Nobody, no country, is showing an interest in our situation or is concerned about us, so if we were deported to China, they would eat us alive.” This chilling statement comes from a member of the Uighur minority in China who is one of many to flee the country due to the increasingly repressive measures Beijing has enforced on the Xinjiang region of China which the Uighur people are native to. The Chinese government has banned Uighur people from people celebrating their traditional religious holidays and taken revered Uighur shrines and religious sites and turned them into tourist attractions. Violence first erupted between the Uighurs and the Chinese government, and Han Chinese who have been moved into the region, in 2008 when Uighur riots killed 16 policeman and an unknown number of Uighur people. Violence has recurred each year since. After a mob attacked a police station this year, the Chinese government charged prominent Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti with separatism although Tohti had never advocated for independence. Tohti, a winner of the PEN / Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award, had merely advocated giving more autonomy to the region so the people could have freedom to practice their religious beliefs. He is now serving a life-sentence for doing so.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 04:42:39 +0000
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