China needs to hear from its peers it cannot commit ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang | Frances Eve | World news | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/03/china-is-committing-ethnic-cleansing-in-xinjiang-its-time-for-the-world
Now is the time to act on China’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang. China’s efforts to destroy the ethnic Uighur identity through mass internment camps and militarised surveillance must be raised loudly and clearly condemned during a UN human rights review of China on Tuesday in Geneva.
Countries afraid of standing up to China on their own can speak out on 6 November on a UN platform, known as the universal periodic review (UPR), where all countries equally take turns to be scrutinised by their peers about every four years. The UPR tests UN member states’ commitment to promoting and protecting human rights, but more pragmatically, it gives governments a shield to protect themselves when speaking up.
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Step-by-step the Xi Jinping regime has crossed thresholds unthinkable years ago, with little repercussion. The government detained nearly every single human rights lawyer over a single weekend in July 2015, imprisoned China’s only Nobel peace prize laureate until he died in custody in July 2017, and earlier this year, abolished presidential terms limits, paving the way for Xi to become dictator for life. The Han-dominated Chinese Communist party is now confident that the only way to govern Xinjiang is to eradicate the distinct Uighur identity in the name of countering terrorism. This cannot continue.
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What’s happening to Uighurs and Muslim minorities in Xinjiang is about the future of China and the wider world. Some of the policies and technologies used in Xinjiang won’t stay there. They’ll spread east across China and eventually find their way overseas.
Au nom de l’anti-terrorisme. C’est peut-être en suivant la logique de ce tout dernier paragraphe que l’on peut trouver l’explication de l’inertie complète des gouvernements occidentaux…