cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/52357783

Archived

In recent years, Chinese official discourse has increasingly used the term “social governance” (社會管治) to describe policies in the Uyghur region (Xinjiang) of China. This seemingly neutral administrative language is quietly reshaping people’s perception of repression, genocide, forced assimilation, and social control.

[...]

Since 2016, the plight of the Uyghurs has drawn widespread international attention due to reports of mass detention, forced disappearances, extensive surveillance systems, and restrictions on religious and cultural life. Leaked government documents, testimonies from camp survivors, and multiple international investigations have made the region a central issue in global human rights discussions.

Chinese authorities have consistently described these policies as necessary measures to combat terrorism and maintain stability. However, United Nations human rights experts and international human rights organizations have repeatedly expressed serious concern about the scale of repression and its impact on Uyghur society.

In recent years, the official narrative surrounding the region has begun to shift. Detention facilities have become less visible in state media coverage, tourism campaigns highlighting the region’s landscapes and cultural heritage have re-emerged, and official reports increasingly portray the region as peaceful, prosperous, and harmonious.

[...]

When decoding Chinese official documents, a major key is to look for what officials avoid saying. This particular piece makes little reference to ethnic rights, religious freedom, language use, or cultural continuity. Nor does it acknowledge the concerns repeatedly raised by international observers.

The conflicts in the Uyghur region are not merely a matter of governance but also stem from history, demographic change, and political power structures.

According to data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics, the population of the Uyghur region in 1953 was approximately 4.87 million, of whom about 3.64 million — roughly 75 percent — were Uyghurs, while Han Chinese accounted for only about 6 percent. By 2010, however, Han Chinese made up roughly 40 percent of the population, while the Uyghur share had declined to around 46 percent.

Many researchers link this demographic transformation to decades of large-scale migration policies that encouraged settlement from China’s interior.

Although China formally operates a system of “regional ethnic autonomy (民族區域自治制),” the political structure tells a different story. The most powerful position in the region — the Communist Party secretary — is appointed by the central government, while the regional chairman, who is typically Uyghur, holds far less real authority.

Under such a structure, autonomy often exists more as a symbolic arrangement than as meaningful self-governance.

As a result, Uyghurs have increasingly been marginalized in their own homeland, not only politically but also in areas such as education, employment, and language use.

[...]

Governance in the post-violence era

The governance model emerging in the Uyghur region also reflects a broader transformation in contemporary authoritarian politics.

Repression does not always rely on visible coercion, as administrative systems, data technologies, social engineering, and policy language can gradually reshape social reality.

For many Uyghur families, the defining experience of recent years has not been open conflict but disappearance: across the Uyghur diaspora, countless people have lost contact with relatives back home. Many have been detained, sentenced, or simply vanished from public life.

The social governance system, presented as rational, benevolent, and successful in Chinese official discourse, is precisely engineered to deprive people of the ability to organize themselves, express their identity, and sustain their cultural life, thereby quietly normalizing repression in society.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/52240923

Here is the full report: Invisible Corners of the Factory Floor: Forced Labor in China’s Prisons (pdf)

A new report by China Labor Watch examines the issue of prison labor in China. Against the backdrop of increasing international attention, monitoring, and enforcement regarding systemic forced labor in China, the report aims to explore the institutional foundations of this practice within the Chinese prison system, analyze how prison-run enterprises embed products made by incarcerated laborers into global supply chains through multi-layer subcontracting, disguised registration, and local economic collaborations, and finally discuss the legal frictions and responsibility frameworks between Chinese prison labor practices and international human rights law and labor conventions.

[...]

- Institutionalized Logic of Coercion: Although labor is defined in legal texts as a means of “reform,” in practice it is directly tied to points-based evaluation systems and sentence reduction/parole decisions. This creates a structural incentive-and-sanction mechanism of “trading labor for freedom,” effectively undermining the voluntariness of labor.

- Dual Roles and Conflicts of Interest: Prison enterprises carry both judicial and economic functions. They are responsible for custody and rehabilitation while simultaneously acting as market actors accepting orders and generating revenue. These conflicting objectives often lead to weakened labor protections.

- Working Hour Limits are Systematically Relaxed: Although there are nominal limits such as “six days per week and eight hours per day,” exception clauses for “seasonal production” or “urgent tasks” are vaguely defined and lack external oversight, effectively creating a structural gateway for normalized overtime.

- Weak Labor Protection and Injury Compensation: Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) regulations are incomplete, and some cases show inadequate investment in protective equipment. Injury compensation is calculated based on prison labor stipends rather than social wage standards, resulting in significantly lower compensation. Channels for appeal and third-party medical assessment are extremely limited.

- Real Risks in Trade and Supply Chains: Despite formal export bans for prison-made products, such goods enter domestic and international markets through layered subcontracting and enterprise “rebranding.” Recent legislation, enforcement actions, and litigation within global business and human rights due diligence frameworks reveal that these risks are receiving increased recognition.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/51870372

Archived

...

The family of human rights defender Yang Li, who recently spent 15 months in detention for her advocacy on land rights, says that her condition has deteriorated to end-stage kidney failure following prolonged inability to access medical care during and following her time in custody.

According to the family, since her release police have repeatedly blocked her travel to Beijing to receive potentially life-saving dialysis treatment, restricting her freedom of movement to her home in the eastern province of Jiangsu.

