Russia and China: their point of view on democracy

This Tuesday, following an official visit by Foreign Ministers to China, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, made a statement expressing the urgent need to convene the permanent members of the UN Security Council given the context of growing international political unrest. He added that: “The model of interaction between Russia and China is at its best in all history, it is free from all ideological ties, it is not subject to opportunism and it is not directed against no one “.

These countries coincide by putting forward their point of view of democracy as “one of the achievements of human development”. However, they clarified that “there is no uniform standard for the democratic model” and that “interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states under the pretext of promoting democracy is unacceptable”.

These precise aspects make us think how much Russia and China have a very ill-defined idea of ​​what plural democracy really is.

For example, these days the sanctions against Chinese officials by the European Union, UK, US and Canada for the crackdown on the Uyghur Muslim minority in the Xinjiang region have passed. Such sanctions – by these democratic states – are considered by China and Russia as “unacceptable”.

In 2014, the Chinese president Xi Jinping started the “People’s War on Terror” in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region made up of its inhabitants, the Uyghurs, who constitute nearly 90% of the province’s population.

Senior state and military officials (following orders from Beijing) threatened to wipe them out altogether, or even destroy them “root and branch”. All this to “break their lineage, break their roots, break their ties and break their origins”.

A few days ago a report from Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy demonstrated how the People’s Republic of China has state responsibility for committing genocide against Uyghurs, thereby violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (better known as the Genocide Convention ).

This report is based on a thorough examination of the available evidence and the application of international law to the evidence raised by the events in the said province. The study was conducted by renowned experts in Chinese international law, human rights, genocide and ethnic politics.

Article 2 of the aforementioned 1948 Genocide Convention refers to it as “The intention to destroy, totally or partially, [a un grupo protegido] as such”. As can be seen from the aforementioned article, this definition does not require explicit statements and we can see how it perfectly identifies with what will be developed.

Previously, Beijing has denied the existence of mass detention camps, called “re-education camps”, aimed at changing the political thinking of detainees, their identity and their religious beliefs. It is estimated that perhaps more than a million Uyghurs occupy them.

In some of these establishments, they keep people in custody all day, while in others, they release them at night to return home. the New York Times reported that members of these re-education camps are forced to “sing hymns praising the Chinese Communist Party and write self-critical essays.”

Today, Beijing has changed by declaring that the camps are used to “fight terrorism” and to train Uyghurs. However, human rights activists have exerted strong pressure to open the camps to foreign visitors, although this pressure has not been crowned with success.

For their part, various media reported that many residents were forcibly detained and are in difficult and unsanitary conditions while being subjected to political indoctrination.

Proof of this is the aforementioned report by Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy. The main points considered are transcribed below:

-Infiltration of homes by government mandate. Since 2014, the Chinese government has deployed Han groups to reside in Uyghur homes as overseers, resulting in the severing of family ties.

– Massive detention. In 2017, the legislative branch of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region officially legalized the massive internment of Uyghurs using regulations to combat extremism. The senior security official and his entities released a manual and a set of documents throughout the region with orders to control the Uyghurs, “Acelerar la construcción” y la expansión de los campos de internamiento masivo, “aumentar la disciplina y el castigo” dentro de los campos y mantener una “estricta confidencialidad” sobre toda the información para que ésta no sea “difundida” ni “abierta to the public”.

-Massive birth control strategy.

-Forced transfer of Uyghur children to public institutions

-Eradication of Uyghur identity, community and domestic life.

-Selective targeting of intellectuals and community leaders. “Massacre of the members of the group”. There are reports of massive killings and deaths of prominent Uyghur leaders who have been selectively sentenced to death by execution or, in the case of the elderly, by prolonged imprisonment.

-There is evidence of serious physical or mental harm to members of the group. Uyghurs suffer serious physical and mental harm as a result of systematic torture and cruel treatment, including rape, sexual abuse, exploitation and public humiliation, at the hands of internment camp officials and groups They were assigned to Uyghur households with the support of programs established by the government. The internment camps contain designated “interrogation rooms” where detained Uyghurs are subjected to constant and brutal torture methods, including beatings with metal batons, electric shocks and lashes. He notices mock executions, “public self-criticism” and solitary confinement. Mass internment and related government programs are designed to indoctrinate and “brainwash”, which has prompted Uyghurs to commit or attempt suicide. “

In the same spirit and as it is publicly known, this same system that we find in the re-education camps, is applied in different controlled factoriess, and other areas of Chinese work.

Faced with this, we must ask ourselves if the said working mechanism can be considered as forced labor, and then Will (forced) labor exalt man?

The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps is a politico-military organization that de facto governs large areas and cities in Xinjiang, and has entered into economic collaboration agreements with various Chinese companies.

27 factories in nine Chinese provinces have been identified thanks to Uyghur labor transferred from Xinjiang since 2017. These factories are part of the supply chain of 83 international brands.

Between 2017 and 2019, we estimate that at least 80,000 Uyghurs transferred from Xinjiang and assigned to factories through job transfer programs under a Beijing policy known as Aid to Xinjiang.

In factories, they usually live in separate dormitories. Outside working hours, they take Mandarin lessons, participate in patriotic education and are prevented from practicing their religion. All 50 Uyghur workers are assigned a government guard and are monitored by security personnel. They have little freedom of movement.

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed concern at the end of August over the plight of Uyghurs. Since, as members of a freer and more multicultural world, we have a responsibility to be aware.

The author is a graduate of Fu Hsing Kang College and president of the Uruguayan Democratic Forum.