Sec. 4. Findings

411 words·~2 min read·/bill/116/s/178/eah/section-4

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Congress makes the following findings: The Government of the People’s Republic of China has a long history of repressing Turkic Muslims, particularly Uighurs, in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. In May 2014, Chinese authorities launched their latest Strike Hard against Violent Extremism campaign, using wide-scale, internationally-linked threats of terrorism as a pretext to justify pervasive restrictions on and human rights violations of members of the ethnic minority communities of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

The August 2016 transfer of former Tibet Autonomous Region Party Secretary Chen Quanguo to become the Xinjiang Party Secretary prompted an acceleration in the crackdown across the region. Scholars, human rights organizations, journalists, and think tanks have provided ample evidence substantiating the establishment by Chinese authorities of reeducation camps. Since 2014, Chinese authorities have detained no less than 800,000 Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other ethnic minorities in these camps.

Those detained in such facilities have described forced political indoctrination, torture, beatings, and food deprivation, as well as denial of religious, cultural, and linguistic freedoms, and confirmed that they were told by guards that the only way to secure release was to demonstrate sufficient political loyalty. Poor conditions and lack of medical treatment at such facilities appear to have contributed to the deaths of some detainees, including the elderly and infirm. Uighurs and ethnic Kazakhs, who have now obtained permanent residence or citizenship in other countries, attest to receiving threats and harassment from Chinese officials.

At least five journalists for Radio Free Asia’s Uighur service have publicly detailed abuses their family members in Xinjiang have endured in response to their work exposing abusive policies across the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. In September 2018, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michele Bachelet noted in her first speech as High Commissioner the deeply disturbing allegations of large-scale arbitrary detentions of Uighurs and other Muslim communities, in so-called re-education camps across Xinjiang .

The Government of the People’s Republic of China’s actions against Turkic Muslims in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, whose population was approximately 13 million at the time of the last Chinese census in 2010, are in contravention of international human rights laws, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, both of which China has signed and ratified, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which China has signed.