Uighur women are forced to marry Han Chinese and have abortions, and face other atrocities by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as part of its efforts to eradicate Uighurs, Uighur advocate Rushan Abbas told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
The Campaign for Uyghurs founder and 2022 Nobel Peace Prize nominee urged world governments to condemn China’s “war against human dignity, democracy and freedom,” and act to stop Uighur genocide.
Women and children have been the most direct victims of Beijing’s policies to culturally assimilate Uighurs, including forcing Uighur women to marry Han Chinese men, repressing Uighur culture and religion, and controlling the Uighur population, Abbas said.
Photo: CNA
The CCP has dispatched more than 1.1 million party members to surveil Uighur women in their homes, and some of the women are raped or forced to have abortions, she said.
The party provides Han men in Xinjiang homes with preferential loans, while encouraging them to marry Uighur women, Abbas said.
Many women living in government-run camps are sexually abused by the police, Abbas said.
“The bodies of Uighur women [have] become the battlefield on which Uighur genocide is being carried out,” she added.
Beijing’s “Pomegranate Flower Plan” has displaced millions of Uighur children by placing them with Chinese families, foster homes or boarding schools, denying them Uighur culture, she said.
Washington-based Center for Uyghur Studies director Abdulhakim Idris, speaking remotely at the event, said that the CCP in 1949 promised the East Turkestan government that it would preserve its autonomy.
Idris said he had not been able to contact family in the region for many years, and they are probably being held in government camps.
Taiwan should learn the lessons of Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong, he said.
“This is the price of signing a peace accord with the CCP,” he said.
Taiwan East Turkestan Association president Ho Chao-tung (何朝棟) said that one out of six people in Xinjiang was being held in a government camp, which he described as experiment labs.
If Taiwan should be “incorporated” into the CCP, it could become Xinjiang, he said.
Young Taiwanese need to understand that the nation’s democracy was hard-won and not a gift from heaven, he added.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
Ferry operators are planning to provide a total of 1,429 journeys between Taiwan proper and its offshore islands to meet increased travel demand during the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday, the Maritime and Port Bureau said yesterday. The available number of ferry journeys on eight routes from Saturday next week to Feb. 2 is expected to meet a maximum transport capacity of 289,414 passengers, the bureau said in a news release. Meanwhile, a total of 396 journeys on the "small three links," which are direct ferries connecting Taiwan's Kinmen and Lienchiang counties with China's Fujian Province, are also being planned to accommodate