The ‘Two Sessions’ – annual meetings of Chinese Party and government leadership that set the tone for political, social and economic reforms for the year to come – began on Wednesday 4 March with the elite Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, while the regular, rubberstamp National People’s Congress (NPC) annual session started on Thursday.

“Keeping Yang Li from essential treatment is unconscionable. Denying urgent care to a critically ill woman – seemingly in retaliation for her peaceful advocacy – is a glaring violation of China’s duty to respect and fulfil the right to health of all,” said Sarah Brooks, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director.

“As China’s leaders gather for the ‘Two Sessions’, we expect to hear about their commitment to improving peoples’ lives and ensuring social services; this must be matched by action and applied to all.

[...]

Yang Li, 46, is a land rights defender from Jintan, Jiangsu, who for years has pursued lawful channels to challenge land expropriation by local government and related human rights abuses. She was detained for her work between October 2024 and December 2025, during which time she allegedly faced torture and was denied medical treatment in violation of international standards, namely the Mandela Rules, which make clear that prisoners should enjoy the same standards of health care as non-incarcerated individuals.

Civil society groups following the case say police repeatedly blocked Yang’s attempts to reach Peking University No. 1 Hospital in January 2026 and confiscated phones from her and her father.

[...]

It appears that Yang did manage to make it to Beijing in early February. A hospitalization notice for Yang Li was issued by Peking University No. 1 Hospital on 11 February, but the activist was not admitted and has since been forcibly returned once again by the police to Jiangsu, where the family fears further refusal of appropriate care.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/51811171

Archived

From March 1, a new law is in effect in Uyghur region — and it tells government workers what they cannot say, where they cannot travel, and who they cannot talk to, for the rest of their lives if necessary. It orders villages to appoint secrecy officers. It requires artificial intelligence to monitor what information leaves government systems. And it makes clear that anyone who talks — to a journalist, a foreign government, a human rights investigator — may be committing a crime.

China already has a national state secrets law. Every province is bound by it. So when the region’s legislature passed its own separate secrecy regulation on November 26, 2025, the question human rights advocates immediately asked was: why does the region need one of its own?

Yalkun Uluyol, a China researcher at Human Rights Watch, offered a direct answer.

“China has a state secret law,” he said. “But Xinjiang authorities had to enact a new one to hide its crimes against humanity. The new law provides new enforcement mechanisms, including travel restrictions for officials and state secret offices at local institutions.”

The regulation took effect on March 1, 2026.

[...]

Among its most significant provisions is one that targets the people most likely to know what has happened inside region’s detention system: the officials who ran it. Under Article 32, any government worker who leaves a position with access to classified information enters what the law calls a “demystification period.” During that time, they are barred from traveling abroad. They cannot emigrate. They cannot speak publicly about what they know in any form.

For years, the testimony of former officials and guards has been among the most important evidence used by researchers documenting abuses in what Beijing calls “vocational training centers.” This law creates a legal wall around those people.

The law also reaches far down into ordinary Uyghur life. Article 5 requires township governments and neighborhood committees — the grassroots structures that in the region already function as instruments of community surveillance — to formally appoint secrecy management personnel. These are the same bodies that have been documented knocking on doors, monitoring prayer habits, and reporting families for contact with relatives abroad. They are now, under this law, official nodes in a secrecy enforcement network.

[...]

Perhaps the most technically far-reaching provision is Article 24, which requires agencies to treat aggregated data as classified even when individual pieces of it are not. Demographic records, birth statistics, religious registration data — the very datasets that independent researchers and UN investigators have used to document what has happened to Uyghurs — could under this article be sealed entirely.

[...]

For the families of the disappeared, for the former detainees who have already spoken, and for those inside the region who have not yet found a way to, the law arrives with a message that needs no translation: what you know about this place is a secret. And it belongs to the state.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/51758910

Archived

In the name of promoting inter-ethnic harmony, China is to force dozens of ethnic minorities within the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to assimilate into Han-dominated society by enacting a landmark law during the upcoming fourth session of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) which opens on Mar 5. The law will require ethnic minorities to use Mandarin Chinese as their main language of instruction, overturning decades-old policies that date back to the era of Mao Zedong, noted ft.com Mar 3.

[...]

The sweeping law marks the latest effort in a signature “Sinicization” campaign under Chinese leader Xi Jinping and prescribes legal action against anyone, inside or outside the country, who undermines “national unity” or provokes “separatism”.

The so-called Han majority accounts for more than 90% of the PRC’s population of 1.4 billion and the country’s constitution recognises 55 ethnic minorities, and a dozen languages — some with their own written scripts — and hundreds of dialects.

Under the new Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, while minority languages may still be taught as a second language, groups such as Tibetans, Uyghurs and Mongolians will no longer be entitled to use their native tongues for core subjects in schools and universities, the report noted.

[...]

The new law “overturns the multicultural promises upon which China was founded”, moving from “an idea of unity through difference or unity through pluralism, to one of unity through sameness, through the elimination of difference”, Benno Weiner, a historian of modern China, Tibet and Inner Asia at Carnegie Mellon University, has said.

“The conclusion that Xi Jinping and others seem to have come to is that diversity is dangerous.”

[...]

Worryingly, one clause in the new law is cited as saying only the state has the right to promote “a system of symbols of Chinese civilisation”, which can be used “in public facilities and architectural design, scenic area exhibitions, place naming and public activities”. Such policies, if enforced, meant there was “no way” that non-Han people would be able to safely express “any type of discontent without being accused of being essentially separatists or terrorists,” Weiner has said.

