(Open letter to Josep Borrell, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy)
Dear Mr. Borrell,
Today, US House of Representatives passed Uyghur Human Rights Bill, which can be a great Eid gift for us. Although this bill cannot directly address the tragic situation in our homeland, East Turkestan (the so-called Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region), this is the official start of the world’s most powerful country’s concern for a helpless nation facing cruel abuse and a clear signal that it can no longer stand idly by.
In today’s world, there are many news written about who is aware of the dangers of the Wuhan virus, who is early, who is late, who is hiding it, and who is the first to reveal it. However, there is a politician who publicly warned the U.S. government and world about this catastrophe from China six years ago, and that is Mr. Dana Rohrabacher, a former member of Congress from the Republican Party. As a member of the Uyghur nation whom have been heavily impacted and harmed by the Wuhan virus and is at greater risk of being harmed, today I feel that expressing my gratitude to Mr.
The Iranian government has recently released 54,000 prisoners temporarily to protect them from the novel Coronavirus.
This move deserves to be respected in the perspective of medical measures and humanitarian considerations.
As far as I know, Sairagul Savutbay has shown great heroism three times in the last three years of the most difficult days for the people of East Turkestan. The first one was that she gave up teaching at a camp in Mongolkura and gave up standing on China’s side, are heroism of self-sacrifice and the courage to stand up for the truth at a critical moment. The second was to flee the border to save her life and bring the voice of the oppressed to the world. This is a kind of bravery that even men usually cannot take in a hurry.
In June 2019 the Chinese government declared that people who are detained in re-education camps have all been “graduated”; and in January 2020 they announced that they have shut down all the re-education camps. Even invited the ‘Ireland Time’ magazine to show them the closed buildings in the Kashgar region of East Turkistan.
When the world started to consider serious measures amid the Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak, we have worried about the situation of more than 3 million Uyghurs in concentration camps in East Turkestan and we have petitioned the international community to prevent possible tragedy in those camps. Because the people in the camps were the most vulnerable to the Wuhan Virus. It's reported that 13000 Wuhan people fled to East Turkestan before the Wuhan city closed.
Chinese State-run media reported 29 people infected with the virus in Uyghur region.but there is not any reports about the measure taken to protect more than 3 million people from the virus in these camps. Instead, local authorities have arrested 12 people on the charges of disclosing state secrets for just sharing posts about the virus.
This is a strong indication that China doesn’t care the lives of Uyghurs either in the camps or outside of the camps.
It’s obvious that the detainees have not idea that an epidemic virus is coming towards them.
