Saying China's Xinjiang province is ruled by law is absolute Joke: Expert

Nov 06, 2021

Beijing [China], November 6 : To say that China's Xinjiang province is ruled by law is an absolute joke, and this is the first time we have solid evidence that police reports acknowledge that neighbourhood police can just arrest people to fill quotas, said Chinese-Australian policy analyst Vicky Xiuzhong Xu.
"We have knowledge that local officials even brag in state media and on social media that law enforcement officers are not following the laws themselves, There is not a lot of following the law going on, not even by officials, but the slogan keeps being repeated. It's just hypocrisy at the highest level going on, said Xu during an interview with Radio Free Asia (RFA).
Xu emphasised that the reality is there is just an incredible amount of racism going on inside of the Chinese party-state system.
"A decade ago I saw studies on how difficult it was for Uyghur youths to find jobs--meaningful employment--and how they were being discriminated against in wider Chinese society," Xu said, adding, "It is no surprise that especially at a time like this when Uyghurs are under a crackdown that the Chinese government does not trust them."
Further, Xu added, "It presents us with another deep hypocrisy because the Chinese government calls the Uyghur homeland the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. So where is the autonomous region?"
Stating that the "Trinity" mechanism in Xinjiang gives the neighbourhood committees so much power to watch people's every step and watch their emotions, Xu said that the exercise has increasingly been implemented in China more broadly especially during the COVID pandemic, according to RFA.
Under Xi Jinping, you see a lot of these policies and being discussed and proposed elsewhere. There is a real danger that the sort of bureaucratic structure or governance tactics used in Xinjiang will spread to other parts of China, Xu said, adding, "If the rest of the world thinks Xinjiang or the Uyghurs present a big ethical dilemma, then now that ethical dilemma is going to be multiplied and the possible human rights violations that would occur would just be unimaginable."
Vicky Xiuzhong Xu has co-authored a new report detailing details of the deep involvement of Chinese government agencies in a systematic effort to suppress Muslim Uyghurs and their culture in northwestern China's Xinjiang region.
The report by the independent, nonpartisan Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) is the latest document presenting evidence of the ramping up since 2014 of systematic human rights abuses of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang, said RFA.