[...]

173 nations ratified the https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-economic-social-and-cultural-rights — a binding framework protecting the right to work, healthcare, education, and an adequate standard of living.

The United States signed it in 1977. Nearly fifty years later, the Senate has never held a ratification vote. The only other signatories that haven't ratified: Palau and Comoros.

Why this matters now: Artificial intelligence functions as narrow superintelligence for software labor. It removes constraints that previously bounded economic activity — triggering demand explosions bounded by new bottlenecks (regulation, energy, trust, human judgment). Who benefits from that transformation depends entirely on whether legal frameworks exist to distribute the gains.

No person should lose access to healthcare because automation eliminated their job. No worker should face poverty wages while AI generates record corporate profits. The treaty that addresses this already exists. It just needs ratification.

What we built: A full differential diagnosis of AI's economic impact, four orders of knock-on effects, and what ICESCR ratification would actually change. Fair witness methodology — every claim sourced, every inference marked as inference, open data, full revision history on GitHub.

• Main analysis: https://unratified.org/
• Blog (ongoing developments): https://blog.unratified.org/
• Source code + revision history: https://github.com/safety-quotient-lab/unratified

Built by a Claude Code agent, directed by a human maintainer. Apache 2.0 (code) + CC BY-SA 4.0 (content). The site runs on open standards — no tracking scripts, no paywalls, no walled gardens.

The analysis serves five audiences: voters looking to act, policymakers evaluating obligations, developers building on the data, educators using the materials, and researchers examining the methodology. Each page adapts its framing to the reader.

How to help: Contact your senators about the ICESCR. Most have never received a single constituent letter about this treaty. Template letters and talking points at https://unratified.org/action/.

[This is an opinion piece by Rayhan Asat, a human rights lawyer of Uyghur descent, an international law scholar at Harvard Law School and a senior legal and policy advisor at the Atlantic Council Strategic Litigation Project.]

Web archive link

At Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney drew applause for his plea to middle powers to “build a new order that encompasses values.” ... It was also deeply painful to see Carney feted for his “principled pragmatism” only days after he visited China to forge a new strategic partnership, devoid of any mention of human rights concerns.

...

Carney’s embrace at Davos and his appeal to deal with the “world as it is, not as we wish it to be” left me with the question: Will the “new” world order he’s advertising protect everyone, or only those whose suffering is not inconvenient? The old order certainly didn’t. Treating human rights as separate from trade, as if mass atrocity can be compartmentalized to appease China, may have safeguarded commercial interests and avoided friction in the short-term—but it also helped normalize the intolerable.

It’s been 10 years since China began building a sprawling system of concentration camps—designed to bury atrocities behind bureaucracy and beyond tourists’ gaze.

...

It’s been three years since the U.N.’s foremost human rights body determined China is committing crimes against humanity. Carney and his “middle power” peers can hardly claim that they didn’t know.

But what happens when China’s façade becomes useful? Even for leaders of the democratic world, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently visited China, it allows suffering to be acknowledged just enough to be set aside, framed as a difference in systems rather than a violation that demands consequence. Public pressure is muted, accountability deferred and appeals for justice quietly absorbed into diplomatic language.

...

It's not just Uyghurs; there are Tibetans, Hong Kongers. International law has never protected Taiwan. Its security rests not on legal norms, but on strategic necessity—especially its dominance in advanced semiconductor chips.

Carney argued that middle powers need to unite to hedge against stronger countries, because what we’re living through is not a transition but a rupture in the rules-based order ... The deeper irony is that leaders of the Global South, including President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s advisor, argued that Brazil would continue working with Europe, China and others who champion multilateralism and international law. It’s unfathomable to square China's status as a champion with its promotion of what Professor Tom Ginsburg described as authoritarian international law.

...

An international legal order worth its name is more than just policing borders and battlefields. It must serve as a shield for those hidden from sight, protecting them from the machinery of disappearance, torture, cultural erasure and similar threats.

...

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/51513798

[Opinion piece by Sebastien Lai. He is the son of Hong Kong media tycoon and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai.]

Archived

China says it stands for stability and the international rule of law. Yet it has sentenced my 78-year-old father, British citizen and newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai, to twenty years in prison for peaceful journalism. That contradiction should define every European leader’s visit to Beijing.

To mark the occasion of German Chancellor Merz’s official visit to Beijing, the Foreign Ministry of the People’s Republic of China on Wednesday issued a press release invoking friendship between the two states and urging trust in an era of instability. In a nod to Trump’s Board of Peace, it also notes that China and Germany stand by the central role of the United Nations and the importance of the international rule of law.

These are fine words. But they are also empty. For as long as my father, the journalist, prisoner of conscience and British citizen Jimmy Lai, remains behind bars, Hong Kong is proof that China’s claim to respect international law is a plain falsehood.

[...]

In the same year that my father has been convicted and sentenced for exercising his right to free speech in Hong Kong, the UK Prime Minister and the German Chancellor have made official visits to China. While I understand the importance of advancing trading interests, I urge leaders everywhere to beware an economic partner who is willing to flout international law, ignore the UN, disregard human rights and put a frail, British prisoner of conscience through an unspeakable ordeal simply because he dared to speak truth to power.

This is not just a moral case. Hong Kong’s descent from the rule of law into tyranny is bad for business. It puts contracts at risk of being unenforceable, makes employers and employees vulnerable to political pressure and taints the potential of the free market with totalitarian control. If Beijing is willing to ignore international law, how can it be trusted to abide by the terms of a trade deal?

