This article was originally published by Newsweek.
The evidence is clear, public, and overwhelming: An estimated one million Uyghurs are in concentration camps, treated as little more than chattel, and enslaved. Both men and women endure systematic physical and sexual abuse, including rape and torture. Young men remain absent from the streets of Urumqi, and women are sterilized and forced to marry men from the dominant Han Chinese ethnic group. They are not safe outside of China, either; CCP authorities have rounded up Uyghur university students in Egypt, as well as a daring group of Uyghurs who made their way into Thailand in 2015 and sent them to the camps. Even Uyghurs abroad and in the United States are threatened and intimidated by authorities in China, who practically hold their kin hostage to prevent them from speaking out.
This is the largest internment of an ethnic-religious minority since the Second World War, and we now bear witness to the attempted destruction of an entire people. What, then, have we in the so-called “Free World” done?
The products of Uyghur slave labor are openly advertised in places like Japan. As 800 year-old mosques are destroyed and Uyghur graveyards are bulldozed and paved over, Hiltons and Tesla dealerships are built in their place. A powerful corner of American finance pours hundreds of billions of dollars into both the XUAR and China in general.
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Jianli Yang is the Founder and President of Citizen Power Initiatives for China. Rory O’Connor is the Founder of the Athenai Institute.
