Officials in China’s Xinjiang region have confirmed that two brothers of a Radio Free Asia (RFA) journalist who have been missing since 2018 are in the custody of authorities.
Radio Free Asia spoke with several local officials who first confirmed the whereabouts of journalist Eset Sulaiman’s brothers, Ehet and Ehmet, in early March. Local police and government officials have refused to say where the two are being held, calling it a “state secret.”
Five of Suleiman’s cousins have also disappeared and are believed to be held in mass “re-Education” camps. Suleiman, who is in the United States, said he believes this is an attempt to prevent him from reporting on human rights abuses.
Radio Free Asia, like Voice of America, is an independent network funded by the U.S. Congress.
Suleiman recalled his last phone call with his late mother in 2016.
He told Voice of America, “She told me that two Chinese police officers knocked on her door several times and warned her that if I continued to report on things about Uighurs, our Family would have to pay the price.”
Human Rights Watch said more than a million Uighurs are believed to have been held in camps in Xinjiang since 2016. Ethnic conflicts and disputes between Uighurs and Chinese Han Chinese have occurred in Xinjiang.
Groups such as the Washington Uighur Human Rights Project (UHRP) say people in these camps have been subjected to torture, rape, political brainwashing and forced sterilization.
The U.S. government has denounced that “China has violated the rights of ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang, including Crimes Against Humanity and genocide.”
China denies the genocide allegations, saying the camps are vocational skills education training centers designed to deter religious extremism and terrorist attacks and to lift Uighurs out of poverty.
Peter Irwin, senior program officer at the Uighur Human Rights Project, told Voice of America that “many people, such as the Uighur Human Rights Project, believe that the way the Chinese government treats the Uighurs constitutes genocide and crimes against humanity.”
He said, “Journalists have played a central role in exposing the truth about East Turkestan.” Uighurs often use the term East Turkestan to refer to the region.
But doing so carries risks. Journalists in China face long prison terms, and those in exile risk reprisals against their families if they speak.
Erwin said “intimidation, sometimes including detention, is the response to Uighurs abroad who speak out about China’s human rights abuses.” He said China shares videos as “evidence that people are alive” in which the detained or missing relatives ask family members to stop criticizing Beijing.
A January report by the Uighur Human Rights Project found that “the most significant threat to activists is the threat to their loved ones in China,” forcing many to consider the safety of their families when exposing human rights abuses.
These posed videos are used as a tool to send false information and intimidate the Uyghur community overseas,” Erwin said. They remind Uyghurs overseas that their loved ones are under complete control, forcing them not to continue speaking publicly.”
Transnational Oppression
Cases of transnational repression in retaliation against relatives of activists or journalists living abroad can take several forms, including assault, digital intimidation, coercion, illegal deportation from the country of residence, and restrictions on visas or travel documents.
Freedom House’s Out of Sight, Not Out of Reach report, published in February, says transnational repression is an attempt by governments to “cross national borders to silence the dissenting voices of their diaspora and exiled communities. “
Nate Schenkkan, director of research strategies at Freedom House and co-author of the report, said the core of the problem is the rise of technology, which has simultaneously increased “the ability of exiles and expatriates to speak out within the borders of the countries they left” and “the ability of those countries to reach those in exile. The ability of those countries to reach those in exile.”
Journalists, Shenkhkan said, “have unique visibility and exposure because of the work they do.” But that leaves them vulnerable to harassment, attacks and surveillance by spyware technology.
Uighurs are a prime target of China’s digital intimidation, Shenkhkan said. “There’s this wholesale effort to control the Uighurs, wherever they are.”
The Sulaiman brothers’ detention is part of a larger pattern of transnational oppression.
“One of the most common tactics we see around the world is what we call coercion by proxy,” Schenkkan said. “There are many instances where China has used this tactic very directly and rigidly,” notably by “recording videos or having family members call their relatives overseas to warn them of their actions.
Sheinkham called on the international community to “use targeted sanctions” and to support the victims of targeted repression by the Chinese government.
Some of this is beyond our control,” said Shankar. There are things we can’t change at the root. But we can change the way we interact with these people and change the opportunities for them to be protected in our country.”
The U.S. government imposed sanctions on China in July 2020, including blacklisting the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps and the entity’s former party secretary, Sun Jinlong, and deputy party secretary, Peng Jiarui, for their alleged involvement in human rights abuses.
The European Parliament passed a resolution last December calling for EU sanctions against China and for China to allow international observers to travel to the Xinjiang region.
Recent Comments