[...]

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) torturers systematically use sexual violence and rape against Palestinians held hostage in Israeli torture chambers and during their attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank

Israeli torturers have photographed Palestinian women, including pregnant women, in degrading positions, including in their underwear in front of male soldiers, subjected them to repeated and invasive strip searches, and threatened to rape or actually raped them.

Israelis have systematically raped and sexually assaulted Palestinian men held hostage in Israeli torture chambers, including through the use of electrical probes to cause burns to the anus, as well as the insertion of objects, such as fingers, sticks, broomsticks and vegetables, into hostages' genitalia.

Israeli torturers and settlers also sexually abuse Palestinian children as young as 14.

In 2021, when the NGO Defense for Children - Palestine (DCI-P) exposed that an IOF torturer had physically and sexually assaulted a 15-year-old Palestinian boy in Israeli custody, DCI-P's office was raided by Israeli authorities. The NGO was stripped of its equipment and labelled a "terrorist organisation".

The violence of IOF soldiers increasingly also includes sexual acts intended to feminise or shame not only the victim but the Palestinian community as a whole, in an increasing trend to photograph or film these acts. For example, IOF soldiers committing genocide in the besieged Gaza Strip repeatedly filmed themselves going through Palestinian women's underwear and making sexual comments about the undergarments.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/51447521

** “If I call my family, there will be problems.” **

Archived

[...]

Beginning in 2016-17, as the Chinese state expanded surveillance and mass internment in the Uyghur Region – as purported counter-terror measures – contact between Uyghurs abroad and their families inside China collapsed. In 2020, a leaked Chinese government database cited Uyghurs’ “overseas communications” with relatives as a cause for internment. In a connected world, where long-distance communication is cheap and instantaneous, making a phone call has far-reaching consequences.

[...]

Uyghurs abroad have been cut off from parents, siblings, and extended family members for as long as a decade. The result has been unresolved grief for deaths in the family learned years after the fact, intergenerational trauma as children grow up without knowing grandparents, deteriorating mental health, and isolation from cultural expression rooted in family life. These harms unfold in a global context of increasing Islamophobia, in which Muslim communities are increasingly securitised, surveilled, and treated as collective threats: all conditions that normalise extraordinary state control over ordinary family life.

[...]

Indirect contact with relatives, such as through mutual acquaintances, provoked retaliation by authorities. One Uyghur [said] that following an innocuous and mediated exchange last year, security agents questioned his father-in-law. When contact was possible, some families experienced monitored or scripted phone calls that simulated “normality” while functioning as intimidation. Others were offered the possibility of a family reunion but only under strict conditions, such as agreeing to monitor Uyghur diaspora members or to disengage from advocacy. News, if it arrived at all, was often incomplete or years after the fact, and the ambiguity of not knowing has become a permanent condition. These are not dramatic, headline-grabbing abuses, but everyday systems of harm.

[...]

For many Uyghurs, family is a means through which the state reaches and attempts to control them, even across borders. Family members inside China are punished for the actions, speech, or presence of relatives abroad. This threat disciplines critical speech overseas, compelling silence not because Uyghurs lack grievances, but because having family in the Uyghur Region is a form of leverage. Yusup, originally from Kashgar and now living in Turkey, last spoke with his mother in 2018. Although Yusup isn’t sure if it was because of their conversation, she was detained the same year and spent six years in prison.

[...]

Why, then, does this intimidation and coercion continue with little intervention, especially since China’s transnational repression infringes on the sovereignty of other states? In part, it is because the world has moved on to other emergencies, leaving Uyghur families to manage what functions as a subtle tool of authoritarian control. However, the broader issue of transnational repression is acknowledged as a growing challenge for democratic societies. A January 2026 analysis by the European Parliament documents how states increasingly deploy surveillance, intimidation, and family-based coercion to control diasporas abroad.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50976930

Jimmy Lai and countless others in China are paying the price for a West too eager to compromise principles for profit.

Archived

Just about two weeks before Hong Kong pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai was handed a 20-year prison sentence, the harshest under the city’s National Security Law, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited Beijing. He walked the red carpet at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, met President Xi Jinping, and attended a lavish welcome ceremony. It was widely hailed as a “break-the-ice” visit, the first by a British prime minister in six years, aimed at normalizing relations with China.

The timing, however, spoke volumes. On the eve of Lai’s sentencing, Starmer signaled that British diplomacy was prioritizing friendship with Beijing over the fate of a British citizen, Jimmy Lai. The message was unmistakable: no matter how China treats Jimmy Lai, the normalization of China-U.K. relations will carry on.

[...]

Starmer later told reporters he had raised Lai’s case with Xi, but offered no details, leaving the public to wonder if Beijing even blinked. The answer came swiftly: Lai, 78, was sentenced to what is effectively a life term. To put it bluntly, this is almost a death sentence. Lai now faces a fate akin to Liu Xiaobo, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who perished in detention.

The severity of the sentence shocked observers. Compared with the 2024 trial of 47 pro-democracy activists, Lai’s 20-year term is twice as long as that handed to Benny Tai, who was accused of masterminding the 2020 primary legislative election. Editors, publishers, and editorial writers involved in Lai’s publications were regarded by the court as masterminds and handed sentences of up to 10 years, punished for simply doing their jobs as journalists.

