A photographic exhibition on concentration camps and the history of Xinjiang, also known as East Turkestan, is to open tomorrow at Taipei’s 228 Memorial Museum.
Named “A Prison Without Walls — East Turkestan Today,” the exhibition features photographs of re-education camps, the everyday lives of Uighurs and the July 2009 Urumqi riots to shed light on the human rights crisis in Xinjiang, as well as the region’s unique history, the Taiwan East Turkestan Association (TETA), which is cohosting the event with Taiwan Friends of Tibet (TFOT), said on Monday.
The exhibition — originally organized by the Uyghur American Association (UAA) and the One Voice, One Step initiative — was launched at the beginning of the year and has been presented in 33 cities in 15 countries, TETA president Frank C.T. Ho (何朝棟) said.
While protests in Hong Kong have been the center of media attention for months, the human rights violations in East Turkestan are no better, he said.
It is estimated that at least 1 million — or one in six — Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in the region have been sent to camps, he said.
Of those not detained, many are forcibly housed with Han people under what appears to be just another form of surveillance, Ho said.
“They deserve our attention not only from the standpoint of human rights and freedom, but also from the standpoint of protecting our sovereignty and democracy,” he said.
The exhibition has great significance because reports from East Turkestan are few, Taipei City Councilor Lin Ying-meng (林穎孟) said.
“It is a fact that the Chinese communist government has been oppressing the Uighurs,” she said.
Calling China’s policy in the region a form of ethnic cleansing, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Ching-yi (林靜儀) said that many Taiwanese experienced similar oppression under the former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime.
“Many Taiwanese aged 60 and older would remember being forced to wear a dog collar in school as punishment for speaking Hoklo [commonly known as Taiwanese] when they were younger,” she said.
While such practices no longer exist in Taiwan, it is the responsibility of all free nations to stand up against China’s crackdown on human rights, she said.
The exhibition, which is open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 5pm, runs until Nov. 17.
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
Taiwan’s passport ranked 34th in the world, with access to 141 visa-free destinations, according to the latest update to the Henley Passport Index released today. The index put together by Henley & Partners ranks 199 passports globally based on the number of destinations holders can access without a visa out of 227, and is updated monthly. The 141 visa-free destinations for Taiwanese passport holders are a slight decrease from last year, when holders had access to 145 destinations. Botswana and Columbia are among the countries that have recently ended visa-free status for Taiwanese after “bowing to pressure from the Chinese government,” the Ministry
RSS