Human rights organisations slam China's crackdown on Uyghurs, other Muslim minorities 

Beijing, Jan 27 (IANS) The Uyghur minority in China has faced severe restrictions under the policies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since 2014, following Beijing’s launch of mass arrest campaigns under the 'Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism'. This campaign has enabled crimes against humanity, especially targetting the Turkic Muslim population of Xinjiang, a report said on Tuesday.

Citing reports from various organisations, including Stanford Law School’s Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic and Human Rights Watch, it said findings highlighted widespread human rights abuses against Uyghurs.

According to a report in ‘5 Pillars’, it was estimated that millions of Uyghurs and other Muslims have been confined in prison and labour camps, where torture, forced labour, political indoctrination, and other human rights abuses allegedly take place.

The report also cited a London-based 'The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ)' investigation, which revealed that over a hundred global brands are linked to factories exploiting Uyghur and other minority workers in what authorities described as "forced labour" camps.

“According to many researchers and human rights watchdogs, the mass transfer of mostly Muslim minority workers constitutes state-imposed forced labour, where the targetted minorities live in a police state - like environment and are coerced to work in key industries,” it noted.

Last week, United Nations experts expressed deep concern regarding persistent allegations of forced labour affecting Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz minority groups as well as Tibetans within the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and across other parts of China.

"There is a persistent pattern of alleged State-imposed forced labour involving ethnic minorities across multiple provinces in China. In many cases, the coercive elements are so severe that they may amount to forcible transfer and/or enslavement as a crime against humanity," the experts said.

According to the experts, forced labour in China is enabled through the State-mandated "poverty alleviation through labour transfer" programme, which coerces Uyghurs and members of other minority groups into jobs in Xinjiang and other regions.

They are reportedly subjected to systematic monitoring, surveillance and exploitation, with no choice to refuse or change the work due to a pervasive fear of punishment and arbitrary detention.

The experts highlighted that Xinjiang’s five-year plan (2021 to 2025) projects 13.75 million instances of labour transfers, while the actual numbers have reached new heights.

“The labour transfers are part of a government policy to forcibly re-engineer Uyghur, other minorities and Tibetans’ cultural identities under the guise of poverty alleviation,” they warned.

--IANS

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