[...]

Ironically, the imposition of such harsh sentences has unfolded against a backdrop of Western governments seeking to normalize relations with China. The reshaping of global politics under U.S. President Donald Trump has nudged allies to engage China. Over the past year, Western leaders who once condemned Beijing for human rights abuses – from France to Germany, Canada to the U.K. – have queued to shake Xi’s hand, sign trade deals, and signal goodwill.

As international pressure eases, the Chinese Communist Party has intensified its crackdown on dissent, acting with a level of impunity not seen in previous years. Beijing’s calculation is clear: if Western powers are eager to deepen economic ties, the diplomatic price of jailing dissidents has all but disappeared.

[...]

Now Jimmy Lai and countless others in China are paying the price for a West too eager to compromise principles for profit. Their suffering is a mirror reflecting the cost of a diplomacy that prioritizes access to China’s market and money over freedom, human rights, and justice.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50731537

Archived

Ever since Frank Dikötter’s first book, The Discourse of Race in Modern China (1992), this prolific star of China studies has challenged conventional truths and broached taboo subjects.

[...]

Yet read as a whole, Dikötter’s body of work does read like a grave indictment of the Communist regime, which is one reason why he is not well-liked by the Chinese authorities.

[...]

If Dikötter has long held a leading position on the Chinese Communist Party’s blacklist, his most recent book will give the authorities no ground to demote him. Red Dawn Over China is a history of the CCP’s rise to power over decades from its obscure origins in the early 1920s to the triumphant end of the Chinese civil war in 1949. To say the least, it was a very bloody affair.

[...]

Those who have read Dikötter will immediately recognise his no-nonsense style, which intersperses dry numbers (thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of deaths) and occasional stories that shed light on how some of these people died. In this book he recounts the story of the CCP’s rise as a non-ending series of crimes, some very meticulously described. Numbers . . . numbers . . . someone gets shot. Numbers . . . numbers . . . someone gets buried alive. Numbers . . . numbers . . . someone gets their head smashed by a rock. Numbers . . . numbers . . . someone gets eaten. Voilà, behold the dawn of Communism.

Dikötter’s general argument is, as he puts it, that “Communism was never popular in China.” It was imposed on the Chinese through systemic, unrelenting violence.

[...]

There was no heroism, no glory, no grassroots enthusiasm for the Communist cause. Just endless brutality perpetrated by a deeply illegitimate movement that never had much of a purchase among the general populace.

[...]

The [new] book is also a valuable reminder that today’s China — the prosperous, technologically advanced superpower — is a country built on a foundation of violence. “Political power,” Mao Zedong argued, “comes out of the barrel of a gun.” A tireless chronicler of the numerous crimes and follies of Chinese Communism, Dikötter once again shows his readers who was pulling the trigger of that gun, and at what cost to the long-suffering Chinese people.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50302535

Archived

A new United Nations report has issued one of the clearest warnings to date that Chinese state policies in Tibet are actively eroding the foundations of Tibetan civilisation, threatening the survival of Tibetans as a distinct people.

The findings appear in a report to the UN Human Rights Council by the Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Nicolas Levrat. While global in scope, the report explicitly identifies Tibet as a case where state-led policies are not merely discriminatory but constitute what the UN expert describes as “eradication in more subtle ways.”

...

At the centre of this warning is China’s vast boarding school system imposed on Tibetan children. The report states unequivocally that “the boarding school education system implemented by China in Tibet is aimed at erasing the Tibetan language and identity.” Tibetan children are separated from their families and communities and educated in environments where Mandarin Chinese, state ideology, and cultural assimilation dominate daily life. According to the report, this policy prevents “the intergenerational transmission of cultural, linguistic or religious elements of minorities’ identities,” a process that leads to “the extinction of the minority as a distinct group in the State population.”

...

The Special Rapporteur makes clear that eradication does not require mass killing to meet the threshold of grave human rights violations.

...

These policies are not isolated, but part of a broader political project. The report notes that China has “since 2012 undertaken a nation-building process” that has resulted in “the marginalisation of minority communities,” leading to “forms of severe discrimination against non-Han minorities, such as Tibetans.” Despite constitutional guarantees of regional autonomy, the report finds that in practice Tibetan identity is being subordinated to a single state-defined national identity.

...

Two Human Rights Watch (HRW) employees who make up the organization’s entire Israel and Palestine team are stepping down from their positions after leadership blocked a report that deems Israel’s denial of Palestinian refugees the right of return a “crime against humanity”.

In separate resignation letters obtained by Jewish Currents and the Guardian, Omar Shakir, who has headed the team for nearly the last decade, and Milena Ansari, the team’s assistant researcher, said leadership’s decision to pull the report broke from HRW’s customary approval processes and was evidence that the organization was putting fear of political backlash over a commitment to international law.

Concerns about reputational damage were voiced by Tom Porteous, HRW’s acting program director at the time. He wrote Shakir that the report was well-argued, but “the question is how we are going to deploy this argument in our advocacy without this coming off as HRW rejecting the state of Israel and without it undermining our credibility as a neutral, impartial monitor of events.”

