TORONTO—Reporters crowded into a room at a downtown Toronto hotel to learn of the plight of China's Uyghur Muslim minority at an Amnesty International press conference Friday.
One of the speakers was Rebiya Kadeer, a Uyghur activist who spent over five years in a Chinese jail on the charge of "leaking state secrets" after sending newspaper clippings to her husband in the United States. Since the Chinese Communist Party came to power in China in 1949, Kadeer said the Uyghur language and culture have been suppressed and Han Chinese have flooded into the region supplanting the Uyghur people to the point where they must travel to inland China to find work.
But in inland cities it is difficult to find work because the Chinese regime has consistently vilified the minority group as anti-China separatists. As a result, said Kadeer, many companies even post signs saying they will not hire Uyghurs.
After the 9/11 attack in the United States in 2001, the regime began branding the Uyghurs as terrorists, making the situation worse.
"The Chinese government destroyed our culture and ethics... They destroyed our religious freedom," she said through a translator.
Kadeer told the story of a man who wanted to explain something of the Uyghur culture to a child through a story about a wild pigeon, a symbol of freedom. The man was jailed for 13 years.
"This is our life right now," said Kadeer, breaking into tears.
She told the tale of Uyghur "separatists" driven around in trucks prior to being executed and how Uyghur spectators are forced to applaud the execution. If they don't clap, they may be arrested. Kadeer noted that the victims may not even be separatists, but are executed to keep everyone else in a state of fear.
As a result, the morality of Uyghur people has been destroyed, she said. One consequence of this is an explosion in the number of child thieves, something unheard of previously.
Currently children aged 7 to 16 in the Xinjiang region (traditional Uyghur territory) are sent to inland Chinese schools to break them of their culture. If parents refuse, they are told their children won't be permitted into other schools and are threatened with losing their jobs. They are also offered a financial reward if they do send their children, Kadeer explained.
Another recent policy is to move unmarried women aged 16 to 25 inland supposedly to give them a better economic opportunity. However, in reality the women are forced into slavery and prostitution, Kadeer said. About 240,000 women have been moved; none have returned. If the women run away, the parents' home and land can be confiscated or they will be fired from their jobs.
Chinese authorities have stepped up their suppression of the Uyghur minority in advance of this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing, added Kadeer, despite promising to improve its widely-condemned human rights record.
"Now there are more Uyghurs in jail."
Although the Chinese regime's constitution protects minority languages and stipulates that education be given in those languages in minority areas, Kadeer said this policy has not been followed.
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