Another Uyghur becomes victim of China's repressive regime

Another Uyghur has fallen victim to the Chinese regime's persistent actions to imprison prominent Uyghurs on false charges, Campaign for Uyghurs has reported.

On September 4, Hursan Hassan, 50-year-old Uyghur, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for separatism. He was earlier detained for more than 20 months.

According to Campaign for Uyghurs, the Beijing authorities level the charge of separatism against Uyghurs in the same way that corruption charges are leveled at Han Chinese officials who express any dissent with Xi Jinping's administration.

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly, President Xi Jinping on September 22 said, "We should respect a country's independent choice of development path and model. The world is diverse in nature, and we should turn this diversity into a constant source of inspiration driving human advancement. This will ensure that human civilisations remain colorful and diversified."

Questioning President Xi's statement, Campaign for Uyghurs said, "We are left to ask the very rhetorical question: how does one define civilization? If the way his authoritarian regime defines civilization is as China is at present, the world should seek no part of it. The Chinese Communist Party has turned China into the least civilized place in the world. The mass detainment of Uyghurs and the sentencing of people like Hursan Hassan should never occur in a "civilised" nation."

Demanding an unconditional and immediate release of Hassan, the activist group said that the family was horrified to learn that just a few days after his wrongful arrest, he was treated at the emergency room despite being very healthy before his detention.

Xinjiang region is home to around 10 million Uyghurs. The Turkic Muslim group, which makes up around 45 per cent of Xinjiang's population, has long accused China's authorities of cultural, religious and economic discrimination.

About 7 per cent of the Muslim population in Xinjiang, has been incarcerated in an expanding network of "political re-education" camps, according to US officials and UN experts.

Classified documents known as the China Cables, accessed last year by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, threw light on how the Chinese government uses technology to control Uyghur Muslims worldwide.

However, China regularly denies such mistreatment and says the camps provide vocational training.

People in the internment camps have described being subjected to forced political indoctrination, torture, beatings, and denial of food and medicine, and say they have been prohibited from practising their religion or speaking their language.

Now, as Beijing denies these accounts, it also refuses to allow independent inspections into the regions, at the same time, which further fuels reports related to China's atrocities on the minority Muslims.

( With inputs from ANI )