo of her sister, Gulshan Abbas, last year in Washington. Her sister is among the many Uighurs detained by China. 

Does your retirement plan or investment portfolio undermine human rights in China?

For millions of Americans, the answer is yes. 

They unwittingly hold or benefit from investments in companies that enable the Chinese Communist Party’s oppression and imprisonment of the Uighur people.
Consider two Chinese firms, Hikvision and Dahua Technology. 

They supply about one-third of the world’s security cameras, but in their home country, both companies have received government contracts — totaling more than $1 billion — to install a vast surveillance apparatus in the western colony of East Turkestan. 

“The projects include not only security cameras but also video analytics hubs, intelligent monitoring systems, big data centers, police checkpoints, and even drones,” Charles Rollet wrote in June in Foreign Policy.
Beijing has deployed the system to try to control the predominantly Muslim Uighurs, viewed by the Communist Party as a threat to its power in that region. 

The surveillance equipment helps authorities identify supposedly dangerous individuals, many of whom are then shipped to concentration camps that Beijing calls “vocational training centers.” 

Of a total population of about 11 million, 2 million Uighurs may have been thus imprisoned.
In these camps, Uighurs are subjected to torture and brainwashing intended to eradicate their culture and force them to embrace communist ideology. 

The Post’s editorial board has decried this “massive campaign of cultural extermination.”
For their part, Hikvision and Dahua have not directly addressed their involvement in Beijing’s surveillance of the Uighurs. 

The companies have pointed with pride to their contribution to "anti-terrorism" efforts generally, and Hikvision last year lamented how “Western media” has distorted its image with “alarmist headlines.”
But the surveillance state that Beijing has established in East Turkestan would not be possible without the companies’ help. 

Most Americans would not willingly support companies that enabled such oppression, but many investment funds and state pension plans own shares in Hikvision and Dahua Technology, likely without individual investors’ knowledge.
The investments occur through several different channels. 

Most directly, U.S.-based funds purchase shares of the two companies. 

The New York State Teachers’ Retirement System (NYSTRS) owned more than 26,000 Hikvision shares at the end of last year. 

The California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), which represents nearly 1 million members and beneficiaries, owned more than 4.3 millionshares in Hikvision as of last June. 

NYSTRS did not respond to a request for comment. 

A CalSTRS spokesperson said they are “researching the issues surrounding the company.”
Another path for investment comes through the influential MSCI Emerging Markets Index. 

Many funds invest directly in the index, while others follow its portfolio. 

The MSCI index is currently tracked by $2 trillion in assets. 

The index added Chinese A-Class shares from both Hikvision and Dahua last year. 

Any time a fund invests in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, it buys positions in both businesses.
Through both active and passive investment funds, Americans also hold stock or bonds in many other questionable or dangerous Chinese companies, including subsidiaries of firms affiliated with the Chinese military. 

According to RWR Advisory Group, U.S. investment funds rarely conduct due diligence to identify and avoid companies complicit in human rights abuses or connected to China’s defense industry. 

The Financial Times reports that public attention to their investments in Hikvision has prompted at least seven U.S. equity funds to divest from the company, but the better path is to be proactive, not reactive.
Fortunately, the U.S. government and lawmakers can force change.
In the short term, Congress should hold hearings on Chinese companies suspected of aiding Beijing’s sinister activities while benefiting from U.S. financial markets. 

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) deserves credit for bringing this matter to his colleagues’ attention. 

Longer term, Congress could pass legislation creating the equivalent of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which determines whether foreign acquisitions of American firms pose a national security risk. 

The White House could also direct the National Security Council, the Treasury Department, and the Securities and Exchange Commission to establish a screening mechanism for Chinese entrants into U.S. capital markets.
Outside of Washington, each state should commission a report on all Chinese debt and equity holdings in its public-pension systems and other state investment portfolios. 

For their part, pension funds should immediately divest from Chinese companies and their subsidiaries — as well as funds such as the MSCI Emerging Markets Index that include them — if they facilitate human rights abuses or otherwise undermine U.S. values and interests.
Americans deserve to be able to invest with confidence that the free-enterprise system isn’t being exploited to fund communist tyranny. 

Buying stock in Chinese companies complicit in the terror against Uighur people might earn plenty of money, but it’s a bad investment.

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.