The Chinese Government Must Account for the Disappearance of the 10+ Million Uyghurs

By  Torchlight Uyghur Group

(Mesheluyghur@gmail.com)

This Petition Is Also Available In The Following Languages:  Japanese (日本語), Chinese (中文),  Uyghur (ئۇيغۇرچە), Slawyan (Kiril), Uyghur (Latinche).

September 22th, 2018

The Chinese government has kept the actual number of the Uyghurs in East Turkestan as a state secret, and reduced the Uyghur population numbers in their official reports for a long time.  This has been an important part of the Chinese policy to make the Uyghurs disappear, and as a result, the Uyghur people have been deprived of the right of knowing their own true population figures. As part of this policy, the Chinese government is treating the number of the Uyghurs kept in state prisons, detained in Nazi-style concentration camps and placed in prison-style orphanages as one of the top-level state secrets at the moment. After the recent extensive coverage from the international media about the detainment of several million innocent Uyghurs in China’s concentration camps, the Chinese government started to deny not only the fact that they have committed ethnic genocide on Uyghurs, but also the number of the Uyghur population they have reported in previous years.  We believe this is not a usual deception tactic employed by the Chinese government, but it is an indication that they have started a process of mass killing of the Uyghur people, or they have an intension to do so.

On September 14, 2018, the host of the “Upfront” program at Al Jazeera English, Mr. Mehdi Hasan, conducted an interview with an Uyghur political activist, Mr. Nury Turkel, and a Chinese government official, Mr. Victor Gao, the vice president for Center for China and Globalization, a think tank headquartered in Beijing, China.  During the interview, Mr. Gao denied the recent UN reports that China had detained more than a million ethnic Uyghurs in its so-called “re-education camps”. He also put out a shocking lie about the current number of Uyghurs in East Turkestan: He claimed that Uyghurs currently have a population of about 6 – 7 million inside East Turkestan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srhM6G-rRB0 2:50).  It is a well-known fact that the Chinese government has been lowering the number of the Uyghurs in their reports since the communist Chinese occupation of East Turkestan, but this is the first time that a high-ranking Chinese government official put the number of the Uyghur population at 6 – 7 million. This number corresponds to the Uyghur population in the 1980s reported by the Chinese national census, and that number has increased to 11,303,000 in the official Chinese census statistics in 2015 (http://www.xjtj.gov.cn/sjcx/tjnj_3415/2016xjtjnj/rkjy/201707/t20170714_539451.html

Currently, the Chinese government is carrying out a repressive policy on the Uyghurs in a scale that has never been seen in the Uyghur history.  According to a recent UN report, at least one million Uyghurs are being detained in concentration camps (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-rights-un/u-n-says-it-has-credible-reports-that-china-holds-million-uighurs-in-secret-camps-idUSKBN1KV1SU ).  This number does not include the numbers of the Uyghurs who are currently serving prison terms and of the Uyghurs who have been sentenced to jails without trial since the beginning of 2017.  There are increasingly serious concerns among the overseas Uyghurs supported by some strong evidence that the Uyghurs in those massive concentration camps are becoming the victims of the organ harvesting business in China and elimination targets for the Chinese government.  The reduction of the Uyghur population statistics to such a low level in a crucial time like this is very worrisome and suspicious indeed.  We can’t help but ask: what has happened to the missing Uyghurs?

Victor Gao is a high-ranking expert in the Chinese government who knows very well what is happening to the Uyghur people now.  So his word, “in Xinjiang all together there are about 6 or 7 million Uyghur people”, is a solid proof that the Chinese government has already secretly locked up several million Uyghurs in their concentration camps.  It also forces us to speculate with some certainty that the Chinese government will carry out massive secret killings on the detained Uyghurs in the coming months.

According to the Chinese census statistics, the Uyghur population was 7,249,500 in 1990; 8,523,300 in 2000; 10,198,000 in 2009, and 11,303,300 in 2015.  But many Uyghur intellectuals living abroad strongly believe that the real number of the Uyghurs in East Turkestan is at least 20 million.  Joshua Project also reported that the worldwide Uyghur population was more than 12 million as early as in 2011 (https://joshuaproject.net/people_groups/15755 The Uyghur people inside China have been allowed to have up to 3 children since the Chinese government’s implementation of the birth control policy, and the natural growth rate of the Uyghur population has been at the top level compared to all other ethnic groups within China.  The marriage and the childbirth rates of the Uyghurs have also been very high, the latter being 69% in 2010 (http://www.360doc.cn/article/15549792_574196290.html  However, the Chinese government has been reporting that the natural growth rate of the Uyghur population is only 1.2%, a number that is completely baseless in any account.