I am trying to survive in Gaza with my children under extremely harsh conditions. The cold is unbearable, and we are living in torn tents that offer no protection from wind or rain. For more than a month now, the donations we’ve received have been very limited and not enough to cover even our most basic daily needs. My children are suffering the most — from hunger, cold, and constant fear. The prices of food and basic necessities have become insanely high. Even bread and clean water are difficult to obtain. Any donation, no matter how small, can help me provide food, blankets, and essential supplies for my children. Please consider donating and sharing our story — your solidarity truly makes a difference. Donation link: https://gofund.me/8e758692

Exactly a year ago today, I was abducted from a Zurich street by plainclothes police, bundled into an unmarked car and taken to prison.

I was walking with one of my hosts toward a venue where I was scheduled to speak at an event organized by Swiss activists about Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

During my detention, Swiss intelligence officers tried to question me without my lawyer present – an apparent attempt, I told Swiss academic Pascal Lottaz in a recent interview, to manufacture grounds for my arrest retroactively.

After three days in detention, I was handcuffed, caged in a police van, taken to the airport and expelled.

The operation achieved its purpose: preventing me from participating in public events about Israel’s crimes. But it failed to intimidate or silence me.

In December, Zurich’s Administrative Court ruled that my detention violated both the Swiss constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.

I have filed additional cases, including a criminal complaint against Nicoletta della Valle, the Israel-linked police official later identified by a parliamentary investigation as having ordered the action against me.

As I told Lottaz, what happened to me is not exceptional. It is part of a widening campaign across the so-called West to silence journalists, students and activists who expose Israel’s crimes or advocate for Palestinian rights.

Among the most shocking cases is that of Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman and the last person still held in US federal detention in connection with protests at Columbia University.

On 13 March last year, Kordia attended what she believed was a routine, voluntary check-in at ICE headquarters in New Jersey.

Instead, she was transported to a detention facility in Texas, 1,500 miles away from her home, her mother and her brother with special needs who relied on her support.

Hello everyone,

We created and are developing an archive to document, archive, and expose the crimes of ICE.

It is on https://crimesofice.org/

TOR link: http://ice7fl7ycodmekhrch5wkclblrbbpjctvdniikzs5gfatnk6pgseilqd.onion/

Unfortunately, our abilities to find different videos and documents of ICE on the internet are still limited. We are a small team.

If you want join our team to help us find more material and show the crimes of ICE to the whole world, let us know :)

SimpleX Chat:

https://smp17.simplex.im/a#6B-MiQ-P7nUt5-xsf3iIfh6H-VS_LWBZoId9VqK4GMU

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I am trying to survive in Gaza with my children under extremely harsh conditions. The cold is unbearable, and we are living in torn tents that offer no protection from wind or rain. For more than a month now, the donations we’ve received have been very limited and not enough to cover even our most basic daily needs. My children are suffering the most — from hunger, cold, and constant fear. The prices of food and basic necessities have become insanely high. Even bread and clean water are difficult to obtain. Any donation, no matter how small, can help me provide food, blankets, and essential supplies for my children. Please consider donating and sharing our story — your solidarity truly makes a difference. Donation link: https://gofund.me/8e758692

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/49395941

Archived

Here is the full report: “Save Our Mother Tongue”: Online Repression and Erasure of Mongolian Culture in China

The Chinese government is waging a systematic campaign to erase Mongolian language, music, and culture online, using surveillance and intimidation of activists, platform shutdowns, and content removal to silence users and digital spaces where Mongolian identity once thrived, PEN America and the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center said in new report, released today.

“Save Our Mother Tongue”: Online Repression and Erasure of Mongolian Culture in China, documents how vibrant digital spaces that once enabled Mongolians to communicate in their own language, share their music and literature, and organize peaceful protests, have been dismantled. Based on 20 in-depth interviews, including with Mongolians in exile and some who recently left China, digital research, and public records, the report shows how the rapid growth of Mongolian-language internet use in the early 2000s triggered a wave of digital crackdowns. These crackdowns intensified after protests erupted in 2020 over a new policy imposing Mandarin Chinese as the language of instruction.

“This is not just about censorship – it is about erasing Mongolian culture and identity and leaving Mongolian people living in China isolated from their own identity,” said Erika Nguyen, senior manager at the PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Center at PEN America and co-author of the report.

“The Chinese government has made basic acts many of us take for granted, like speaking your language, listening to your music and participating in digital community spaces, not only almost impossible but something that is actively dangerous. This is also a chilling glimpse at what will happen if tech companies continue to give governments unfettered control over what can and cannot be available online.”

A new policy in 2020 that replaced Mongolian with Mandarin Chinese across all subjects in schools sparked protests that swept the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. This led to a swift and brutal suppression from the government during which 8,000 – 10,000 Mongolians were placed in police custody. This real-world repression was followed by an escalating crackdown on online posts protesting the policy. More than half of interviewees for this research, all of whom now live outside of the region, were banned from WeChat, a widely used mobile app in China, because they took part in the protests online and in real life.

A Mongolian who left the region after the protest explained, “I participated in the protests in Inner Mongolia in 2020, driven by my deep concern for the preservation of our language and culture. The atmosphere was charged with hope, but that quickly turned to fear as the government cracked down on dissent. …they implemented widespread censorship, shut down social media, and silenced anyone who dared to speak out.”

Following the protests, the Chinese government paid particular attention to suppressing the use of the Mongolian language: nearly 89% of the 169 cultural websites written in Mongolian – a vertical, left-to-right writing system unsupported by most digital platforms – reviewed by PEN America have been shut down, converted to Mandarin-only access or stripped of content related to Mongolian life and culture, including discussions of Chinggis Khan. Mongolian words, songs, and historical references are routinely censored or labeled “separatist.”

