China faces heat over Uyghur Muslim genocide, removes its Xinjiang party chief  

By King C Bharati

Jammu, January 08, 2021: The world is slowly turning its heat on the Communist Party of China (CCP) for its gross human rights violations in Xinjiang Province against the Uyghur Muslims where a state sponsored genocide is going on for many years with the Western powers keeping mum and Islamic world turning a blind eye.

However, things seem to be changing now as the Uyghur Muslim genocide is catching the attention of the world particularly the Western countries who see China as a new super power and want to settle scores instead of actually being concerned about the Uyghur Muslim genocide.

On the other hand, the powerful Islamic countries are also turning a blind eye leaving the Uygur Muslims in lurch even as the self-styled champion of Muslims, Pakistan, is kneeling before the Chinese government in order to keep CCP happy to get more financial help for its collapsing economy.

Meanwhile US President Joe Biden on Thursday signed into law legislation that bans imports from China’s Xinjiang region over concerns about forced labour, the White House said.

In another set back to China, an unofficial and independent UK-based tribunal has ruled that the Chinese government has committed genocide, crimes against humanity and torture against Uighurs and other minorities in its western region of Xinjiang.

Faced with twin onslaught over the state sponsored genocide and to quell the what it calls as ‘rumours’, China has replaced the head of the Xinjiang region associated with alleged human rights abuses against ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslims.

Ma Xingrui, governor of the Guangdong province, was appointed to replace incumbent Chen Quanguo as the Communist Party chief for the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region, Bloomberg and The Guardian reported, citing the state-run Xinhua news agency.

However, there are still some people who refuse to call a spade-a-spade and shy away from calling out on China over the issue of Uyghur Muslims openly.

In a report in Breitbart Thomas D. Williams writing about Pope Francis Christmas messages and his calling attention on various atrocities around the world, he says, “Yet in this panoramic excursion to call attention to situations of injustice around the globe, the pope once again mysteriously avoided any mention of one of the most egregious examples of the trampling of human rights: the genocide of Uighur Muslims currently taking place in Xinjiang, China.

The pope has kept a sepulchral silence regarding the more than one million Uighur Muslims interned in a network of 85 Chinese concentration camps in the region of Xinjiang, where they are being systematically tortured, raped, enslaved, and forcibly sterilized.

Francis has not budged in the face of significant international criticism for his unwillingness to call out China for its grave human rights abuses, despite his practice of meticulously enumerating the sufferings of ethnic and religious groups around the world.

“As more and more nations have expressed their concern about the growing evidence of concentration camps and even genocide in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, there has been silence from the one entity that has the whole of suffering humanity at the core of its mission. I refer to the Holy See,” wrote Dominic Lawson in the Sunday Times.”

The UK-Based Tribunal levelling charges of genocide on China, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, the head of the Uighur Tribunal and prominent human rights lawyer, said the Chinese government has targeted the Muslim Uighur population with forced birth control and sterilisation policies in order to reduce the group’s population.

“The tribunal is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the People’s Republic of China, by the imposition of measures to prevent births intended to destroy a significant part of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang as such, has committed genocide,” said Nice, who also led the prosecution of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic on war crimes and genocide.

He added that “this vast apparatus of state repression could not exist if a plan was not authorised at the highest levels”.

The tribunal does not have government backing and the power to sanction or punish China. But experts say that it will help to galvanise governments around the world to hold China accountable for abuses.

The Chinese authorities have arbitrarily detained as many as one million Uighurs and other minorities in 300 to 400 facilities in Xinjiang, in the largest internment of an ethno-religious minority since WWII.

The US and several other countries have declared China’s actions as genocide. But the United Kingdom has refused to do so.

On the other hand, US President Joe Biden on Thursday signed into law legislation that bans imports from China’s Xinjiang region over concerns about forced labour, the White House said.

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is part of the US pushback against Beijing’s treatment of the China’s Uyghur Muslim minority, which Washington has labelled genocide.

The bill passed Congress this month after lawmakers reached a compromise between House and Senate versions.

Key to the legislation is a “rebuttable presumption” that assumes all goods from Xinjiang, where Beijing has established detention camps for Uyghurs and other Muslim groups, are made with forced labour. It bars imports unless it can be proven otherwise.

Some goods – such as cotton, tomatoes, and polysilicon used in solar-panel manufacturing – are designated “high priority” for enforcement action.

Trying to quell the fears, Daniel Uria reports in UPI, “China has replaced the head of the Xinjiang region associated with alleged human rights abuses against ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslims.

Ma Xingrui, governor of the Guangdong province, was appointed to replace incumbent Chen Quanguo as the Communist Party chief for the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region, Bloomberg and The Guardian reported, citing the state-run Xinhua news agency.

Chen, 66, was appointed party secretary of Xinjiang in 2016. He will move onto a new role, according to the report.

He was one of several top Chinese officials sanctioned by the United States in July 2020 over allegations they are contributing to the human rights abuses being committed against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.

Ma, 62, has a background in the aerospace industry and served as the party chief in Shenzhen from 2015 before becoming governor of Guandong.

The change comes ahead of what is expected to be a broader restructuring of the Communist Party ahead of its 20th congress in the fall.

It comes after U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act into law, banning imports from the Xinjiang region unless the importer can prove they are not made with forced labor and imposing sanctions on foreign individuals who make use of forced labor.”

China has been accused of detaining some 1 million Uyghur and other Muslim minorities in concentration camps.

The Chinese government, however, has vehemently denied the allegations, referring to the camps as training centers whose purpose is to stamp out extremism in the name of counterterrorism.

The Biden administration earlier this month announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics after declaring China’s treatment of the Uyghur population as genocide in March.

While Uygur Muslims are facing the onslaught and the insensitivity of the world, things are changing on the world platform even though there is little hope that the fate of Uyghur Muslims will change as China is a master of deceit and by removing an officer and appointing another, may hoodwink the world once again, while continuing its genocide and ethnic cleansing of Uyghur Muslims in its Xinjiang region.