China must be censured for human rights abuses

Chinese President Xi Jinping has managed to consolidate his general secretaryship of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for a lifetime, or until he is overthrown, with the adoption of a landmark resolution on the party’s ‘major achievements and historic experiences’ by the CCP on 11 November.

Only twice before has the CCP passed such a resolution – one, during Mao Zedong’s time and two, at the start of the Deng Xiaoping era.

The resolution places Xi at the same level as Mao and Deng, erases the two-term limits established by Deng for Chinese leaders (Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao both stepped down after a decade as general secretary and president of the People’s Republic of China) so that Xi can continue as the PRC’s president until his death.

Now Xi has all but ensconced himself as president for life. The Communist Party has declared Xi’s world view as the “essence of Chinese culture”.

Not that Xi has not made enough enemies in China, but he is busy stamping himself all over China’s body politic.

Late last month, Xi appointed Wang Junzheng as the new Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) party secretary, in what seemed like China’s adopting an increasing hard line towards aspirations of regions within China that seem apart from China. Since 2019, Wang Junzheng was head of the political and legal commission of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) overseeing its security apparatus. Wang Junzheng is on a number of sanctions lists by the US, Britain, the EU and Canada, for his tough role in Xinjiang, aimed at China’s Uyghur ethnic minority.

The hard line move is expected to herald actions including that of Mandarin being made the primary language in all schools in Tibet, prescribing a new history of Tibet and its people, ‘eliminating the influence of the Dalai Lama’ etc.

This will be a furtherance of consolidation moves made since last year. On 29 August 2020, Xi announced plans to “strengthen unity and socialism” in Tibet by building an impregnable fortress to ward off dissent. In 2008, when the Tibet protests erupted, fomented by discontent with decades-long repression, the CCP conducted arbitrary killings and arrests in Tibet. This was followed by the CCP’s long-term policy of forced assimilation.

Over the past few years, China has incessantly oppressed freedom of expression in Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong under the guise of “anti-separatism”, “anti-extremism” and “counter-terrorism”.In Xinjiang, since 2017, an estimated one million or more Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim peoples were arbitrarily detained without trial and subjected to political indoctrination and forced cultural assimilation in “transformation-through-education” centres. Despite having initially denied the existence of camps, authorities later described them as “vocational training” centres. Nevertheless, satellite imagery indicated that an increasing number of camps continued to be built over the years.

In Inner Mongolia, there were region-wide protests over a new “bilingual education” policy that would gradually change the teaching medium of several classes from Mongolian to Mandarin Chinese throughout the nine years of compulsory schooling. According to media reports, hundreds of people, including students, parents, teachers, pregnant women and children, were arrested for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” solely because they participated in peaceful protests or shared information about protests on the internet.

China’s repression of religion in Xinjiang and Tibet remains severe. People are arbitrarily detained for ordinary religious practices that authorities deemed “signs of extremism” under the “De-extremification Regulations”.

In 2017, according to official statistics, arrests in Xinjiang accounted for nearly 21 percent of all arrests in China, despite people in Xinjiang making up only 1.5 percent of the total population. Since 2017, Chinese authorities have used various pretexts to damage or destroy two-thirds of Xinjiang’s mosques; about half of those have been demolished outright. Important Islamic sacred sites have been destroyed across the region. As part of regional authorities’ intrusive “Becoming Families” surveillance, development, and indoctrination campaign, officials impose themselves for overnight stays at the homes of Turkic Muslims, a practice that authorities say “promote[s] ethnic unity.” In another particularly cruel practice, some Turkic Muslim children, whose parents have been arbitrarily detained, are placed in state institutions such as orphanages and boarding schools, including boarding preschools.

China has an indelible insecurity about the dismemberment of itself through ethnic dissent. It has pursued a policy of so-called ethnic blending, in other words forced assimilation, of ethnic minorities. Chinese leaders want to turn China into a cohesive state-race, which means making ethnic minorities like the majority Han peoples. Because of Chinese secrecy and its increasing global might and reach, it has succeeded in obfuscating the extent of its atrocities on its ethnic and religious minorities.

In June 2020, 50 independent UN human rights experts strongly criticised China for the repression of religious and ethnic minorities in Xinjiang and Tibet, among others. On 6 October 2020, 39 UN member states issued a joint statement expressing grave concerns about the human rights situation in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and other regions, urging China to allow immediate, meaningful and unfettered access to Xinjiang for independent observers, including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and relevant UN special procedure mandate holders. Capitalising on its rising political and economic influence and expanding role within the UN, China continued to seek ways to challenge established human rights mechanisms.

The United States has sanctioned officials and blacklisted dozens of Chinese agencies linked to abuses in Xinjiang. In January 2021, it determined that China’s actions constitute genocide and crimes against humanity.

China has displayed no compunction over the cultural genocide and other atrocities it has committed in Tibet and Xinjiang. Besides the crushing of political dissent in Hong Kong. It has remained vehement in its obstruction of human rights observation agencies investigating the situation within its boundaries and denied any access to information. It has the habit of making allegations of its human rights violations against the state seem like canard. Even though talk in the Chinese ethnic minority diaspora are rife with tales of torture, arbitrary arrests, killings, disappearances and various other abuses. Going by its suppression of information within and without its borders, it is not wrong to estimate that human rights abuses in China are far worse than they seem.

It is Xi Jinping’s implicit dream to make `Greater China’ the sole superpower of the world in future. However, major nations of the world, today, must act swiftly to pre-empt that. China cannot and must not presume global leadership with its callous record on human rights.