The ECAJ and the Uygers
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has expressed its deep concern and alarm about the treatment of Uyghur and other minority communities in north-western China.
“It is impossible to ignore persistent reports of hundreds of thousands of members of the Uyghur and other Muslim communities in China being rounded up and sent to re-education camps to pressure them into abandoning their religion, and other harsh government measures directed at reducing their numbers”, ECAJ President Jillian Segal said.
“In the face of official denials of these practices, we have seen shocking footage coming from north-western China of dozens of people kneeling, bound and blindfolded with their heads shaved being led on to trains by armed guards”.
“Whilst every government has the right and duty to protect its people from terrorism and violent separatist and other political movements, the suppression by forced reductions in population and mass transports of hundreds of thousands of people to detention centres, simply for expressing religious ideas and participating in religious worship, can have no justification and is an egregious violation of fundamental human freedoms, dignity and rights.
“These crude and brutal measures are unworthy of any nation, let alone one that prides itself on having inherited the enlightened traditions of a great civilisation.”
“We urge the government of China not to sully its global reputation by setting itself up as an enemy of religion. We ask it to re-think its policies and practices, and to act with the deliberation and self-restraint that befits China’s status as a great power.”
Agree but were a government has total control its best to stay quiet and try to live quietly to make a good living as most Chinese do or immigrate. Chinese travel as tourist and attend overseas universities. We could not have imagine that happening under Mao Tse Tung. After all post Mao, China has dragged most of the majority Han population out of poverty into a prosperous middle class in a few decades. Hong Kong protests are futile and even the Republic of China (ROC), Taiwan to the UN, may soon be subject to the will of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and nothing will stop it, not even the USA nor the UN.