Saving Brave Hong Kong

U.S. senators seek quick passage of Hong Kong rights bill
Reuters

A protester walks at the occupied campus of the Chinese University in Hong Kong, China, November 13, 2019. 

WASHINGTON -- Two senior U.S. senators began a process on Thursday for the U.S. Senate to quickly pass legislation that would place Hong Kong’s special treatment by the United States under extra scrutiny, a sign of support for pro-democracy protesters in the Chinese-ruled city.
U.S. Senators Jim Risch, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Marco Rubio, a senior member of the panel, want to pass the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act” by unanimous voice vote.
The legislation would require the secretary of state to certify at least once a year that Hong Kong still retains enough autonomy to warrant the special U.S. trading consideration that bolsters its status as a world financial center.It also would provide sanctions against officials responsible for human rights violations in Hong Kong.
The lawmakes’ announcement came amid a surge in violence surrounding months of protests in Hong Kong. 

On Thursday, pro-democracy protesters paralyzed parts of the city for a fourth successive day.
If it does pass the Senate, the measure would not be sent immediately to the White House for President Donald Trump to sign into law or veto. 

Lawmakers would first have to iron out differences between the Senate’s legislation and a bill that passed the House of Representatives last month.

China's crimes against humanity

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says China's treatment of Muslims 'enormous human rights violation'
By Eric Beech in Washington

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivers statements at the State Department in Washington, U.S., October 9, 2019.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday that China’s treatment of Muslims, including the Uighurs, in western China was an “enormous human rights violation” and Washington will continue to raise the issue.

“This is not only an enormous human rights violation, but we don’t think it’s in the best interests of the world or of China to engage in this kind of behavior,” Mr. Pompeo said in a television interview with American broadcaster PBS.
Asked whether Chinese dictator Xi Jinping was responsible, Mr. Pompeo said: “Xi Jinping leads the country just like the leader of a tank platoon, a small business or a country is responsible for the things that happen in your name.”
Punishing Beijing for its treatment of Muslim minorities, the U.S. government this week widened its trade blacklist to include China’s top artificial intelligence startups and announced visa restrictions on Chinese government and Communist Party officials responsible for the detention or abuse of Muslim minorities in East Turkestan colony.
Mr. Pompeo on Sunday called on all countries to resist China’s demands to repatriate ethnic Uighurs, saying Beijing’s campaign in the western Chinese colony of East Turkestan was an “attempt to erase its own citizens.”
U.N. experts and activists say at least 1 million Uighurs, and members of other largely Muslim minority groups, have been detained in camps in the remote region.

“We’re going to continue to talk about these human rights violations,” Mr. Pompeo said. 

“As the president has said in another context in Hong Kong, we want to make sure that these issues are handled in a way that is humane.”
Asked about a growing dispute over a tweet by a National Basketball Association (NBA) team official supporting the protests in Hong Kong, Mr. Pompeo said American businesses were waking up to the risks of operating in China.
“The reputational cost to these companies, I think, will prove to be higher and higher as Beijing’s long arm reaches out to them and destroys their capacity for them, their employees -- in the NBA’s case team members and general managers -- to speak freely about their political opinions,” Mr. Pompeo said.

China's crimes against humanity

U.S. Blacklists 28 Chinese Entities Over Abuses in East Turkestan

By Ana Swanson and Paul Mozur

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said Monday that it had added 28 Chinese organizations to a United States blacklist over concerns about their role in human rights violations, effectively blocking those entities from buying American products.
The organizations have been implicated in China’s campaign targeting Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities in the colony of East Turkestan, according to a Commerce Department filing.
Among the entities being placed on the list are Hikvision and Dahua Technology, two of the world’s largest manufacturers of video surveillance products. 

It also hits China’s well-funded, newly emerging class of artificial-intelligence start-ups. 

Together, the companies’ products are central to China’s ambitions to be the top global exporter of surveillance technology.
The list also includes companies that specialize in artificial intelligence, voice recognition and data as well as provincial and local security bureaus that have helped construct what amounts to a police state in East Turkestan. 

These entities have been involved “in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention and high-technology surveillance,” the filing said.
The move was announced just days before high-level Chinese and American officials meet in Washington to try to resolve a trade war that has begun mounting pain on China.
The blacklist’s impact on the companies is likely to be mixed.
In many cases, they could find ways to replace American components and have likely already stockpiled key parts, limiting the short-term impact.
Over the longer term, it could hamper their access to United States and European markets, as well as damage recruitment efforts. 

American customers, universities and others will likely look askance at striking up relations with Chinese companies on the blacklist.
A Commerce Department spokesman said Monday that the action was not related to those talks. 

But the decision is likely to rankle the Chinese government, which has helped support some of these companies as they have developed into cutting-edge technology firms.
“The U.S. government and Department of Commerce cannot and will not tolerate the brutal suppression of ethnic minorities within China,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement.
Hikvision said in a statement that it strongly opposed the decision and had been trying to address the administration’s concerns for the past year. 

The punishment will “hurt Hikvision’s U.S. business partners,” the company said.
China has faced growing condemnation from human rights groups in recent months for its detention of up to one million ethnic Uighurs and other minority Muslims in large internment camps in East Turkestan.
Beijing has constructed an advanced surveillance system, in what it describes as an effort to fight Islamic extremism among the Uighurs, the largest ethnic group in East Turkestan. 

But Uighurs and others around the world say Chinese officials are trying to suppress their culture and religion.

Human Rights Watch has said the violations are of a “scope and scale not seen in China since the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution,” and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called China’s treatment of the Uighurs the “stain of the century.”
Yet administration officials have wavered on how much to keep human rights and economic concerns separate in their negotiations with China. 

Many officials emphasize that the topics are separate, but the administration has shelved several proposals that would have shined light on China’s abuses over concerns that a tough stance could upset trade talks. 

And President Trump himself has often linked national security and other concerns to trade talks.
On Monday, President Trump said “bad” action in Hong Kong, the site of violent protests, would hurt progress on trade and urged China to find a “humane solution.”
“I think they’re coming to make a deal,” he said of the Chinese. 

