Civic Register
| 5.7.21
House Panel Holds Hearing on Atrocities Committed by China Against Uyghur Minorities
Should U.S. companies boycott China over the atrocities against Uyghurs?
What’s the story?
- The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday held a hearing on the atrocities committed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region. The U.S. declared the persecution a genocide during the Trump administration in January, and Biden administration Secretary of State Antony Blinken has agreed with that designation.
- The witness list for the hearing included a survivor of the CCP’s concentration camps, along with an activist for Uyghur rights and an international affairs scholar. Nury Turkel of the Uyghur Human Rights Project testified:
“The Chinese state has spent the last four years crushing our culture, language, civilizational accomplishment in poetry, literature, the arts and theology, architecture and scholarship. The Uyghur imams, religious scholars, university presidents, professors and teachers, successful business owners, entrepreneurs, they have all been swept en masse into the modern day industrial scale concentration camps.”
- Tursunay Ziyawudun, who experienced torture and sexual violence in the CCP’s concentration camps, testified that her time in detention left “an unforgettable scar on my heart” and recounted disturbing details about her experience:
“Girls would be taken away and only brought back days later… and then I, myself, was taken [along with another woman]. I was tortured with an electric stick pushed inside my genital tract. I could hear the other woman’s screams in the next room. I knew the guards were raping her. After that, she never stopped crying.”
- Witnesses urged the U.S. government to enact the Uyghur Human Rights Protection Act, which companies including Disney, Nike, and Coca-Cola lobbied against at the end of the last Congress.
- Ranking Member Michael McCaul (R-TX) criticized those companies for doing business with the CCP:
“We cannot put profits ahead of doing what’s right. The true nature of these Faustian deals need to come to light so consumers begin to know where their money is going.”
- The G7 nations ― a group which includes the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, and Japan ― on Wednesday issued a joint statement expressing it was “deeply concerned” about the persecution in Xinjiang and also in Tibet, and called on the CCP to end restrictions on pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong.
- Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, responded on Thursday by accusing the G7 of pushing “unfounded accusations against China” and told them “to face up to their own problems.”
- Chairman Gregory Meeks (D-NY) criticized the CCP’s response in the hearing:
“Instead of working with the international community to investigate these atrocities and bring an end to the genocide, the Chinese government has endorsed an attitude of deflection and disinformation.”
What is China doing to Muslim minorities in Xinjiang?
- Human rights experts say that between 800,000 to 2 million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims have been detained indefinitely in reeducation camps since 2017 because the Chinese Communist Party views them as a potential extremist or separatist threat in the Xinjiang region of western China.
- Detainees are interned without due process in the camps, where they are subjected to communist propaganda, forced to renounce Islam, and in some cases are beaten and tortured. Detainees are forced to demonstrate sufficient political loyalty to be released.
- Uyghur detainees are also used as forced labor, which several notable multinational companies have been associated with. In July 2020, U.S. Customs & Border Protection seized a 13-ton shipment of hair weaves & beauty accessories shipped from China that was suspected to have been made from human hair taken from Uyghurs in a concentration camp.
- Outside of the Xinjiang internment camps, there is political and cultural indoctrination occurring in schools and authorities using the compulsory collection of biometric data (like DNA & voice samples), artificial intelligence, big data, and movement restrictions to control the population.
- Uyghur women are subjected to pregnancy checks, and forced abortions and sterilizations have been performed on many. Those who have too many children are sent to detention camps unless they can pay substantial fines.
- The Chinese Communist Party restricts the use of the Uyghur language and has demolished Uyghur graveyards and shrines. There have also been credible reports of extrajudicial mass killings.
- Abroad, the Chinese Communist Party has threatened & harassed Uyghurs & ethnic Muslim minorities who’ve moved overseas, and in some cases have sought to forcibly repatriate them to China. At least five journalists working for Radio Free Asia’s Uyghur service detailed abuses against their family members in Xinjiang because of their work exposing the Chinese Communist Party’s abuses.
— Eric Revell
(Photo Credit: Uyghur Concentration Camp: Radio Free Asia / Fair Use)
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🇺🇸 If The US is to remake the model of democracy we must consistently honor our commitment to defending human rights worldwide!
