The United States and other countries must pay attention to what the Chinese Communist Party is saying about Xinjiang, Turkel emphasized, citing remarks by President Xi Jinping to “show absolutely no mercy” to the Uyghurs. The Xinjiang Communist party secretary Chen Quanguo has given orders to “round up everyone who should be rounded up,” Turkel noted.
According to the U.S. State Department, more than one million Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities have been put in internment camps, while two million others are subject to forced daytime “re-education” training.
While the party is not detaining mass amounts of Christians as it is the Uyghurs, many Christian leaders have been detained without trial for not following the party’s demands, said Nina Shea, senior fellow and director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute.
Cardinal Joseph Zen, the retired Bishop of Hong Kong, has compared the erosion of religious freedom to “being put in a little bird cage,” she noted.
Xiaoxu Sean Li, communications director for the Falun Dafa Association, noted the June 2021 statement of 12 United Nations human rights experts that there was “credible evidence” that religious and ethnic minorities in China were targeted for organ harvesting. Medical data of detainees is being collected for a large database that identifies potential donor matches . Detainees are then killed and their organs are harvested and shipped, he said.
Robert Destro, a law professor at The Catholic University of America and former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor in the Trump administration, claimed that the party is now carrying out everywhere what it has been doing in Tibet for years. The party has extracted natural resources from the region and set up surveillance systems while stamping out religious practice, he said.
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