cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/57087027
CIVICUS speaks about China’s recently implemented Ethnic Unity Law with Gulchehra Hoja, a correspondent for Reporters Without Borders and a Uyghur activist and journalist known for her reporting on human rights abuses against Uyghur people in China.
On 1 July, China’s Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress came into effect. The law requires state and social bodies to foster a single national identity, gives Mandarin priority in education and government affairs, and can be applied beyond China’s borders to people accused of undermining ethnic unity.
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What does the new Ethnic Unity Law state?
Gulchehra Hoja: This new law means there is one acceptable way to be Chinese and requires every part of society, not just the state, to work towards it. Culture, faith and language become things to be managed rather than rights to be protected.
But none of this is new. The law formalises practices that are already in place and turns repression into official state policy. For years the Chinese government has closed Uyghur-language schools, demolished mosques, imprisoned intellectuals, separated children from their families and sent more than a million Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples into detention camps. Ordinary expressions of Uyghur identity can attract suspicion […] The Ethnic Unity Law strengthens Communist Party authority, not minority rights. It tells minorities that loyalty to the Communist Party matters more than their identity and that even the most ordinary parts of life are subject to state control.
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On paper, Article 4 [of China’s constitution] guarantees all ethnic groups the right to use their own languages and preserve their cultures. But there is an enormous gap between what the law says and what happens.
I come from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region […] The region is officially described as autonomous, but autonomy must include genuine local political participation, real cultural protection and the right to use and teach our language freely. Where those are missing, autonomy exists in name only.
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Uyghurs are the first victims, but we are certainly not the only ones. The law reaches Hong Kong activists, religious communities, Southern Mongolians and Tibetans. It can even be applied to Chinese citizens whose beliefs or identities just don’t fit the Communist Party’s vision. And because it applies beyond China’s territory, it reaches all of them wherever they live.
Paramilitary institutions, police, security agencies and universities work together, so every part of society is drawn into monitoring and reshaping people’s identities. Students from China’s National Security College, for example, were sent to East Turkistan to study governance centres, neighbourhood grid management, police stations and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, the state-owned paramilitary body that runs its own cities, courts, police and prisons across the region. This was not an academic visit. It was training in how to put a population under surveillance.
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What are the risks of speaking out?
[…] In authoritarian systems, telling the truth can be treated as a crime. I was branded a terrorist not because I committed violence but because I practised journalism and dared to speak out. And it was not only me who paid for it. After I reported on what was happening in East Turkistan, 25 members of my family were detained.
I am not alone in this. The Chinese government fears independent reporting, and that is why it works so hard to control information. Foreign journalists have been expelled, local journalists imprisoned and many Uyghur journalists working for international media have seen relatives disappeared, imprisoned or sent to detention camps simply for continuing to report.
The new law gives Beijing further justification to present peaceful advocacy as a threat to national unity. It also sends a message to Uyghurs living in Canada, Europe, Latin America, Turkey and the USA: we are still watching you. That is what transnational repression means.
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Governments should not judge this law by its title but by its consequences. They should continue documenting human rights abuses, expose China’s efforts to intimidate critics abroad, sanction the officials responsible for these policies and strengthen protections for Uyghur journalists and refugees. We’ll keep documenting these stories even when access is restricted, but we can’t do it alone.
This is not only about Uyghurs. It is about whether a government can erase a people’s culture, history, language and religion and call it unity. That question should concern everyone.
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In a related (semisatirical?) article, The Disreport writes that China Announces Entire Planet Now Subject to Chinese Law.
In an emergency press conference held Tuesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly announced that the People’s Republic of China has officially expanded its legal jurisdiction to include “everywhere.”
Standing behind a podium while visibly sweating through his suit, waving both arms with increasing urgency and periodically pointing at a globe, Xi declared that every person on Earth is now expected to obey Chinese law regardless of where they live, what citizenship they hold, or whether they have ever been to China.
“You are in China now!” Xi shouted, pointing at a reporter from Brazil. “You too!” he continued, gesturing toward a Canadian journalist. “Especially you!” he added after noticing someone quietly taking notes.
Officials later clarified that while the borders of China remain unchanged, the definition of “inside China” has been updated to include “all locations where someone might someday have an opinion.”
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