“It’s got to be a fair deal.”
The Trump administration has steadily ratcheted up pressure on China through tariffs on more than $360 billion of Chinese products and other restrictions on Chinese investment in the United States. The administration has also begun looking to restrict exports to China.
This year, the administration placed Huawei, the Chinese telecom equipment giant, on the blacklist, saying it posed national security concerns. 

It added five Chinese entities to the list in June, also citing national security.
American companies can still apply for licenses to supply products to organizations that have been placed on the Commerce Department entity list, but the government may deny the applications.
The companies on the list help illustrate the breadth and development of China’s surveillance industry, which increasingly uses predictive technology to track its own citizens, or spot potential protests or crimes as they occur.
The new additions include several artificial intelligence start-ups: Megvii, SenseTime and Yitu Technologies. 

They also include iFlytek, which makes voice recognition software; Xiamen Meiya Pico Information Company, a data forensics company; and Yixin Science and Technology Company, which makes nanotechnology.
The listed government entities include East Turkestan’s public security bureau and 19 subordinate bureaus and institutes.
Several of the firms have grown into global operations while servicing an extensive market in China. Hikvision said it had more than 34,000 employees and dozens of divisions worldwide, and it has supplied products to the Beijing Olympics, the World Cup in Brazil and Linate Airport in Milan. Dahua Technologies has more than 16,000 employees, according to its website, with divisions in North America, Europe and Latin America.
The companies run the gamut in terms of capabilities and focus. 

Some are specialists in facial-recognition systems, voice-recognition software, surveillance cameras and phone tracking systems that are sold largely to China’s security forces. 

Others have ambitions of building systems that can filter social media content and products that could help doctors reach cancer diagnoses.
As a result, the impact of the bans will be varied. 

For the surveillance camera maker Hikvision, which makes a significant portion of the world’s security cameras, the impact could be significant. 

A block could have a roughly 10 percent impact on revenue, technology research firm Sanford Bernstein said in a Monday note. 

While the company would have to replace some American-made chips placed in its high-end cameras, most of the impact would come on the back-end servers that help analyze footage as part of its security systems.
The impact could be larger in terms of broader sales ambitions. 

Hikvision has worked to court the American market, including a number of government-connected customers.
For those focused on artificial-intelligence software, like Yitu and Megvii, the direct hit could be small. 

Nonetheless, the blacklist could impact them in other ways. 

The artificial intelligence start-ups on the list have partnerships with American software firms, connections to American universities and have been active in trying to hire foreign talent. 

In all those cases, the blocks will likely hamper their efforts.

Mitch McConnell slams China over Hong Kong, threatens a global confrontation that could tank the finance hub

• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wrote a blistering op-ed calling out China for various human rights violations and a crackdown on Hong Kong.
• He said the US could revisit the 1992 Hong Kong Policy Act, which gave the city special access to the US market and poured billions into Beijing's pockets. The act allows the US to trade with Hong Kong on better, more favorable terms than it affords the Chinese mainland.
• Doing this would punish China, but also Hong Konge as the island could lose its status as a global financial hub.

By Alex Lockie


Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wrote a blistering op-ed calling for the world to stand up to and confront China over a variety of human rights concerns and a violent response to 11 weeks of largely peaceful protests in semi-autonomous Hong Kong.
"Sooner or later, the rest of the world will have to do what the protesters are doing — confront Beijing," McConnell wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
In the article, McConnell also called for a punishment that could demolish Hong Kong's status as a global financial hub and a cash cow for Beijing.

Hong Kong on fireThe emblem of communist China is seen vandalized on the Chinese Liaison Office after a march to call for democratic reforms, in Hong Kong, China July 21, 2019. 

When the British returned Hong Kong to China in 1997, it did so with an internationally recognized treaty wherein China promised to respect Hong Kong's system of government, which allows greater freedoms than the mainland's strict communist rule.
But China has steadily eroded the freedoms people in Hong Kong enjoy, partially due to a creeping takeover of its government, and partly due to techno-authoritarianism enabling an unparalleled surveillance state. 

The recent spate of protests in Hong Kong kicked off when the local government proposed a bill that would allow China to deport Hong Kongers to the mainland for trials.
Hong Kongers responded to the bill with perhaps the largest protests in human history, and carried them out in a notably peaceful and orderly way for weeks, despite documented police brutality and brutal beatings from mainland-linked gangs.
McConnell described China's often violent response to Hong Kong as "authoritarian rulers seeking to repress the innate human desire for freedom, self-expression and self-government" on par with historical massacres of freedom-seekers in the former Soviet Union and under former Chinese dictator Mao Tse-tung.
McConnell goes on to shred China's brutal oppression of ethnic and religious minorities, including in Tibet and East Turkestan, where more than 1 million Chinese citizens have been detained, re-educated in party propaganda, and often made to renounce their religion.

The US could hurt China over Hong KongA demonstrator sits down in front of riot police during a demonstration to demand authorities scrap a proposed extradition bill with China, in Hong Kong, China June 12, 2019.

Perhaps most significantly, McConnell threatened a move that would destroy Hong Kong's special appeal to global finance by revisiting the 1992 Hong Kong Policy act.
The act allows the US to trade with Hong Kong on better, more favorable terms than it affords the Chinese mainland.
"This special access to the U.S. and other nations helped drive the investment and modernization that have enriched Hong Kong, and Beijing by extension," wrote McConnell. 

"Beijing must know the Senate will reconsider that special relationship, among other steps, if Hong Kong's autonomy is eroded."
He then went on to say that he had instructed various Senate committees to examine Beijing's actions in Hong Kong and increase funding for pro-Democracy movements in Asia.
"Revoking the 1992 Hong Kong Policy Act is a double-edged sword and one that should be wielded cautiously," Mike Fuchs, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a progressive DC think tank, told Business Insider.
Ending the policy "would hurt Beijing by closing off a backdoor through Hong Kong to receive preferred economic treatment because of the status that it has," said Fuchs. 

