The Chronicles Of Olc:
Silver City – Education About China
Part Three
September 9, 2020
Military personnel and law enforcement officers are seen patrolling a street in Kashgar, Xinjiang, on July 23, 2014.
(This photograph was provided courtesy of a traveler to China, 2014.)
It is not unusual to see an individual police car or a sheriff’s officer in Silver City and Grant County. It would be unusual, though, to see joint patrols of law enforcement officers and military personnel routinely patrolling the streets of Bayard, Santa Clara, and Hurley.
In China, such patrols are not unusual in certain communities. Including in communities in Xinjiang.
Residents of Grant County hear or read news stories almost daily about divided government in the United States – how Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on almost anything and how Congress and the President are fighting about the most basic policies.
But it may come as a shock to the people of New Mexico that there are times when there is strong agreement among almost everyone in leadership within the American government. Such is the case with the situation of evil perpetuated by the Chinese leadership in Xinjiang.
The Federal government of the United States has been actively investigating the activities of the Chinese leadership against the Uyghur people.
On June 17, 2020, President Donald Trump signed into law the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020. This law was approved by unanimous consent by the members of the United States Senate and by a vote of 413 to 1 by the members of the United States House of Representatives. (The one nay vote was from a representative from Kentucky; 17 other members of the House of Representatives did not vote.)
Think about it.
Unanimous consent by the Republican-controlled Senate.
A vote of 413 to 1 by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.
Those votes should provide some context on the importance of this issue.
This law states that the U S Congress has found that “The Government of the People's Republic of China has a long history of repressing Turkic Muslims and other Muslim minority groups, particularly Uyghurs, in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. In recent decades, central and regional Chinese government policies have systematically discriminated against these minority groups by denying them a range of civil and political rights, including the freedom of expression, religion, and movement, and the right to a fair trial.”
“In May [of] 2014, the Government of the People's Republic of China launched its latest ‘Strike Hard Against Violent Extremism’ campaign, using wide-scale, internationally-linked threats of terrorism as a pretext to justify pervasive restrictions on and serious human rights violations of members of ethnic minority communities in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,” so stated members of Congress in the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020. “The August 2016 appointment of former Tibet Autonomous Region Party Secretary Chen Quanguo to be Party Secretary of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region accelerated the crackdown across the region. Scholars, human rights organizations, journalists, and think tanks have provided ample evidence substantiating the establishment by the Government of the People's Republic of China of internment camps. Since 2014, the Government of the People's Republic of China has detained more than 1,000,000 Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and members of other Muslim minority groups in these camps. The total ethnic minority population of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region was approximately 13,000,000 at the time of the last census conducted by the People's Republic of China in 2010.”
The President, the Senate, and the House of Representatives detailed the evil that is occurring in these camps. Though the American government does not seem to have officially used the term “concentration camps,” others within this country and elsewhere throughout the world have used that term when describing the facilities where the Chinese communists are “placing” individuals who are deemed a threat to their system of government.
“Those detained in internment camps in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have described forced political indoctrination, torture, beatings, food deprivation, and denial of religious, cultural, and linguistic freedoms,” according to the text of this law. “These victims have confirmed that they were told by guards that the only way to secure their 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.”
The President agreed by signing this law that the Senate and the House of Representatives have found that “In 2019, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China concluded that, based on available evidence, the establishment and actions committed in the internment camps in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region may constitute ‘crimes against humanity.’”
This news column is the third of several news columns that will focus on other aspects of how President Xi Jinping and China implement and maintain a system that allows evil to thrive and harm the Chinese people.
Do you have questions about China and the olc of the Chinese leadership?
How Christians are persecuted? How Muslims are “re-educated”?
How journalists are imprisoned? How members of Falun Gong are tortured?
Your questions may be used in a future news column.
Contact Richard McDonough at chroniclesofolc@mail.com.
© 2020 Richard McDonough