Stopping short of accusing the Chinese government of committing genocide due to the lack of full information of what is going on, Amnesty International has published further evidence of human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region of China, which it says has become a “dystopian hellscape” for hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities subjected to mass internment and torture. Amnesty said counter-terrorism could not reasonably account for mass detention, and that the Chinese government's actions showed a "clear intent to target parts of Xinjiang's population collectively on the basis of religion and ethnicity and to use severe violence and intimidation to root out Islamic religious beliefs and Turkic Muslim ethno-cultural practices".
Those taken to the network of camps in Xinjiang were "subjected to a ceaseless indoctrination campaign as well as physical and psychological torture". In the internment camps, they are not allowed to practise Islam, forbidden from using their mother tongue and forced to attend classes where they studied Mandarin and Chinese Communist Party propaganda. Torture methods, according to the report, included "beatings, electric shocks, stress positions, the unlawful use of restraints including being locked in a tiger chair, (a steel chairs with leg irons and handcuffs that restrain the body in painful positions ), sleep deprivation, being hung from a wall, being subjected to extremely cold temperatures, and solitary confinement".
Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, said, “It should shock the conscience of humanity that massive numbers of people have been subjected to brainwashing, torture and other degrading treatment in internment camps, while millions more live in fear amid a vast surveillance apparatus.” She also accused UN Secretary General António Guterres of "failing to act according to his mandate", explaining that Guterres "has not denounced the situation, he has not called for an international investigation", Callamard told the BBC. "It is incumbent on him to protect the values upon which the United Nations has been founded, and certainly not to stay silent in front of crimes against humanity."
The author of the Amnesty report, Jonathan Loeb, stated that the organisation's research "did not reveal that all the evidence of the crime of genocide had occurred" but that it had so far "only scratched the surface".
China has created a 'dystopian hellscape' in Xinjiang, Amnesty report says - BBC News
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