For reference, the US did $67.3 billion worth of business with Hong Kong in 2018.
Matthew Henderson, the director of the Asia Studies Centre at the Henry Jackson Society, told Business Insider that the 1992 act allows the US to revisit the policy if China gets too involved in Hong Kong policy.
"From a Western perspective, it makes sense to remind Beijing that loss of benefits conferred under the Act would harm Hong Kong as a global financial and commercial centre — and also harm China's prosperity, to which Hong Kong still makes a very big contribution," Henderson said. 

"So Beijing would be wise not to erode Hong Kong's autonomy to the point that the Act's conditions cease to apply."
But both Henderson an Fuchs agreed, if the US does revoke the 1992 act, Hong Kongers will feel the effects first and foremost.

Behind the Niceties of Chinese Leader’s Visit, France Is Wary

By Adam Nossiter

President Emmanuel Macron of France with Xi Jinping at a news conference in Paris on Monday.
PARIS — France rolled out red carpets and honor guards for Xi Jinping on Monday, but beneath the pomp, there were wary statements about China’s influence by his host, President Emmanuel Macron.
With Italy last week breaking from Europe in signing on to China’s global infrastructure project for moving Chinese goods, Mr. Macron has made it clear that a unified European response, in his view, is critical in dealing with the Chinese hegemon.
He reiterated that sentiment Monday as Xi listened in a deal-signing ceremony at the presidential Élysée Palace, where more than a dozen commercial and governmental treaties were signed worth billions of euros.
Earlier Mr. Macron welcomed Xi at a symbol of French imperial history and power, the Arc de Triomphe.
Beneath the tight smiles and brisk handshakes, Mr. Macron’s sharpened words resonated as the template for France’s attitude toward China, a country that floods France with luxury-shopping tourists but competes directly with it in a principal arena of mutual geopolitical interest, Africa.
Mr. Macron, keenly aware of France’s small position in the Chinese market — between 1 and 2 percent of imports — talks about Europe when he talks about China. 

Germany’s position is nearly five times as large.
After saying last week that the era of European “naïveté was over,” and that China had “played on our divisions,” he emphasized to the Chinese leader Monday that in talking to France, he was talking to Europe.
It was not immediately clear how France had avoided the “naïveté” Mr. Macron criticized, nor how it had reinforced the multilateral unified European approach he promulgated, in signing the French deals with the Chinese on Monday.
Still, unlike Italy, France has not signed on to China’s global goods-moving project, which it calls “One Belt One Road.”
Making reference to Gen. Charles de Gaulle’s famous declaration in 1964 that recognizing China was a matter of “reason” and “evidence,” Mr. Macron said Monday at the Élysée that those same words applied to the “choice” of the 21st century: the “relationship between Europeans and Chinese.”
De Gaulle was bucking the United States when he uttered those words, and Mr. Macron, 55 years later, was doing something of the same.
Appealing to China as a partner, he made a pointed reference to the United States under President Trump, who has repudiated multinational agreements like the Paris Climate accord and Iran nuclear deal.
“The order of things has been shaken,” the French president said, and “faced with the risk of the destruction of the multilateral order, France and China have a responsibility,” as permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
“No country can redefine the rules of the international game,” Mr. Macron asserted, saying that France, like China, would stick to an agreement with Iran, and saying the two countries had made progress on the subject of climate change, and on the lifting of import restrictions for French beef and poultry.
Earlier French and Chinese officials and executives signed agreements on aeronautics — the Chinese are buying 300 airplanes from Airbus — and on space, banking and investment, shipbuilding and cultural exchanges.
On human rights violations in China, a subject that preoccupies French media but not official discourse or French business, Mr. Macron made only a hurried reference. 

Xi is visiting at a time when Galeries Lafayette, the emblematic French department store, is projecting a rapid expansion in China, which represents a third of the world market for luxury goods.
Jet-lagged Chinese tourists are bussed directly from the airport to the Galeries Lafayette store in central Paris, and the Rue Saint Honoré, a thoroughfare studded with luxury shops, routinely decks itself out for Chinese New Year.
The Chinese have invested in a wide scattering of French sectors, including wine, hotels, and industrial food production, including milk. 

France was the recipient of 9 percent of Chinese investments in the European Union in 2018; the Chinese have bought more than 150 wineries in Bordeaux, and China is the top export market for Bordeaux wine. 

The Chinese push into that culturally symbolic sector has created some backlash, but not enough to stop French owners from selling their properties.
With Xi silently listening Monday Mr. Macron said that Europe had never considered individual rights as “culturally specific,” and that its preoccupation remained for “the respect of fundamental and individual rights.” 

He said that the two had “had frank exchanges” on the subject.
But French analysts of relations with China said Monday that commercial relations were the real subject of preoccupation. 

“It’s the question of reciprocity,” said Jean-Philippe Béja of Sciences-Po, the research university. “We’ve been open towards trade and investment, and the Chinese have never let us enter their state procurements process.”
Europeans had also become more aware, and wary, of technology transfers and investments that “help the Chinese government develop its potential, and in the case of artificial intelligence it’s about control, and exporting control,” said Mr. Béja, referring to advances in Chinese government surveillance of its own citizenry.
“We’re more fearful than the other” members of the European Union about Chinese power and hegemony, said François Godement, an expert at the Institut Montaigne research center in Paris. “China is pushing its own pawns,” he said, particularly in parts of Africa where for decades French dominance has been undisputed.
Mr. Macron insisted Monday that France and China were “not strategic rivals” in Africa, though he said the two nations could be “much more important partners,” appearing to reflect a worry about Chinese investment on the continent.

The world must stand against China’s war on religion

By Chris Smith

Muslim protesters outside China's embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Dec. 21. 

Mihrigul Tursun said she pleaded with God to end her life as her Chinese jailers increased the electrical currents coursing through her body. 

Tursun, a Muslim Uighur whose escape led her to the United States in September, broke down weeping at a Nov. 28 congressional hearing as she recounted her experience in one of China’s infamous political “ re-education centers. ”
It is an appalling story but one that is all too familiar as existential threats to religious freedom rise in Xi Jinping’s China. 

The world can’t ignore what’s happening there. 

We must all stand up and oppose these human rights violations.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party has undertaken the most comprehensive attempt to manipulate and control — or destroy — religious communities since Mao Zedong made the eradication of religion a goal of his disastrous Cultural Revolution half a century ago. 

