There are credible reports, according to the United Nations, that a million or more Uighur Muslims are being held in what amount to internment camps in China. And now, increasingly, their families are speaking out.
HOTAN UNITY NEW VILLAGE, China (AP) — In this corner of China’s far west, rows of identical white concrete houses with red metal roofs rise abruptly above the sand dunes of the harsh Taklamakan Desert. A Chinese flag flutters above the settlement, and a billboard at the entrance says, “Welcome to the Hotan Unity New Village.”
Winter is coming, and farmers in this Uyghur village are busy cutting branches pruned from walnut trees for firewood. The wood is fuel for small metal stoves that heat their mud-and-brick homes.
As Yalies sipped cocktails in Beijing and snapped photos of the Great Wall this summer, the Uyghurs — a Muslim ethnic minority — faced genocidal policies within the same country.
The Trump administration is considering sanctions against Chinese senior officials and companies to punish Beijing’s detention of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uyghurs and other minority Muslims in large internment camps, according to current and former U.S. officials.
Lawmakers are urging Washington to sanction Chinese officials over possible crimes against humanity the same week that Beijing legalized its policy of mass detentions of Uighur Muslims.
THE CHINESE government has dropped a bombshell.
At the Xinjiang International Grand Bazaar in the heart of Urumqi, everything is bought and sold from tiny stalls blasting local music, in a square filled with Islamic architecture.
Speaking to a foreign journalist is usually a stressful endeavor for a Uighur in China. Uighurs belong to a Muslim ethnic minority and speak a language closer to Turkish than Chinese.
Last year, the Chinese wife of a Pakistani man traveled back home to China with their two children. She wanted to introduce her younger boy, 18 months old, to her mom.
