Human rights: Uyghur children in China: UN human rights activists deeply concerned

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Human rights
Uighur children in China: UN human rights activists deeply concerned

A busy street in the city of Kashgar in western China’s Xinjiang (archive image). photo

© picture alliance / dpa

Hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and members of other minorities in Xinjiang are being put into re-education camps or forced into forced labor. As a result, children have to grow up without their parents.

According to UN human rights activists, children from the Uyghur minority in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang are increasingly being educated in state boarding schools. The experts reported on the information they had that the majority of those affected were Uyghur children whose parents were in exile or in internment camps.

The boarding school system in Xinjiang has been greatly expanded, said the UN rapporteur on minorities, Fernand de Varennes, and the rapporteurs on cultural rights and education, Alexandra Xanthaki and Farida Shaheed. The authorities treated children of exiles or internees as orphans and placed them not only in boarding schools, but also in preschools and orphanages.

The experts expressed “deep concern” that these children would be forced to assimilate into the Chinese language and culture. “The massive scale of the allegations raises extreme concerns about the violation of fundamental human rights,” they said. They therefore contacted the government in Beijing.

Uyghurs, members of other minorities and human rights organizations have been reporting for years that hundreds of thousands of people in Xinjiang have been put into re-education camps against their will, in some cases tortured and forced into forced labor.

dpa

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