Now Xi, apparently fearing the power of independent religious belief as a challenge the Communist Party’s legitimacy, is trying to radically transform religion into the party’s servant, employing a draconian policy known as sinicization.
Under sinicization, all religions and believers must comport with and aggressively promote communist ideology — or else.
To drive home the point, religious believers of every persuasion are harassed, arrested, jailed or tortured. 

Only the compliant are left relatively unscathed.
Bibles are burned, churches destroyed, crosses set ablaze atop church steeples and now, under Xi, religious leaders are required to install facial-recognition cameras in their places of worship. 

New regulations expand restrictions on religious expression online and prohibit those under age 18 from attending services.
Government officials are also rewriting religious texts — including the Bible — that remove content unwanted by the atheist Communist Party, and have launched a five-year sinicization plan for Chinese Protestant Christians.
These efforts have taken a staggering human toll. 

In recent months, more than 1 million Uighurs and other Muslims in the East Turkestan colony have been detained, tortured and forced to renounce their faith. 

The U.S. government is investigating recent reports that ethnic minorities in internment camps are being forced to produce goods bound for the United States.
Yet, despite this anti-religion campaign, the Vatican has shown a disturbing lack of alarm concerning these threats and, instead, appears to be seeking a form of accommodation. 

In September, Vatican officials signed a “provisional agreement” that essentially ceded to the Chinese government the power to choose — subject to papal review — every candidate for bishop in China, which has an estimated 10 million to 12 million Catholics.
Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, a retired bishop of Hong Kong, in September called the deal “a complete surrender” by the Vatican and an “incredible betrayal” of the faith.
At a congressional hearing I chaired in September, Tom Farr, president of the Religious Freedom Institute, testified that the government-controlled body charged with carrying out the policy, the Catholic Patriotic Association, had drafted an implementation document containing the following passage: “The Church will regard promotion and education on core values of socialism as a basic requirement for adhering to the Sinicization of Catholicism. It will guide clerics and Catholics to foster and maintain correct views on history and the nation.”
One can hope that Beijing has made concessions to the church that have yet to be revealed. 

Initial reports are less than promising. 

Since the agreement was reached, underground priests have been detained, Marian shrines destroyed, pilgrimage sites closed, youth programs shuttered, and priests required to attend reeducation sessions in at least one province.
The Vatican should reconsider its arrangement with the Chinese government. 

But what can be done more generally in response to Xi’s war on religion? 

The United States and several European countries have condemned it, but any nation that values freedom of religion should unite in denouncing China’s treatment of Muslim Uighurs, Christians, Tibetan Buddhists and Falun Gong practitioners. 

In particular, Muslim-majority countries, strangely muted regarding the persecution of Muslim Uighurs, must protest these abuses even at the risk of endangering the benefits from China’s “Belt and Road”infrastructure projects.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and I have urged the Trump administration to use Global Magnitsky Act sanctions to target Chinese officials responsible for egregious human rights abuses. 

We have sought expanded export controls for police surveillance products and sanctions against businesses profiting from the forced labor or detention of Uighurs. 

We have also introduced the bipartisan Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2018 to provide the administration with new tools to comprehensively address the abuse.
The United States must lead the way in letting the Chinese Communist Party know that taking a hammer and sickle to the cross and enslaving more than 1 million Uighurs in an effort to erase their religion and culture are destructive, shameful acts that will not be tolerated by the community of nations.

China's Crimes: Massive Crackdown in Muslim Region

Mass Arbitrary Detention, Religious Repression, Surveillance in East Turkestan

Human Rights Watch

The Chinese government is conducting a mass, systematic campaign of human rights violations against Turkic Muslims in East Turkestan.
The 117-page report, “‘Eradicating Ideological Viruses’: China’s Campaign of Repression Against Xinjiang’s Muslims,” presents new evidence of the Chinese government’s mass arbitrary detention, torture, and mistreatment, and the increasingly pervasive controls on daily life. 

Throughout the region, the Turkic Muslim population of 13 million is subjected to forced political indoctrination, collective punishment, restrictions on movement and communications, heightened religious restrictions, and mass surveillance in violation of international human rights law.

Chinazism: Crackdown on Turkic Muslims

“The Chinese government is committing human rights abuses in East Turkestan on a scale unseen in the country in decades,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. 

“The campaign of repression in East Turkestan is key test of whether the United Nations and concerned governments will sanction an increasingly powerful China to end this abuse.”
The report is primarily based on interviews with 58 former residents of East Turkestan, including 5 former detainees and 38 relatives of detainees. 

Nineteen of those interviewed have left East Turkestan within the past year and a half.
The Chinese government’s “Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Extremism” began in East Turkestan in 2014. 

The level of repression increased dramatically after Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo relocated from the Tibet Autonomous Region to assume leadership of East Turkestan in late 2016.
Since then, the authorities have stepped up mass arbitrary detention, including in pretrial detention centers and prisons, both of which are formal facilities, and in political education camps, which have no basis under Chinese law. 

Credible estimates indicate that 1 million people are being held in the camps, where Turkic Muslims are being forced to learn Mandarin Chinese, sing praises of the Chinese Communist Party, and memorize rules applicable primarily to Turkic Muslims. 

Those who resist or are deemed to have failed to “learn” are punished.
The detainees in political education camps are held without any due process rights – neither charged nor put on trial – and have no access to lawyers and family. 

They are held for having links with foreign countries, particularly those on an official list of “26 sensitive countries,” and for using foreign communication tools such as WhatsApp, as well as for peacefully expressing their identity and religion, none of which constitute crimes.
A man who spent months in political education camps, told Human Rights Watch: “I asked [the authorities] if I can hire a lawyer and they said, ‘No, you shouldn’t need a lawyer because you’re not convicted. There’s no need to defend you against anything. You’re in a political education camp – all you have to do is just study.’”
Outside these detention facilities, the Chinese authorities in East Turkestan subject Turkic Muslims to such extraordinary restrictions on personal life that, in many ways, their experiences resemble those of the people detained. 