China was chosen to hold the winter Olympics. The people that did that are responsible. There isn’t one country that does not know what Chyna does to the people. They knew that before they chose them to hold the winter Olympics. Now try to remember these are athletes from around the world we have worked very hard. They go to the winter Olympics not for politics but for their sport. If other countries want to do anything to stop China and what they do in their country don’t do it with the Olympics. There are other ways to get it China. Stop buying the products that are made in China. Each country open your country up and make your own products. Anything that you see that says China on it don’t buy it send it back to China. In other countries you can make Your own cars. These companies that are having everything made in China because labor is so cheap yet their prices are very high. Don’t buy their products. But don’t take it out on athletes who worked very hard to be in the winter Olympics there are many other ways to hurt China. Get people in the White House and Congress , inner Senate, and in the house that are for America. To bring our jobs back in to make our own products even her own drugs, and whatever else we need we do not need to be dependent On China. The first thing Americans can do is investigate who you are voting for in every election and make sure every election is done fairly and true and right and everyone has to prove that they are an American citizen and where they live in order to vote you must give ID and who you are.
American companies need to consider more than the bottom line and find other countries to manufacture their good and not be OWNED by China! I check the label on everything I buy to look for the made in China label. If there is no other alternative I will consider if I really "need" it or is it a "want". We have a Biden Administration who the Chinese have in their pocket and the uselessness of not sending anyone but the athlets to the Olympics is digusting!
We should boycott China not only concerning the treatment of Uyghurs but also for the Christian population that are also persecuted by the CCP.
I am against the Chinese regime for all their human rights violations, including this one. Please vote to deny China any benefit because of such. The only reason you would not do so as if you are financially beholden and bribed by the CCP
While I applaud the stance some companies have taken over social issues such as systemic racism and voting rights in this country, most companies are conspicuously silent about the genocide being committed by China. American companies need to stop looking after their own profits if they care about being good corporate citizens. Not only do they tiptoe around China's actions against their own people, but they also censor products, movies, and merchandise to avoid being blocked by the Chinese government. If American companies aren't comfortable defending American values around the world, then maybe they should face tax penalties. In order to make the whole world a better place, values must come before profits.
Just boycott China. As a closed society, a communist dictatorship, a military intimidator and a lifelong dehumanizing criminal enterprise, they should get no mercy, no quarter. Open up with solutions as a proud member of the global community, and maybe we’ll talk. Remain secretive & silent and continue to push other countries, then all blood will be on your hands. Create an environment of hate and fear and continue to push the world to the brink, and whoever is left at the end will see you in hell!
Why did all those American soldiers lose their lives fighting communism and then the U.S. has done everything he could to make China into a super power? Just goes to show that all the wars allegedly fighting communism was a farce.
Hold China accountable.
America and many other countries boycotted South Africa over Apartide, but China has a hold over more than just the Uyghurs because there are too many companies who are tied to China for their wealth. These companies are giving up their Humanity for profits. Americans are in love with cheap goods and are sacrificing the dignity of decency and human dignity. The Uyghurs are being eliminated, sterilized and forced into labor camps. Is this the kind of American's we want to be??? I know I don't! I buy very little from Amazon and check where it is made.
China is doing what Hitler did to the Jews and they also must be stopped. The Muslim Chinese have every right to practice their chosen faith. If we do not stop the Racist Chinese government God will punish us.
Personally, I will try to be more conscientious as a consumer and not purchase products made in China. It is difficult, because it seems just about everything has been manufactured there since Reagan became President. But, if that type of oppression was used against me and my family, I’d hope people around the world would take a stand for my freedom and human rights.
We should boycott China for many things as Trump had done. We’ve gotten in bed with the enemy.
Both parties have wanted action against China for persecuting Christians Muslims and freedom fighters... actually do something
World organization such as UN need to address this. It should be many countries opposing all humanitarian crimes. The USA must end its detention of minor children who illegally cross our borders expecting to find a better life. They only have to look at US citizens living in poverty, hungry & homeless, to know this is no longer the land of opportunity. The rich get richer; the poor struggle daily.
Boycotting China is one step towards making the US a more humanitarian nation. The companies should but we all know that for far to many of these companies put the values they state in their commercials to the side very damn fast. The government ought to enforce a boycott if it’s going to be successful.
Waste of time.
US should boycott China PERIOD!!!
Not like they will do anything. How about a Hearing on John Kerry’s ties to Iran??
Kinda ironic to think about boycotting China while Congress and numerous state legislatures try to make the BDS movement against the Israeli thug government atrocities on Palestinians a crime. No, not ironic. Hellish.