China's clampdown on Uyghurs overseas has spread to nearly 30 countries: Report

China’s clampdown on the Muslim ethnic minority of Uyghurs has expanded to nearly 30 countries across the globe mostly because the governments of the host nations fear Beijing’s power and influence, a new report has claimed. A report compiled by the rights group Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs and the Uyghur Human Rights Project has stated that at least 28 nations across the world are complicit in China’s broad harassment and intimidation of Uyghurs. Among these 28, the MIddle Eastern and North African nations are the ‘worst offenders.’

The report titled ‘No Space Left to Run, China's Transnational Repression of Uyghurs’ released last month, argues that China uses a wide range of methods to intimidate Uyghurs finding solace abroad including the use of spyware and hacking, sending out red notices against the targetted people through Interpol. 

Bradley Jardine, research director at Oxus Society and one of the authors of the report, as per news agency ANI, said, “Since 2017, the most common method for silencing overseas dissent is to threaten an individual's relatives residing within China's borders with detention, and in some cases, have a target's close family issue public statements as part of government smear campaigns designed to undermine an activist's credibility.”

Jardine reportedly also said that the most number of Uyghurs targetted outside China are located in Muslim-dominated nations including Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which have been termed the largest offenders of transnational repression of the Uyghurs. He reportedly said that some of the complicit nations have no legal protections for the vulnerable communities and the rule of law tends to be either weak or susceptible to political interference.

"This has made the Middle East fertile ground for China's campaign of global intimidation," Jardine added.

First such case dates back to 1997

ANI reported citing another media outlet that the first such case of oppression of Uyghurs outside China happened in Pakistan in 1997 when the government deported 14 Uyghurs to Beijing who were accused of being separatists. Reportedly, all of them were executed upon arrival in China. The report said, “The China’s Transnational Repression of Uyghurs Dataset examines 1,546 cases of detention and deportation from 1997 until March 2021 and offers critical insight into the scope and evolution of the Chinese government’s efforts to control and repress Uyghurs across sovereign boundaries.”

Elaborating that ‘transnational oppression’ took place in three phases with the third one currently ongoing, the report said, “In the first stage of China’s evolving system of transnational repression, from 1997 to 2007, a total of 89 Uyghurs from 9 countries, mostly in South and Central Asia, were detained or sent to China.”

“In the second phase (2008–2013), 130 individuals from 15 countries were repressed. In the ongoing third phase (2014 to the end of our data collection in March 2021), a total of 1,327 individuals were detained or rendered from 20 countries,” it added.

IMAGE: AP