A combination of administrative measures, checkpoints, and passport controls arbitrarily restrict their movements. 

They are subjected to persistent political indoctrination, including compulsory flag-raising ceremonies, political or denunciation meetings, and Mandarin “night schools.” 

With unprecedented levels of control over religious practices, the Chinese authorities have effectively outlawed Islam in the region.
They have also subjected people in East Turkestan to pervasive and constant surveillance. 

The authorities encourage neighbors to spy on each other. 

The authorities employ high-tech mass surveillance systems that make use of QR codes, biometrics, artificial intelligence, phone spyware, and big data. 

And they have mobilized over a million officials and police officers to monitor people, including through intrusive programs in which the monitors are assigned to regularly stay in people’s homes.
The campaign has divided families, with some family members in East Turkestan and others abroad caught unexpectedly by the tightening of passport controls and border crossings. 

Children have at times been trapped in one country without their parents. 

The government has barred Turkic Muslims from contacting people abroad. 

The government has also pressured some ethnic Uyghurs and Kazakhs living outside the country to return to China, while requiring others to provide detailed personal information about their lives abroad.
The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) reviewed the situation in China in mid-August and described East Turkestan as a “no rights zone.” 

The Chinese delegation disputed this portrayal of the region, as well as its characterization of political education camps, calling them “vocational education centers.”
It is evident that China does not foresee a significant political cost to its abusive East Turkestan campaign, partly due to its influence within the UN system, Human Rights Watch said. 

In the face of overwhelming evidence of grave abuses in East Turkestan, foreign governments should pursue a range of multilateral and unilateral actions. 

They should also pursue joint actions at the UN Human Rights Council, creating a coalition to gather and assess evidence of abuses in East Turkestan, and imposing targeted sanctions on Party Secretary Chen Quanguo and other senior officials responsible.
“The pain and anguish of families torn apart, with no knowledge of what’s happened to their loved ones stands in stark contrast to Beijing’s claims that Turkic Muslims are ‘happy’ and ‘grateful,’” Richardson said. 

“A failure to urgently press for an end to these abuses will only embolden Beijing.”

Selected accounts
The names and identifying details of people interviewed have been withheld to protect their safety. All names of detainees are pseudonyms.

On political education camps:
Nobody can move because they watch you through the video cameras, and after a while a voice came from the speakers telling you that now you can relax for a few minutes. That voice also tells you off for moving…we were watched, even in the toilet. In political education camp, we were always under stress.              –Rustam, a former detainee who spent months in political education camps, May 2018

I resisted their measures…They put me in a small solitary confinement cell…In a space of about 2x2 meters I was not given any food or drink, my hands were handcuffed in the back, and I had to stand for 24 hours without sleep.             –Nur, a former detainee in a political education camp, March 2018

Everyday controls in East Turkestan:
A total of five officials…took turns to watch over me [at home]. And they had to document that they’d checked on me… The photos show them reading political propaganda together [with me] or show me moving a pillow on a bed to prepare for them to stay overnight; or them lying down on the sofa.                                                        –Aynur, a woman who left East Turkestan in 2017, May 2018

Since early 2017, twice a week, officials came. Some people even stayed for a night. The authorities came in advance and made a list and assigned new “relatives” to you. … [The officially-assigned “relatives”] talked to my son, my grandkids, they took pictures, they sat at the table, they asked, “Where’s your husband, where did he go?” I was really frightened, and I pretended to be busy looking after my grandkids. I was worried that if I spoke I’d let slip that my husband had gone [abroad]. So, I stayed silent.

–Ainagul, 52, who left East Turkestan in 2017 and whose son is in a political education camp, May 2018

International impact of the Strike Hard Campaign:
First, the village police called, and then a higher-level police bureau called. Their numbers were hidden – they didn’t show where they were calling from…. The police told me, “If you don’t come, we’ll come get you.”

–Dastan, 44, who lives outside China and whose wife is in a political education camp, May 2018

They give a signal, that even if you’re in a foreign country, they can “manage” you. … I’m scared... I didn’t join any terrorist or any organization against China. I didn’t join any demonstrations. I didn’t carry any East Turkestan flag. I have no criminal record in China…why are they doing stuff like that [to me]?

–Murat, a 37-year-old student living outside China and whose sister is in a political education camp, June 2018

Chinese colonialism: one in five arrests take place in East Turkestan

East Turkestan, home to about 12 million Muslims, has been the focus of an intense Chinese crackdown

By Lily Kuo in Beijing

Controls over religious and cultural expression in East Turkestan have increased since 2016. 

One in five arrests in China last year took place in East Turkestan, the nominally autonomous western territory that critics say has been turned into a police state rife with human rights violations.
Analysing publicly available government data, the advocacy group Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), found 21% of all arrests in China in 2017 were in East Turkestan, which accounts for about 1.5% of China’s population. 

Indictments in East Turkestan, accounted for 13% of all charges handed down in the country last year.
“For both arrests and indictments, the sudden increases in 2017 from 2016 are staggering,” the organisation said in its report, released jointly with a Chinese group, the Equal Rights Initiative, on Wednesday. 

“Given that China’s conviction rate is 99.9%, nearly every individual indicted is likely to be convicted.”

China is holding at least 920,000 Uighurs in re-education camps.

The report comes ahead of a UN review, beginning 10 August, of China’s implementation of the convention on racial discrimination. 

This week, the US state department is holding the country’s first summit on religious freedom and a US congressional commission is holding a hearing on the situation in East Turkestan.
“This data, coming from the Chinese government itself, must force the international community to act”, said Frances Eve, a researcher with CHRD.
East Turkestan, home to about 12 million Muslims, mostly ethnic Uighurs as well as Kazakhs, has been the site of a government “strike hard” campaign, aimed at rooting out religious extremism and potential separatist movements. 

The region, almost half the size of India, has seen outbreaks of ethnic violence in the 1990s and again in 2009.
Human rights groups say the crackdown has gone too far. 

Controls over religious and cultural expression have increased under hardline communist party secretary, Chen Quanguo, drafted to East Turkestan in 2016. 

Those under the age of 17 are forbidden to enter mosques or make unauthorised pilgrimages to Mecca. 