The report found that other ongoing attempts to eradicate the Mongolian language, expression, and community include: arresting and forcing “re-education” on Mongolian activists and educators who posted online; using digital platforms for forced “confessions” to publicly discipline and intimidate Mongolians; restricting language-specific messaging apps that were designed and coded to support Mongolian script; shutting down chat forums and online meeting spaces where people wrote in Mongolian and discuss Mongolian language and culture; and removing Mongolian music from music apps.

“To express ourselves online – that would mean telling our stories on our terms, in our own voice,” said one exiled Mongolian activist interviewed for the report. “It would mean Mongolian words, poems, and music thriving – not hidden in encrypted chats, not erased by algorithm or policy, not punishable. It would mean Mongolian children seeing their language in pixels as well as textbooks, feeling seen, alive, and proud.”

[...]

“Imagine waking up one day and not being allowed to communicate with your parents, grandparents, or siblings in a language they understand,” said Enghebatu Togochog, director of the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center. “That is what has happened to Mongolian people living in China. Online cultural communities are not just nice to have but an essential part of allowing people to fully enjoy their cultural rights – that is what the Chinese government is taking away and what we must urgently fight to protect.”

These violations against Mongolian people are reflective of a wider crackdown by the Chinese government designed to stamp out any minority language and culture in the region, including Mongolian, Tibetan, and Uyghur.

[...]

The report concluded that governments, multilateral institutions, tech companies, cultural institutions, and donors must act collectively to hold the Chinese government accountable for violations of the cultural, linguistic, digital, and free expression rights of ethnic minorities. They must press for the release of detained Mongolians, the repeal of laws and practices that suppress minority identity and speech, support Mongolian cultural initiatives, and provide protection and support to Mongolians in exile at risk of transnational repression.

At the same time, the research found, China continues to publicly display a “sanitized” or touristic version of Mongolian culture through foreign influencers and international media in order to be able to claim to international audiences that it is supportive of Mongolians’ cultural rights.

“The Chinese government is willing to go to great lengths to tout the type of Mongolian culture it deems acceptable to an international audience while actively undermining Mongolians’ rights to determine and develop their own culture,” said Nguyen.

I am trying to survive in Gaza with my children under extremely harsh conditions. The cold is unbearable, and we are living in torn tents that offer no protection from wind or rain. For more than a month now, the donations we’ve received have been very limited and not enough to cover even our most basic daily needs. My children are suffering the most — from hunger, cold, and constant fear. The prices of food and basic necessities have become insanely high. Even bread and clean water are difficult to obtain. Any donation, no matter how small, can help me provide food, blankets, and essential supplies for my children. Please consider donating and sharing our story — your solidarity truly makes a difference. Donation link: https://gofund.me/8e758692

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/49097095

Archived

Kevin Slaten, research lead for the China Dissent Monitor (CDM), explains how the CDM team uncovers dissent activity in China, what this information tells us about economic, social, and political trends there, and why understanding dissent and protest in China is important for people living outside.

[...]

Slaten: CDM is currently the only public database of protest events in China. We have collected and analyzed nearly 14,000 such events since June 2022.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has for many years systematically censored information about protests in China’s media and internet, and it has arrested citizens who attempted to centralize this information into a database [...] Understanding patterns related to the frequency, topics, and locations of dissent provides insight into how China’s economic slowdown affects ordinary people, the efficacy of government policies, and public dissatisfaction with the conduct of government and other officials—as well as systemic injustices and potentially even regime stability.

[...]

The CDM team races every day to document protest activity on China’s social media sites before it is deleted. Depending on the topic and size of the event—and whether it goes viral—some posts may disappear in minutes. Online censorship makes this sort of documentation difficult. Searches for dissent-related terms don’t turn up many results, and protest posts are often restricted, for example.

[...]

Additionally, dissent by some social groups, such as ethnic and religious minorities or activists, is not well represented on Chinese social media because these groups face especially stringent restrictions like closer surveillance by state security.

[...]

Chinese citizens often have some understanding that protests happen, having seen them in internet posts or heard anecdotes through their social networks. But, they may not know the real prevalence or distribution of protests, including in their own cities, much less other regions. This can contribute to the perception that protest is an abnormal or illegitimate way to seek justice, a narrative that the CCP promotes and benefits from.

[...]

More generally, protest events across China have been increasing in the last year, according to CDM’s database. This upward trend is primarily associated with economic grievances, particularly protests by workers, home buyers, and other consumers or investors.

[...]

A lot of the things that prompt dissent in China—from widespread labor rights violations to repression of ethnic minority groups—reflect consequences of the CCP systematically restricting rights like free expression and free association. We can already see the influence of this system expanding beyond China’s borders. For example, the CCP manipulates media in other countries and is the world’s worst perpetrator of transnational repression, when governments reach across borders to intimidate or attack exiles they perceive as a threat. Chinese companies import poor labor practices into the foreign countries where they work. This puts pressure on American companies to compete by lowering their labor standards. Thus CCP abuses can undermine people’s rights everywhere, including in the United States.

[...]

Accurate information about developments in China is increasingly difficult to find as the CCP has restricted access to economic and social data, in addition to suppressing public criticism through its sprawling censorship apparatus. CDM is an alternative source of information which, by documenting protest actions, sheds light on the state of China’s economic, social, and political developments at the grassroots level.

[...]

