Sayragul Sauytbay, a Kazakh “whistle blower” living in exile in Sweden, reveals torture in concentration camps, accuses Chinese Communist Party of being like fascists during hearing on “Human Rights Situation in China” by the Human Rights Committee of the German Federal Parliament. Repression of Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Muslims. (World Uyghur Congress President Dori Kun Twitter photo)
The Chinese Embassy in Germany issued a statement late Wednesday night accusing the Human Rights Committee of the German Bundestag of “interfering in China’s internal affairs,” and several of the witnesses who spoke were “persistent anti-China elements. Some of the witnesses named in the statement told the station that the Chinese accusations were “very unusual” and showed Beijing’s intensified narrative and repressive efforts to control human rights. At the hearing, former Chinese civil servants who experienced the Xinjiang concentration camp, members of the German-based Human Rights Watch, and local anthropologists all testified that the Chinese government is using control of the media and the Internet to control people’s actions, thoughts, and lifestyles. However, there is also a local “Sinologist”, a German professor from the Confucius Institute, who speaks for the Chinese government.
The “Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid” of the German Federal Parliament held a hearing this week (November 18) on “The Human Rights Situation in China,” which focused on the Chinese Communist Party’s oppressive policies against ethnic groups and religions, the pushing of the National Security Law in Hong Kong, and the suppression of civil society.
“Wenzel Michalski, head of Human Rights Watch Germany, said that since 2016, arbitrary mass arrests, torture, and ill-treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang have become normalized. He warned that the Communist government is fragmenting the EU through its “One Belt, One Road” policy of creating dependency ties through economic investment in individual EU countries, which poses a danger to German democracy.
Sayragul Sauytbay, a Kazakh “whistle blower” exiled in Sweden and a former government employee who was imprisoned in a “re-education camp” by the Chinese Communist Party in 2017, disclosed at a hearing that the camp was a “re-education camp. She said that the Chinese Communist Party is using fascist methods to suppress Turkic Muslims, and that they have experienced torture, brainwashing, slavery and forced labor and even killings. She said the Chinese Communist Party is using fascist methods to suppress Turkic Muslims. The former civil servant of the Chinese government, who went into exile after her release in 2018, called on Germany to do something, or soon Uighurs and other East Turkish Muslims will cease to exist.
I am a victim of the Chinese Communist Party’s genocidal policy,” said Shayla Gulik, “I am not against the Chinese people, I am against the Chinese people. I am not against the Chinese people, but against the Chinese Communist Party, the government. The Chinese Communist Party is committing a real genocide against the Uighurs, Kazakhs and many other ethnic groups in East Turkestan. This crime is a fact that has been proven by many hard facts in the international community. No one can conceal this fact with falsehoods. If we pretend that we do not see or hear the evil crimes being committed by the Chinese Communist Party, we will also be complicit in the crime.
Adrian Zenz, a German anthropologist, testified that the CCP wants to control the media, the Internet, what people do, how they think, how they live, etc., and that its goal is to have the people obey the Party’s leadership. The re-education camps in Xinjiang are an even more extreme form of political propaganda by the CCP in the education system, and human rights violations are a byproduct of the CCP regime.
“Kai Müller, the German director general of the International Campaign for Tibet, has said that Tibetan culture is disappearing, that international criticism is not enough, that his organization has advocated sanctions against CCP officials, and that the German government should ensure that the Dalai Lama’s successor is not appointed by the CCP.
The German government should also ensure that the Dalai Lama’s successor cannot be designated by the Chinese Communist Party. In her testimony, Zhou Lei, a local German journalist for the Epoch Times, said that China has established a series of “brainwashing centers” since 2001, targeting Falun Gong practitioners, Christians, Buddhists, and others. In these “brainwashing centers,” detainees were subjected to electric shocks, forced feeding, isolation, and even sexual assault in order to force them to renounce their religious beliefs. Zhou Lei also cited information from the Falun Gong organization stating that at least 4,500 Falun Gong practitioners have died as a result of torture, including several victims of “illegal organ harvesting.
However, Mechthild Leutner, the German director of the local Confucius Institute, defended the CCP during the hearing. The professor of Sinology at the Free University of Berlin also complained that “criticism of the CCP’s human rights violations” was becoming a strategic tool of foreign policy. In the language of Chinese Communist Party propaganda, Luo Meijun said that the Chinese government’s policy in Xinjiang is “anti-terrorist measures” and that concentration camps are “conversion centers for terrorists, separatists, etc.”.
The Chinese Embassy in Germany issued a statement Wednesday evening accusing the German Bundestag Human Rights Committee of “interfering in China’s internal affairs” and showing “ideological bias and a teacher’s mentality”; declaring that China’s human rights situation is “at its best ever” and “unanimously embraced and supported by 1.4 billion Chinese”; urging the German Bundestag Human Rights Committee to stop “smearing” so as not to damage bilateral relations; and accusing the participants in the hearing, Zheng Guoen, Shayla Gulley, Zhou Lei and others, of being “persistent anti-China elements”.
The tone of the Chinese statement is consistent with China’s “war wolf diplomacy,” which uses both strong countermeasures and threats to intimidate future witnesses.
We sent a letter to the Chinese Embassy in Germany requesting further explanation of the statement’s references to “anti-Chinese elements,” “interference in internal affairs,” and “human rights in China are now at their best in history,” but the Chinese Embassy has not responded to our request as of this writing.
David Missal, a young German scholar, said that the Chinese Communist Party has once again resorted to the old tactic of accusing other countries of interfering in internal affairs, but human rights know no borders, and Germany, which has a history of human rights violations, has a greater responsibility to pay attention to human rights issues in China. He said that the human rights situation in China is the darkest period in the last 30 years.
What the Chinese government says in this statement is particularly ridiculous, Mudavis said. The Chinese Communist Party says “China has no human rights problems, and China’s situation is the best,” when in fact China’s human rights situation is probably at its worst now, compared to the past 30 years; the statement also says what we often hear, “This is interference in China’s internal affairs. But human rights are universal values and we must pay attention! Especially as Germans, as a country with a history of human rights violations, we have to be more concerned about these human rights issues in other countries.
A few days ago, Mudavis and Hong Kong students studying in Germany signed a petition “asking the German parliament to urge the German government to sanction China over Hong Kong’s National Security Law”, and the number of signatories has exceeded the 50,000 threshold required for the hearing.
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