(RNS) — Two new reports conclude that China is engaging in organ harvesting and a child separation campaign against the country’s Uighur Muslim minority.
China’s ambassador to the U.K., Liu Xiaoming, has denied a BBC investigation’s findings, which concluded that Muslim children in the Uighur-majority region of western Xinjiang are being systematically separated from their parents.
The extensive investigation, commissioned by the BBC and led by leading German researcher Adrian Zenz, has found that more than 400 Uighur children in a single township have lost both their parents to prison or China’s vast network of internment camps.
Chinese authorities have describe the camps as vocational education training centers aimed at curbing terrorism. But U.S. officials say that between 1 million and 3 million Uighurs have been arbitrarily imprisoned in “concentration camps” where detainees are indoctrinated and even tortured.
Just as China began detaining Uighur adults en masse, authorities also began rapidly rolling out construction of thousands of military-style full-time boarding schools for Uighur children, Zenz found.
This “weaponization of education and social care systems” is critical to “the region’s hair-raising political re-education and transformation drive,” he wrote, and seems to be a pre-emptive measure against the potential fallout of China’s “war on terror” against Uighur resistance.
“Increasing degrees of intergenerational separation are very likely a deliberate strategy and crucial element in the state’s systematic campaign of social re-engineering and cultural genocide in Xinjiang,” Zenz wrote.
In southern Xinjiang, Chinese authorities have spent about $1.2 billion on building and upgrading kindergarten facilities, including large-scale expansions of dormitory space and extensive security measures.
In 2017 alone, the number of children enrolled in Xinjiang’s kindergartens spiked by more than half a million. Muslim minority children comprised over 90 percent of that jump, per publicly available government statistics.
In these schools, Uighur and other local languages are largely banned. State directives order schools to focus on “thought education.”
“Xinjiang’s schools have become like the colonial boarding schools used by the United States, Canada or Australia, to assimilate native ethnic populations,” Zenz concluded in his report.
“China has declared war on faith,” Sam Brownback, ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom, said June 21 at an event introducing the 2018 International Religious Freedom Annual Report. “We’ve seen increasing Chinese government abuse of believers of nearly all faiths and from all parts of the mainland.”
Brownback also excoriated reports that Chinese authorities have subjected prisoners of conscience to forcible organ harvesting, which he said “should shock everyone’s conscience.”
The reports came from an independent tribunal initiated by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China, which confirmed long-standing allegations that China is forcefully harvesting the organs of marginalized people in prison camps, sometimes when patients are still alive.
“It is no longer a question of whether organ harvesting in China is happening. That dialogue is well and truly over,” said Susie Hughes, the group’s executive director.
On June 17, the tribunal reported that “forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale,” making practitioners of the beleaguered Falun Gong spiritual movement one of the country’s main sources of organs. China banned the Falun Gong in the 1990s and has smeared the meditative discipline as an “evil cult.”
While Chinese officials announced the country would stop taking organs from executed prisoners in 2014, the tribunal concluded that the practice is still taking place.
The tribunal found that it was possible that Uighur Muslims’ organs have been sold against their will to the billion-dollar transplant industry.
Citing a lack of evidence that China has dismantled the infrastructure used for its organ transplantation industry, as well as the country’s inability to explain its organ sourcing, the tribunal said, the massive scale of the “concerted persecution and medical testing” of Uighurs suggests that “evidence of forced organ harvesting of this group may emerge in due course.”
The tribunal determined that it was “beyond reasonable doubt” that China is committing “crimes against humanity” and urged international courts to investigate whether the crimes rose to the level of genocide.
Forced organ harvesting, the tribunal wrote, “is of unmatched wickedness even compared — on a death for death basis — with the killings by mass crimes committed in the last century.”
This should please Donald Trump and his pro-life supporters.
