US enforces visa restrictions for China over Uighur issue

Shanghai Newspaper_ US enforces visa restrictions for China over Uighur issue
Image grabbed from www.news.com.au

Visa restrictions will be imposed by the United States on Chinese officials involved in Muslim population repression. A number of 28 Chinese organizations were blacklisted for alleged abuse in the Xinjiang region.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed how the Chinese government had instituted a highly repressive campaign to which China dismissed the allegations being groundless.It is being accused of continuous abuses against Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz Muslims and other minority Muslim groups.

Uigurs, are a minority Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central and East Asia, recognized as native to only one region, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China. They are considered to be one of China’s 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities.

Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said that there is no such thing as ‘human rights issues’ as claimed by the United States. He claims that these are just mere excuses for the United States to deliberately meddle in China’s internal affairs.

Hence, China’s Muslim ‘crackdown’ is something that works around this definition and nothing more than being mass detentions in internment camps; pervasive, high-tech surveillance; draconian controls on expressions of cultural and religious identities; and coercion of individuals to return from abroad to an often perilous fate in China

As a result, visa restrictions are to be imposed on Chinese government and Communist Party officials, as well as their family members.

The United States calls on China to put an end to its repressive campaign in Xinjiang. They have called its attention to release those indiscriminately detained, and stop efforts to coerce members of Chinese Muslim minority groups residing abroad to return to China to face an uncertain fate.

The United Nations and other human rights groups say China has rounded up and detained more than a million Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in vast detention camps. These minorities are forced to renounce Islam, speak only in Mandarin Chinese and learn obedience to the communist government.

On the contrary, China emphasized that these minorities are attending vocational training centres which will give them jobs and help them to eventually integrate into the Chinese society, all for the prevention of terrorism.

As a result more countries aside from the US has increasingly denounced China’s actions in Xinjiang. Furthermore, Mr. Pompeo, in a press conference in the Vatican said that China has allegedly imposing its citizens to worship the government and not God. Back in July more than 20 countries at the UN Human Rights Council signed a joint letter criticising China’s treatment of the Uighurs and other Muslims.

Xinjiang is officially designated an autonomous region within China, like Tibet to its south.