CHINA: “WHERE ARE THEY?”

1. CHINA: “WHERE ARE THEY?” TIME FOR ANSWERS ABOUT MASS DETENTIONS IN THE XINJIANG UIGHUR AUTONOMOUS REGION Suzanne Wright, China Country Specialist AIUSA

2. Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region XUAR’s population is about 22 million More than half of this population is made up of mostly Turkic and predominantly Muslim ethnic groups, including Uighurs (around 11.3 million) and Kazakhs (around 1.6 million) who mostly speak Turkic languages. Uighurs made up 75 percent of the region's population in 1945, but make up only about 45 percent today. 

4. Bota Kussaiyn, 26, a Kazakh student studying at Moscow State University, last spoke with her father, KussaiynSagyambai, in November 2017. He was detained in a political “re-education” camp in the XUAR after returning to China from Kazakhstan for medical treatment.

5. Amnesty International and other human rights organization do not have access to China and the XUAR, and reporters traveling to XUAR are followed and harassed. Information about Uighurs, Kazakhs and others detained in XUAR comes from relatives outside China who are desperate for information about their loved ones. In September 2018, during a four-day visit to Kazakhstan, Amnesty International collected testimonies from more than 100 ethnic Kazakhs originally from the XUAR who say they have lost touch with relatives and friends inside the XUAR and fear that they have been detained. Their findings are published in a report CHINA: “WHERE ARE THEY?” TIME FOR ANSWERS ABOUT MASS DETENTIONS IN THE XINJIANG UIGHUR AUTONOMOUS REGION.

6. Many Uighur academics who document and advocate for Uighur culture have disappeared. Akeda last spoke with her mother, RahileDawut, in December 2017. She now fears her mother, a prominent Uighur scholar, has been detained at a “reeducation” camp in the XUAR. Ilham Tohti, a respected Uighur economist and founder of a popular bilingual website aimed at fostering inter-ethnic dialogue, was sentenced to life in prison for “separatism” and portrayed as having tried to incite ethnic tensions in 2014. Amnesty International considers Ilham Tohti to be a prisoner of conscience and has called on China to release him immediately and unconditionally. In 2017, more than 200 Uighur students were detained in Egypt, of whom at least 22 were forced to return to China. This violated the principle of non-refoulement, which required that people are not returned, either directly or indirectly, to a country where there is a real risk of serious human rights violations or abuses.

7. The spread of the surveillance and social control measures being used in the XUAR coincided with the arrival in 2016 of the region’s current party secretary, Chen Quanguo. He has employed: • a blanket of surveillance cameras using cutting-edge facial recognition and other systems to track people through big data analysis; • thousands of additional police and security personnel; • “convenience police stations” throughout urban areas; • many more checkpoints to monitor people’s movement. • These measures have turned the XUAR into what the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination Co-Rapporteur Gay McDougall characterized as a “no rights zone”.

8. Mass detention camps began to appear in XUAR after the adoption of regional “Regulations on De-Extremification” in March 2017. • Called “transformation-through education” centers, the goal of these is to replace religious affiliation and ethnic identity with secular, patriotic political allegiance. They are: • lectured about “religious radicalism”; • made to study Chinese; • forced to memorize legal provisions and patriotic songs; • and write “self-criticisms”. • Numbers of detainees is unknown, but one widely accepted estimate, published in May 2018, put the total number of detained at “anywhere between several hundred thousand and just over one million”. • Those sent for “transformation” are not put on trial; they have no access to lawyers or right to challenge the decision. Detentions are apparently open-ended and can last weeks, months – possibly even years.

9. What is Amnesty International doing? • Our members are calling on the Chinese government to: • immediately release all persons held in “de-extremification”, “transformation-through-education” or other facilities in the XUAR, unless there is credible evidence that they have committed an internationally recognized offense; • repeal or amend all laws and regulations that impermissibly restrict the exercise of human rights by Uighurs and other ethnic minorities. SIGN OUR PETITION FOR ILHAM TOHTI!! • Internationally, we are working with other NGOs to push for the United Nations Human Rights Council to urgently adopt a resolution establishing an international fact-finding mission to investigate the allegations that up to one million Uighurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups are arbitrarily detained in the so-called “transformation-through-education” facilities  Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. • AIUSA is working to increase support in Congress for two pieces of legislation: • The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2019, which mandates several reports on aspects of the crackdown, including information about Chinese companies involved in the construction and operation of the camps; and • The UIGHUR Act, which would increase global advocacy by the US on this issue at the UN and elsewhere. The bill also mandates that the Secretary of Commerce deny applications for licenses by any companies for export to China of any machine learning, pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, or biometric technology unless they provide certification that it will not be used to facilitate the mass arbitrary detention of Uighurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minority groups. • SIGN OUR PETITION ONLINE!!