More than one million of these Han Chinese officials, who essentially act as spies, have been deployed to the homes of Uyghurs across Xinjiang province.
More than one million of these Han Chinese officials, who essentially act as spies, have been deployed to the homes of Uyghurs across Xinjiang province.
According to sources obtained by Radio Free Asia, Muslim women in China, whose husbands have been forced into the numerous concentration camps for ethnic minority Muslims across the northwestern province of Xinjiang, are being forced to share beds and live with Han Chinese officials. These officials are sent to live in the homes of these mostly Uyghur women, in an attempt to “monitor” their lives and family.
In what China is calling the voluntary “Pair up and Become Family” program, Communist Party officials are sent into the homes of these Muslim Uyghur women. These officials live in the homes, attend weddings and funerals, teach the children Mandarin Chinese, and question the family members on all aspects of life. Speaking to RFA, one Chinese official, who requested to stay anonymous, stated that they live in these homes to “help” Uyghur women:
[We help] with their ideology, bringing new ideas…we also talk to them about life, during which time [we] develop feelings for one another.”
More than one million of these Han Chinese officials, who essentially act as spies, have been deployed to the homes of Uyghurs across Xinjiang province. Staying in the homes of Uyghur women whose husbands have been imprisoned in concentration camps, this is yet another example of China’s genocide against its ethnic minority Muslim population.
These concentration camps that many of the Uyghur husbands and men are being sent to are the largest mass incarceration of peoples since the Holocaust, and are said to hold more than one million ethnic minority Muslims from China, many of whom are Uyghur Muslims. Those in the concentration camps have been subject to mass rape, sterilizations, torture, and even extrajudicial killings. Uyghur families in Xinjiang are also required by state officials to invite government members into their homes, and provide information about their political and religious views.
Female Muslim prisoners in China’s concentration camps are being gang-raped and tortured
The heavily monitored province of Xinjiang is also subject to numerous checkpoints, facial recognition cameras, and forced medical examinations from the Uyghur population. In addition to the heavy security, China’s “Pair Up and Become Family” program is another step towards a complete ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Uyghur population of China.
Human Rights Watch have heavily condemned these official stays in the homes of Muslim families, stating:
Muslim families across Xinjiang are now literally eating and sleeping under the watchful eye of the state in their own homes…[these are] deeply invasive forced assimilation practices [that] not only violate basic rights, but are also likely to foster and deepen resentment in the region.”
While China claims that this is all part of a wider “war on terror” to stamp out Muslim extremists and foreign influences, many have pointed towards the blatant genocide that is being conducted by the Chinese state. Peter Irwin, the spokesperson for the World Uyghur Congress exile group, told the Independent:
It’s a programme to eliminate the identity of Uighurs by ensuring that people cannot express themselves. Of course, monitoring people, that’s something, but having a policy of perhaps people sleeping in the same beds as people, that’s a perverse step forward that we haven’t seen before.”
As Uyghur and other ethnic minority Muslims in the region continue to be targeted, tortured, and even killed for simply being Muslim, China remains steadfast in its abusive and genocidal state policies. Describing these home visits as an attempt at “fostering ethnic harmony”, China is doing anything but: Uyghur Muslims continue to suffer under one of the worst human rights violations in living memory.