Islamic names, beards, face veils, and long skirts have reportedly been outlawed.
Advocates and researchers say at least hundreds of thousands of minorities, mainly ethnic Uighurs, have been detained in “re-education” camps where they can be held indefinitely. 

In April, a group of US lawmakers called the camps, “the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.”
Anything from reading foreign websites to speaking to relatives abroad can land residents of East Turkestan in detention. 

One ethnic Uighur in the state told CHRD his uncle had asked a friend to help him download songs onto his mobile phone. 

When he lent the phone to someone to play music, he was reported to the police and given a seven year prison sentence for broadcasting banned content.
Another said a neighbour of his had been detained for attending classes on the Koran a decade ago. One ethnic Uighur told CHRD his brother had been sentenced to prison after a former classmate of his had been detained. 

The classmate detailed a video the two had watched as boys that inspired them to pledge to get strong and cause an “ethnic incident.”
“My brother received a seven-year sentence for that misguided adolescent boasting which happened a decade before”, the family member said. 

“It was just 10-year-old chatter by teenagers, and they never did anything.”
According to CHRD’s report, the arrests in East Turkestan between 2013 and 2017 marked a 306% increase from the previous five years. 

The arrests cover all types of criminal cases, but CHRD said the dramatic increase is likely due to the strike hard campaign.
“The world cannot sit by while Uighurs and minorities in East Turkestan are forced into camps and criminally prosecuted for no reason other than their ethnicity and Islamic faith,” said Eve.

Chinese Neocolonialism in Africa

By Erik Agbleke
December 2018 will mark the 3rd anniversary of the 6th Ministerial Conference of the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), where Xi Jinping pledged to strengthen an already steady relationship with the African continent. 

With a promising speech to the African Union leadership and Heads of State, Xi promised to deliver a $60 billion package over the next 3 years that will include aid, interest-free loans, and capital.
To the 53 African countries that were in attendance, this was a welcome gift as Africa was just coming out of the ebola outbreak which left devastating effects in its path. 

It seems that China has found a way to expand its sphere of influence in the globalization race of the 21st century. 

Moreover, it is on the way to surpass the United States in terms of relevance and impact within the area. 

So, how and why does this matter, given the United States’ interest in the African region?
It is no secret that foreign aid can be used as a bargaining chip, where it goes a long way in facilitating international relations. 

For instance, the Marshall Plan of post-World War II was not initiated just out of the good heart of the US government. 

It was rather erected as a roadblock to the spread of communism in Western Europe. 

In the same way, China’s willingness to pour money and resources into the continent of Africa is not motivated by some form of sincerity towards the people, but rather to further its own agenda.
This financial sponsorship has ironically gained popularity with African leaders who welcome with open arms the gifts that Zhongnanhai come bearing to them. 

This allows China to bring businesses to the continent and build much-needed infrastructure, such as railroad tracks for transportation and commerce while instituting their ‘one belt one road’ initiative. However, this form of investment turns out not to be mutually beneficial to the African people. 

It buries the continent in insurmountable debt that the Chinese government maintains as leverage, a boon for them in terms of strategy. 

Case in point, the establishment of the first Chinese Naval base in Djibouti, which enables them to gain quick access into the Indian and Atlantic Ocean.
The West has a history of turning a blind eye towards Africa and its citizens, and Africans have come to accept such western indifference. 

Despite many clearly botched and stolen elections, including evidence of human right violations and overt dismissal of the rule of law, western powers have refused to hold many leaders accountable for their actions, no matter how vile they may be.
The silence from these countries who are typically quick to speak up and take actions when their interests are being threatened has emboldened some of these African leaders and empowered them to continue governing as they see fit. 

In the end, the collateral damage becomes the people they have sworn to lead and protect. 

China striving to be the biggest supporter and financier on the continent should be something that we should be concerned about; given the fact that they themselves are a substantial perpetrator of human rights violation and governmental intimidation. 

China’s waxing power on the continent may lead to an even greater disregard of human rights violations.
For the United States to regain a strong foothold within Africa and further advance its agenda of peace, power, prosperity, and principle, it must be willing to be the biggest stakeholder in terms of aid and financial support of the continent by investing in its growth and development. 

However, monetary support is not the only path to winning hearts and minds. 

Up until the Trump administration was handed control of the government, the U.S. was the best destination for education and business ventures. 

To some, the American Dream was still alive and attainable if they worked hard and played by the rules. 

This is no longer the case as the current administration sees fit to walk a hard line against immigration.
Programs such as the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or the Deferred Enforced Departure (DED), which gave a way for multitudes of individuals that fled the atrocities in their civil war-torn countries to find refuge in America are being terminated. 

Families that have spent most of the past two or three decades building a new life here are being urged by a deadline to return to a country that is no longer theirs.
These more dismissive and closed policies can lead to a drop in foreign influence for a country such as the U.S., whose popularity has been on the decline over the last ten years due to the conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. 

The policies being pushed by the Trump administration could, in turn, make it hard for the U.S. to gain support on the African continent while trying to curb the rise and effectiveness of terrorist groups that are operating in the area and threatening its interests.
The U.S. which has always championed itself as the vanguard for human rights around the world owes it to itself and for the success of its foreign policy to stand up to China’s expansion strategy. 

It will help tremendously in deterring terrorism and radicalization in Africa. 

However, the work should not solely rest on the Americans’ shoulders. 

The leadership in African countries must first recognize the neo-colonial practices that China is indirectly imposing on them and then stand against such unfair practice. 

To break free from dependency on outside actors and grow, there must be a willingness among the consortium to take responsibility for the development of the African continent which should be done in-house.

