In the Chinese province of Xinjiang, the regime of President Xi Jinping is cracking down on Uyghurs with extreme severity. Children are separated from their families and sent to re-education camps. “The authorities are targeting children of kindergarten age,” explains Uyghur activist Rushan Abbas to “Bild”. Children would be taken away from families at the age of four, five or six.
After the kidnapping, the parents were not told where their children were, and all communication was cut off. According to Abbas, the children in the camps have to learn Standard Chinese with the aim of forgetting their own language. They would also be forced to wear traditional clothing.
The camps are heavily guarded, there is no contact with the outside world, and the children only come out for forced labor: “They are mainly used in agriculture as cheap slave labor,” says Abbas. Some children would be taken to other parts of China after re-education and adopted there. This is also a practice used in the Ukraine war.
The UN Human Rights Commission partially confirms Abbas’s statements in a report. The oppression of the Uyghurs is tantamount to “crimes against humanity”. Witnesses reported “patterns of torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”. According to estimates, around one million Uyghurs – children and adults – are interned in camps.
China does not deny the existence of the camps, but speaks of training centers and that the visit is voluntary. Here, too, Putin copied Xi: he and his regime describe the kidnappings of the children as rescue and evacuation operations.
The Russian kidnapping of Ukrainian children and the oppression of Uyghurs are very similar. “These crimes against the Uyghur children have been committed on an even larger scale for several years,” says Rushan Abbas and demands: “If an arrest warrant can be issued against Putin, then Xi must also be held accountable for his crimes.”