Rights declining in China, which continues persecuting Uyghurs: Amnesty

Beijing, Mar 29 (EFE).- Amnesty International warned Tuesday of the deterioration of human rights in China, where the organization said the persecution of Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region continues in “reeducation camps” despite their alleged closure in 2019.

“The human rights situation throughout China continued to worsen,” said Amnesty’s annual report presented Tuesday, which mentions “acts of harassment and intimidation, unfair trials, arbitrary incommunicado detention, as well as torture and other ill-treatment.”

The organization said the Chinese government adopted “extreme measures” to prevent independent access to the autonomous region of Xinjiang to verify the complaints about the situation of Uyghurs and other minorities.

It also spoke about the use of policies that violate “the rights to freedom and personal security, privacy, freedom of movement, opinion and expression, thought, conscience, religion and belief,” among others.

“The government continued its campaign of political indoctrination, arbitrary mass detention, torture and forced cultural assimilation against the Muslim population residing in Xinjiang. Thousands of Uighur children were separated from their parents,” the document read.

While Beijing denies these accusations and says its action in Xinjiang only seeks to prevent extremist acts and preserve security, Amnesty spoke of “a clear intention to collectively attack sectors of the population based on religion or ethnicity, and to use extreme violence, intimidation and arbitrary mass detention to eradicate Islamic religious beliefs and ethnocultural practices of Muslim groups.”

Amnesty, which in recent years denounced the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of people and the detention of more than 1 million people in internment camps called “training” or “education” centers by the authorities, said this practice persists.

“There continued to be credible evidence that many people interned in Xinjiang had been transferred and remained in detention. A large number of families continued to report missing relatives, who were believed to be in detention,” the report said.

The organization said that between October 2019 and May 2021 it gathered “conclusive evidence that the Chinese government had committed crimes against humanity” such as imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty, torture and persecution.

It also said Uyghurs abroad could not return to China to take care of their children, some of whom would have been “sent to orphan camps where they were prohibited from speaking their mother tongue or communicating with their families.” EFE

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