Germany urges release of detained China human rights lawyer

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Germany is calling on China to release a prominent human rights lawyer charged with inciting subversion, drawing a sharp rebuke from Beijing.
German Human Rights Commissioner Barbel Kofler this week said Yu Wensheng is innocent of wrongdoing and had only sought to campaign for democratic reforms and "support fellow citizens who were harassed for exercising their human rights."
"I call on the Chinese government to release Yu Wensheng without delay, and to fully respect the civil rights guaranteed in the Chinese Constitution," Kofler said in a statement posted on the website of the German Federal Foreign Office.
Yu, an informal spokesman for a group of Chinese human rights lawyers, was grabbed by police on Jan. 19 while preparing to take his 13-year-old son to school.
Police informed Yu's wife of the charge against him on Saturday, lawyer Huang Hanzhong said. Inciting subversion is a vaguely worded charge often used to muzzle dissent and sometimes results in years-long prison sentences.
Yu's detention extends a crackdown on independent legal activists in recent years by China's authoritarian one-party Communist government.
His seizure came a day after he posted a letter online calling on the ruling party to reform the constitution and allow open presidential elections.
"The president, the head of state, is basically appointed without any meaningful election. It has no credibility for the country, for civil society and for countries across the world," Yu said in the letter.
Police searched Yu's home and office and seized computers, USB drives, cellphones and files documenting cases that Yu had handled in recent years, Huang said.
Yu gained widespread attention after being detained for three months in 2014, during which he says he was tortured and questioned. 

He was detained again in 2015 but released after a day when his case received wide publicity.
China routinely dismisses attempts by foreign governments to intervene in civil rights cases and has extended its crackdown on civil society activists to foreign citizens.
Beijing has rejected calls by the U.S. and European governments to release Gui Minhai, a Swedish citizen who sold gossipy tomes about Chinese leaders from his Hong Kong bookshop.
Around 10 Chinese police officers surrounded Gui and Swedish diplomats on Jan. 20 as they traveled by train to Beijing. 

Gui was seized and his whereabouts remain unknown.

Han terrorism: Condemn China for kidnapping Gui Minhai

As Sweden’s reaction to the seizing of its citizen shows, countries allow Beijing to flout human rights in exchange for trade deals
By Jojje Olsson

The kidnapping of a foreign citizen in front of accompanying diplomats constitutes a new level of assault, even for China.
If the world does not condemn it in the strongest possible terms, it will also represent a new level of submission, encouraging China to continue exporting its repression abroad.
Ever since Swedish publisher Gui Minhai was first kidnapped in October 2015, my government’s primary focus in its relations with China has been to increase economic cooperation. 

Last year, our prime minister, Stefan Löfven, visited China with the largest Swedish trade delegation in decades.
Yet while Löfven claimed he had raised the issue of Gui Minhai behind closed doors, neither he nor anyone else, uttered a single word about Gui in public. 

The post-trip communique was packed with details about new trade deals and economic cooperation. Not a single line mentioned the Swedish political prisoner who was falling sick behind bars at a secret location far from conventions and banquets.
The quiet diplomacy that has characterised Sweden’s handling of Gui Minhai stands in stark contrast to the case of Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson, two Swedish journalists who were jailed in Ethiopia in 2011. 

Swedish ministers became personally involved in that case almost immediately. 

The prime minister branded Ethiopia a “dictatorship”.
Gui Minhai has enjoyed no such support. 

Despite several requests, his daughter, Angela Gui, only managed to speak on the phone with foreign minister Margot Wallström for the first time at the weekend. 

The foreign ministry has told her not to contact the Swedish embassy in Beijing. 

Last year Angela told me that Lars Fredén, the Swedish ambassador to China until 2016, had deliberately avoided her when they ended up at the same social event in Stockholm.
Gui was kidnapped for a second time last Saturday. 

But only after the story was reported on Monday did Wallström issue a short statement calling for “the immediate release of our fellow citizen”.
That was the first time during Gui’s 829 days of extralegal detention that the Swedish authorities had openly criticised China’s actions.

That is, of course, exactly the way Beijing wants it. 

Because shedding light on the regime’s oppression hurts its ambitions to build its soft power to help increase the Chinese influence in international organisations, and make overseas investments with as little scrutiny as possible.
Several western countries have already been brought into line by the stick and carrot of economic cooperation. 

When Liu Xiaobo received the Nobel peace prize in 2010, Beijing severed diplomatic and trade relations with Oslo. 

Only after the Norwegian foreign minister in late 2016 travelled to Beijing and read aloud a humiliating joint statement was Norway again able to export its salmon to China.
Despite all his flattery of China, David Cameron’s government was warned that Britain should not dare comment on Beijing’s erosion of Hong Kong’s freedoms.
Nowhere is Beijing’s disregard for international treaties more obvious than in the South China Sea, which China continues to militarise, despite international censure and a damning ruling from an international tribunal in 2016.
China is also succeeding in silencing the European Union’s criticism of its behaviour. 

Last year, Hungary and Greece, both big destinations for Chinese loans and investments, blocked two EU joint statements on the deteriorating human rights situation in China.
After the two Swedish journalists were released from Ethiopian jail in 2012, Sweden’ ambassador hailed international pressure as a decisive factor. 

Sweden now needs to reach out to the international community for a similar cooperation on Gui Minhai. 

Every politician who still claims a shred of morality must step out and speak out.

Chinese State Hooliganism

EU, Sweden call for China to release detained publisher
AP

In this June 18, 2016, file photo, freed Hong Kong bookseller Lam Wing-kee stands next to a placard with picture of missing bookseller Gui Minhai, in front of his book store in Hong Kong as the protesters are marching to the Chinese central government's liaison office. Gui, who was secretly detained in China has been taken away by Chinese authorities again after being released into house arrest last October, his daughter said Monday, Jan. 22, 2018. 

BEIJING— The European Union on Wednesday joined Sweden in calling on China to immediately release a Swedish book publisher who was taken off a train in front of his country's diplomats by Chinese police four days ago.
The Chinese foreign ministry on Wednesday indicated Gui Minhai, the Hong Kong-based book publisher, and the Swedish diplomats who were with him may have been breaking Chinese law.
Gui was first abducted in 2015, one of five Hong Kong booksellers whose disappearances became a symbol of the extent to which China was willing to reinforce its hard line on squelching political dissent and a free press — despite international criticism.
The office of EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said it "fully supports the public statement and efforts of the Swedish government" on Gui's behalf.
"We expect the Chinese authorities to immediately release Mr. Gui from detention, allow him to reunite with his family and to receive consular and medical support in line with his rights," it said in a statement.
On Tuesday, Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs Margot Wallstrom said in a news release that China has given no clear explanation for Gui's detention. 