The CDM is now back online thanks to a tranche of short-term funding. However, without further support, policymakers, businesses, investors, researchers, and others could once again lose access to this uniquely valuable public resource that exposes the social and political developments the CCP tries to hide. To help CDM continue its groundbreaking research, please donate to Freedom House today.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/48759609

Tentative data for the year 2025 from the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) shows the mass exodus of asylum seekers from China continues unabated and is set to either rival last year’s record-breaking number or possibly exceed it. The tentative data, to be adjusted and finalized later in 2026, estimates some 178,725 asylum seekers from China. This is a far cry from the numbers seen during Hu Jintao’s reign, when it would stay between 7,000 and 21,000 annually.

The new data also shows some major swings in where Chinese people seek asylum, with Canada, Italy, and the United States seeing a continued and major surge.

With the new data, China has seen some ~1,330,000 Chinese asylum seekers under Xi Jiping’s years in power, compared with just ~162,000 during his predecessor Hu Jintao’s two mandate periods in power. The table below illustrates the dramatic shift in this regard since Xi took power and shows a continued strong upward movement after the lifting of the last COVID restrictions.

[...]

Italy now accounts for nearly ~2.2% of all Chinese asylum seekers worldwide, while the EU as a whole received 9,219 Chinese asylum seekers 2025, or ~5.2% of global total.

In other Europe-related developments, the number of people choosing Russia, 295 in 2019, has collapsed to only 5 people in 2025, and either at zero or in single-digits the entire COVID restriction period.

Other noteworthy figures show South Africa as the only South/East/West African country that received any Chinese asylum seekers, while in the MENA region, Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia are the only countries to receive them, though, except for Israel, in very limited numbers.

In the greater Asia-Pacific, Australia remains the only major destination for Chinese asylum seekers, but having seen a significant drop from 17,668 to 10,426, while New Zealand, still rare, grew from 74 to 555. Many, such as Japan, records zero asylum seekers for all the years between 2019 and 2025, South Korea being a very rare exception (2,606 in 2019 and 2,181 in 2025). The few others that have received any at all are all either in single or double digits, such as Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Nauro, and Vanuatu. Asia continues to be a very rare destination for Chinese asylum seekers, with no change in sight.

In the Americas, both Canada and the US have seen major growth. In Canada, it grew from 2,873 to 6,425, while in the US it went from 68,794 to 147,909. Other noteworthy developments are a near collapse in asylum seekers choosing Brazil (from 4,616 to 798), while Costa Rica is the only Central American country to receive significant numbers, rising sharply from 152 to 619. Most other countries in the Americas received either no asylum seekers at all, or very small numbers.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/47964660

Archived

The knocks came at 2am. Hiding out at a friend’s house in a Beijing suburb, Gao Yingjia and his wife, Geng Pengpeng, rushed downstairs to meet the group of plain-clothed men who said they were police officers. Their son, nearly six, was sleeping upstairs, and Gao and Geng wanted to minimise the ruckus. They knew their time was up.

Two months later, Gao is in a detention centre in Guangxi province, southern China, charged with “illegal use of information networks”. His arrest was part of the biggest crackdown on Christians in China since 2018. It has prompted alarm from the US government and human rights groups, with some analysts describing it as the death knell for unofficial churches in China.

“We both knew that as Christians in China, there were risks,” said Geng, who fled overseas for safety with her son. “But to be honest, you can never be fully prepared.”

Gao is a senior pastor in Zion Church, one of China’s most prominent underground “house churches” with thousands of members across the country. His arrest, and those of more than a dozen other church leaders, came after months of increasing pressure on the network. But the crackdown has not been limited to Zion, prompting fears of a nationwide assault on Chinese Christians.

[...]

Human Rights in China said more than 100 people had been detained in Wenzhou, a city in Zhejiang province, eastern China, in a raid on Christian groups last week. The US-based NGO said pressure had been mounting on Wenzhou’s Christians for months after a dispute about installing a Chinese national flag inside a local church.

Now Geng is grappling with a set of impossible choices: should she return to China to be nearer to her husband, but risk arrest herself? Should she stay in Thailand, a country that has relaxed visa policies for Chinese nationals but has a history of complying with deportation requests from Beijing? Should she go elsewhere? Earlier in her religious journey, she sometimes felt her prayers would hit the ceiling and come back down. Now her faith is steadfast, but she’s waiting for guidance: “Sometimes I wonder, is this real?”

[...]

China has five officially recognised religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism, but religious activities outside of officially sanctioned institutions are banned. Christians in particular have long gathered in unofficial house churches to worship away from the eyes of the state.

[...]

In September, China introduced new rules banning unlicensed religious groups from holding online sermons. Xi Jinping, China’s leader, chaired a senior Communist party meeting in which he urged for the “Sinicization of religions”.

But pressure has been increasing on Chinese Christians all year. In May, the pastor Gao Quanfu from the Light of Zion church (a separate organisation to Zion) and his wife were arrested. Around the same time, several members of the Golden Lampstand Church, an evangelical network, were reportedly given lengthy prison sentences on charges of fraud. And over the summer, more than 100 Zion members were questioned by police and several physical branches forced to close.

[...]

About 3% of China’s population identify as Christian, according to official estimates, a level that has remained stable for over a decade despite efforts by churches to grow their numbers. But that figure could be an underestimate, considering the increasing risks of publicly identifying as a Christian. Another survey from 2018 suggested 7% of Chinese people believed in some kind of Christian deity.

[...]