I'm a former long-time Democrat of more than 30 of my 57 years. About 7 years ago, I became a registered Independent as I had many differences concerning the principles of both the Republican and Democratic parties. However, about 5 years ago, I reluctantly became a registered Republican. However, I still support many if not most policies typically supported by the Democratic party. If interested, I posted a,lengthy explanation of my opinions on a wide range of issues regarding the column, "Former U.S. ambassador to Vatican to chair new commission on human rights" (July 8, 2019). I'll try to briefly summarize my viewpoints, while respectfully suggesting th at you read my entire post regarding the article about the new chair of the new human rights commission. I support stringent gun control laws ,and contribute when possible to Ceasefire PA. When I discovered a,handgun in my late Dad's bank safety deposit box in 1994, I immediately turned it in to my local police department. I also oppose capital punishment. I have for years been a pen pal with a man in prison for life for a serious crime. I occasionally send him funds for his personal use. He's a devout Jehovah's Witness and I believe he's reformed his life. I contribute when I can to the Catholic Mobilizing Netwirk. As I support reasonable laws and regulations to protect our environment, I contribute to the Catholic Climate Covenant. I support reasonable government assistance to the millions of Americans in need. I 'm a retired Special Education teacher who instructed children with brain damage, so I believe that I have (without being immodest) an attitude similar in a very imperfect way to Pope Francis, through caring for the vulnerable and marginalized people in our society. I have lived in a,nursing home/rehabilitation center for nearly 4 years, so I know and am friends with many very elderly and disabled men and women. I do my best to assist my fellow residents when possible and appropriate with their personal needs. I worked in a group home with disabled men some years ago. Several of my co-workers were immigrants from Liberia. They had fled from a brutal civil war, seeking a better life for themselves and their families. They were good, hardworking people. Therefore, I believe that our nation should welcome more immigrants to our nation, especially refugees and people seeking asylum from violence persecution in their homelands. I oppose the proposal to build a new or "enhanced" wall along our southern border with Mexico. Although I'm not a pacifist, I respect the courage of their convictions. I only support war as a last resort after all diplomatic efforts have been exhausted. Of course, civilians must never be deliberately targeted, and nuclear weapons should never be used. I believe that our nation (along with other developed nations) should provide humanitarian assistance and economic development aid to impoverished nations. On a,personal note, I know and respect people of many different faiths:Protestants of different denominations (including my dear sister-in-law Martha and niece Virginia who are United Presbyterians), as well as several Muslim s, Jews, and people of other or no particular faith. However, I oppose the violence of legal abortion. Although I support Church teaching regarding contraception (that is, I support natural family planning as,outlined in St. Pope Paul VI's Humane Vitae) I do support legal contraception that isn't abortive for adults. Please read Harvard Law Professor Mary Ann Glendon's excellent book, "Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse. I read this book years ago, and still refer to it for information about many important matters. Professor Glendon makes the point in a convincing matter in my view that because of the greatly expanded rights granted in our society haven't taken into account in many cases corresponding duties and responsibilities in order to contribute to the common good. In my post regarding Prof. Glendon being named the Chair of the Commission on human rights, I refer to numerous legal scholars who support legal abortion yet have offered compelling criticisms of the reasoning of Roe v. Wade. These include among others prominent Harvard Law Professors Laurence Tribe and Alan Dershowitz, and Associate Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Regarding your criticism of pro-lifers, with due respect, I would point out that Republican Chris Smith of New Jersey is a pro-life moderate Republican who has spoken out strongly against religious persecution. I would respectfully remind you that it's been well documented by the secular news media (such as the Washington Post, which has a n editorial policy in favor of legal abortion) that for many years, China had a,brutal one-child policy, which resulted in many millions of pregnant women being cruelly coerced into having abortions, including in some cases,late in the development/gestation of the unborn human being. Families also were penalized with enormous fines for violating the one-child policies. In 1989, the President of the National Organization of Women (NOW) was Molly Yard. NOW is well known for vehemently supporting legal abortion for any reason. During an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 1989, Yard said regarding China's one-child policy, "I consider the Chinese government's policy among the most intelligent in the world." Ms. Yard denied that it involved forced abortions. However, in an article in the New York Times ( which has long had a so-called "pro-choice" editorial policy) on 2/29/08 it was stated that China is "home to one of the most stringent family planning regimens...Most urban couples are limited to a single child unless they pay hefty fines." The article continued, " In the 1980's officials routinely forced women to abort fetuses that would have resulted in above-quota births. " Ms. Reggie Littlejohn, a Yale Law School graduate, is the founder and President of Women's Rights Without Frontiers. Its' website also asserts that "China's population control program, called the 'one child policy,' is enforced through coercive measures including forced abortions and forced sterilizations." On June 2 7, 2019, Ms. Littlejohn spoke at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. She spoke about "the continuation of the sex-selective abortions of baby girls and forced abortions under the two-child policy, as well as the unimaginable suffering of abandoned, elderly widows in the Chinese countryside. I think a quote, which is commendable only for its awful honesty, comes from Faye Wattleton, the former President of Planned Parenthood and a nurse. In a May/June 1997 interview,in Ms. magaine, she admitted , "I think we have deluded ourselves into believing that people don't know that abortion is killing...yes, it (abortion) kills a fetus."
As a,pro-life advocate, I care not only for the rights of unborn human beings, but for Muslim minorities in China who are being horribly physically abused.
What’s this have to do with Trump? TDS is on display amongst many of the readers here
But American companies do business with them all the time. When "intellectual" property is stolen, the "leaders" of our country go nuts and threaten all kinds of sanctions. But when humans are violated, though words are spoken, no capital is put at risk. So much for "pro-life" in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Somehow, my comment was duplicated. It's not the first time. 'Sorry about that.
There was a time when America had the moral authority to publicly speak out against forced organ harvesting and separating children from their parents. Not anymore. Trump’s immoral policy of separating children from their parents, locking up the children in cages with inadequate and substandard care denigrates America’s place in the world. America now morally resides among “outlaw” countries that have long practiced inhumane policies.
The practices you describe were started by the Obama administration. Children were protected by separating them by age and sex from potential adult predators. The original photos that went viral were from 2014. So blame Obama. But the real question is why make that comment on an article on China. TDS on display.
This is a truly chilling article. I wish I knew how to help these people. For now I pray.