Although allowing for up to 3 children, Chinese government implemented a strict birth control policy on Uyghurs to prevent the increase of Uyghur population. Hundreds thousands of infants were forcefully aborted before they were born even when at their final trimester periods. Hundreds of thousands of young Uyghur girls and boys were taken to the other Chinese provinces under the disguise of “work training” and never to be returned since 2000. No one ever heard from them after they were snatched away from their families. Extremely strict residency policy restricted the Uyghurs from travelling to and freely residing in other cities without getting official permission from the government agencies. The one additional method employed by the Chinese government to hide the true number of Uyghurs is to degrade the ranks of ancient Uyghur cities such as Yarkent and Kuchar to the sub-city level.

According to the ‘2015 Xinjiang Year Book’- an official Chinese publication, the Uyghur population increased by 7.7% and 8.5% in Kashgar and Qarghiliq, respectively  (http://www.xjtj.gov.cn/sjcx/tjnj_3415/2016xjtjnj/rkjy/201707/t20170714_539450.html

This statistics caused some worries among the Chinese intellectuals in a way that their government’s population policy towards the Uyghurs did not yield “ideal” results. Instead of decreasing in numbers, the Uyghurs were still surviving and thriving. Alarmed by this, the Chinese government started a more sinister approach of mass detaining the Uyghurs without trial, in order to completely wipe out the Uyghur people from their own land.   It is estimated that, at the moment, around three million Uyghurs are locked up illegally in the so called “re-education” camps – Nazi- style concentration camps aimed at disappearing Uyghurs into “blackhole” (https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/millions-08032018142025.html

Although the Chinese government has been carrying out this type of forced disappearances on the Uyghurs before, they were smaller in scale and mostly limited on the Uyghur intellectuals and scholars. However, this time the Chinese government has detained millions of innocent Uyghurs in the concentration camps and is still building more camps in East Turkistan; in addition, the Chinese government is also building huge numbers of crematoria to process the dead bodies. This scene should remind one of the WWII and the Jewish people’s fate during that dark period of history. If the Uyghur population in East Turkestan is in fact only 6-7 million as Victor Gao stated, then where are the rest of the Uyghur people? Chinese government must give the world an answer for the disappearance of millions of Uyghurs.

As the victims of the ongoing Chinese genocide, Uyghurs are prohibited from knowing their own true population numbers. If we analyze the statistics published by the Chinese government and the statistics we’ve acquired, we can obtain very different results than what the Chinese government reported and what Mr. Gao claimed.  If we employ the reported total Uyghur population of 7,249,500 for the year of 1990 and the increase rate of 8.5%, we can come up with a total Uyghur population of 13,411,575 for the year of 2000; furthermore, the Uyghur population should have reached a number of 24,811,413 in 2010, and 35,356,242 in 2015. Even assuming that more than 300,000 Uyghurs have died from the natural causes and/or killed by the government each year since the 1990s, the current minimum total population of Uyghurs should have been more than 25 million.

At this moment, we, the Uyghurs living abroad, are extremely traumatized by the forced disconnection from our family and friends imposed by the Chinese government. This is the highest level of abuse in every form – psychological, emotional, and financial – that any human being can ever possibly suffer. We know we are not alone in this battle of good and evil, right and wrong; we know that the majority of the humanity and the majority of the countries around the world are with us against the extreme evil committed by the Chinese government. The world will not and cannot stay silent over another genocide; the people around the world will not and should not witness another nation and population to disappear from the face of the Earth; we believe that the world will stand up, the people will stand up for humanity, justice and for their fellow brothers and sisters.

Your voice is precious to us. By signing this petition, you are saving countless innocent lives. Please sign this petition and pray for the Uyghur people and against the evil Chinese government. Thank you!

Every voice and signature counts! Be the voice of freedom!

You can find more information from the following sites:

https://www.facebook.com/torchuyghur/

https://twitter.com/torch_uyghur

http://blog.freedomsherald.org

http://freedomsherald.org/ET/unb/

Uyghur Torchlight Group’s previous petitions:

https://www.change.org/search?q=Torchlight%20Uyghur%20Group

https://www.change.org/p/donald-j-trump-the-chinese-government-must-account-for-the-disappearance-of-the-10-million-uyghurs