China's Final Solution

UN religious freedom expert requests visit to East Turkestan
Reuters
Men pray at a mosque at the East Turkestan Islamic Institute during a government organised trip in Urumqi 

The United Nations investigator for religious freedom has asked China to let him visit its East Turkestan colony where some one million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims are being kept in concentration camps.
Facing growing international opprobrium for what it calls "re-education and training centres", China has stepped up diplomatic efforts to fend off censure.
Defending its programme in the remote western region, China told diplomats recently that "absurd preachings" from "Islamist extremists" there had turned some people into "murderous devils".
"I have requested for a visit to go there because this a priority for me in terms of looking at what is happening there. There is reason to be seriously concerned about reports coming out of the East Turkestan colony," UN special rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed told a news briefing on Tuesday.
China has not yet replied to his February request, he said.
Shaheed, a former Maldives foreign minister, disclosed he was among several UN rights experts to write to China last November voicing anxiety at its programme targeting "extremism".
The letter is also signed by UN investigators on arbitrary detention, disappearances, freedom of expression, minority issues, and protecting rights while countering "terrorism".
"I wrote to China along with a couple of other rapporteurs on the 'de-extremification' law that they are implementing which has resulted in millions being interned," Shaheed said.
"The concerns we raised were first of all that the laws were overly broadly worded and were targeting essentially protected activities of communities, in terms of their right to thought, conscience and belief. So a whole range of violations occurring in these communities," he said.

Deaths in custody
The UN letter voices concern that China's regulation "targets Turkic Muslim ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities as well as Kazakh nationals" within a context of a "crackdown on the exercise of fundamental rights in East Turkestan".
It calls on Beijing to repeal the measure.
"There have been allegations of deaths in custody, physical and psychological abuse and torture, as well as lack of access to medical care," it said.
The Chinese regulation defines extremification as the "spreading of religious fanaticism through irregular beards or name selection", the letter said.
The law's stated aim to make "religion more Chinese" was unlawful, it added.
A bipartisan group of US legislators on Monday complained to the administration of Donald Trump that its response to abuses against China's Muslim minority was inadequate months after it said it was looking into imposing sanctions.

China's Final Solution

U.N. Rights Officials Criticize China Over Muslim Internments

By Nick Cumming-Bruce

Uighur Muslims demonstrated in Brussels in September against China’s mass detention of Uighurs in the western colony of East Turkestan.

GENEVA — United Nations human rights officials have sharply condemned regulations issued by China that seek to provide a legal basis for the mass internment of Muslims in the East Turkestan colony.
Six United Nations officials and rights experts said in a letter sent on Monday to the Chinese government that the regulations were a violation of international law, and they urged that those responsible be held accountable.
The regulations were issued by the authorities in East Turkestan in western China, who said they were intended “to contain and eradicate” extremism.
The United Nations experts contended that the new rules to justify mass internments in “re-education centers’’ were based on overly broad definitions of extremist behavior and amounted to criminalizing the legitimate exercise of basic rights.
The experts said the regulations were “incompatible with China’s obligations under international human rights law.”
Western reporting and academic research in recent months have exposed a crackdown on East Turkestan’s Uighur population and other minorities in which as many as one million people, about one-tenth of the region’s population, have disappeared into concentration camps. 

In addition, nearly all aspects of daily life and religious practice have become minutely regulated.
Among those who participated in preparing the letter were Elina Steinerte and Bernard Duhaime, who are members of United Nations panels monitoring enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions; David Kaye, the special rapporteur on freedom of expression; and Fernand Varennes, an expert on minority rights.
An example of what they viewed as overreach by the Chinese officials was references in the regulations that identified extremism as the “spreading of religious fanaticism through irregular beards” or the selection of names.
The regulations stated the authorities’ intention to make religion “more Chinese and under law and actively guide religions to become compatible with socialist society.’’

“We would like to highlight that the homogenization of society and the aim to make religion ‘more Chinese’ are not considered legitimate aims under international law,” the experts said. 

They also argued that the coercive nature of the re-education centers meant they amounted to detention camps.
The statement appeared likely to hit a raw nerve in Beijing with its forceful critique of a policy closely associated with Xi Jinping’s drive to stabilize East Turkestan, a region that has increasing strategic significance in China’s ambitious Belt and Road initiative to connect the country with Central Asia and Europe.
In August, Chinese officials denied to a United Nations panel that it was engaged in mass internments. 

Since then, China has begun a campaign through the state media defending its policies as a "humane" initiative, saying that it was providing "vocational" training for East Turkestan’s ethnic minorities, protecting vulnerable populations from the scourge of extremism and generating employment opportunities.
The human rights experts said they were concerned that the East Turkestan regulations and other measures to suppress dissent applied across China not only violated basic rights, but by “creating pockets of fear, resentment and alienation” could lead to more radicalization and extremism.
The other rights experts who participated in drafting the letter were Ahmed Shaheed, who monitors freedom of religion and belief, and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, who follows the protection of human rights in the context of counterterrorism measures.
Their critique came only a week after China defended its record at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, claiming “tangible and enormous progress” in promoting and protecting “human rights with Chinese characteristics” and dismissing criticism as politically motivated.