Sweden has already summoned China's ambassador in the Scandinavian country over the 53-year-old's case.
"We take a very serious view of the detention on Saturday of Swedish citizen Gui Minhai, with no specific reason being given for the detention, which took place during an ongoing consular support mission," Wallstrom said in her statement.
"We expect the immediate release of our fellow citizen, and that he be given the opportunity to meet Swedish diplomatic and medical staff," she said.
Wallstrom said the Swedish diplomats accompanying Gui had been "providing consular assistance to a Swedish citizen in need of medical care.
"This was perfectly in line with basic international rules giving us the right to provide our citizens with consular support," she said.
Gui had been running a Hong Kong publishing company specializing in tales about high-level Chinese politics when he disappeared from his Thai holiday home about two years ago. 

He had been spirited away by Chinese security agents to mainland China, where he later turned up in police custody. 

In a videotaped confession that was coerced, Gui stated that he'd turned himself in to mainland authorities over a hit-and-run accident.
He was released into house arrest in October in the eastern city of Ningbo, living in what his daughter Angela called a police-managed apartment.
His daughter told Radio Sweden, the English-language service of national broadcaster Sveriges Radio, that her father was on a train with two Swedish diplomats on Saturday when a group of police officers seized him.
She said her father was traveling to Beijing to see a Swedish doctor after he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neurological disease that he developed while in custody.
Gui's 2015 abduction reinforced rising fears that Beijing was chipping away at the rule of law in Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese city that is promised civil liberties such as freedom of speech until 2047.
The books Gui and his colleagues sold at their Causeway Bay Bookshop were popular with visitors from mainland China, where such titles are banned.

Chinese authorities have a history of continuing to persecute political prisoners even after their release from prison and other legal strictures.
Noted human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng recently disappeared back into custody after five years of prison and three more years confined by guards at home. 

Liu Xia, the wife of the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, has been held a virtual prisoner for years despite never being charged.
Since her husband's death in July while serving a prison sentence, Liu has had virtually no contact with friends or family and the authorities will not say where she is currently being held.

Axis of Evil

North Korean Defector Speaks Out After Rogue China Repatriates Family
By Brian Padden
North Korean defector Kim Ryon-Hui (C) speaks to reporters during a press conference by Tomas Ojea Quintana, the UN's Special Rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, in Seoul on Dec. 14, 2017.

SEOUL — North Korean defector Lee Tae-won is still plagued with guilt over his failed efforts to bring his wife and child to South Korea, which resulted in their forced repatriation and the likely prospect of execution in North Korea.
“There's nothing I can say to them except I am sorry. I am really sorry for my son and wife. I am really sorry because there's nothing I can do. There's nothing I can say,” said Lee.

Caught in China
After arriving in South Korea in 2015, the North Korean defector took on the name Lee to try to protect his family from retribution from North Korean security forces. 

His wife and four-year-old son were among a group of 10 defectors that where apprehended by China soon after they crossed the North Korean border in late October.
In November he last spoke with his wife by phone while she was in a detention center in China.
“As soon as my wife told me she was being repatriated, the call was cut. I thought the call was cut because the police took the phone. It was devastating,” he said.
This year China has increased the arrests and repatriation of North Koreans attempting to escape the poverty and repression at home. 

According to the advocacy group Human Rights Watch, 41 North Koreans were arrested in July and August alone, compared with 51 arrests documented for the entire year before.
Ji Seong-ho, center, a North Korean defector living in South Korea and president of Now Action & Unity for Human Rights, attends a rally against Laos' recent repatriation of nine North Korean defectors, in front of the Laotian Embassy in Seoul.

Analysts attribute the rise in border arrests to efforts by China to discourage a possible flood of refugees as tougher economic sanctions imposed for Pyongyang’s repeated nuclear and missile tests increases poverty and food scarcity among ordinary North Koreans.

Human rights violations
The total number of defections to South Korea in 2017 was 1,127, which is 20 percent less than the previous year, according to South Korea’s Ministry of Unification.
Phil Robertson, the Deputy Asia Director at Human Rights Watch has criticized China for violating the U.N. Refugee Convention by designating North Korean refugees as illegal “economic migrants,” and forcibly repatriating them despite the likelihood they will be subjected to inhumane treatment.
“This is condemning people to decades of forced labor, possible executions, certainly torture in every case,” said Robertson.
China has also blocked the United Nations Security Council from acting on a General Assembly recommendation to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, based on a 2014 Commission of Inquiry report documenting a network of political prison camps and systematic human rights abuses, including murder, enslavement, torture, rape, and other sexual violence.

Failed appeal
In November Lee made a public video message appealing to both Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump to intercede and prevent the repatriation of his family, during the time the U.S. leader was visiting the region.
An unidentified North Korean defector holds a picture of nine North Korean defectors who were flown home as she cries during a rally protesting against Laos' repatriation of them, in Seoul, South Korea, June 5, 2013.

His plea went unanswered. 

Lee was later told by a friend in North Korea that his wife and child were turned over to a North Korean state security department in late November. 

But he continues to speak out to focus world attention on the dangers and atrocities faced by North Korean seeking to flee the authoritarian state.
“It is my goal to inform the international community of the pain defectors in South Korea are experiencing, and the pain North Koreans face,” said Lee.
There is also concern that North Korean human rights violations and China’s complicity are being downplayed by both the U.S. pressure strategy and South Korea’s engagement approach to curb Pyongyang’s nuclear development program. 

Focusing on human rights issues could complicate Washington’s efforts to persuade Beijing to enforce tough economic sanctions, and could also undermine Seoul’s efforts to increase cooperation and dialogue with Pyongyang.
On Tuesday, senior officials from 20 nations are meeting in Vancouver for a U.S. and Canada-led summit to discuss increasing diplomatic and financial pressure on Pyongyang to end its missile and nuclear programs. 

China will not attend the summit and has instead called for continuing the temporary reduction in regional tensions, due to North Korea’s participation in the upcoming Olympics and the U.S. postponement of joint military drills in South Korea.