As Australia slams China’s Xinjiang policies, Uygur activists hope for ‘concrete action’
- Australia’s small Uygur community feel they finally have a voice in the country’s national conversation about how to manage strained ties with China
- But Canberra has held back from sanctions on its largest trading partner and is unlikely to confront Beijing directly on the issue
“People would say, ‘This is the 21st century, are you making up things?’” said Abdulghafur, a 41-year-old Uygur activist and geoscientist in Sydney.
“How come you have concentration camps there, how come your family doesn’t talk to you?”
All that has changed in recent years, according to Abdulghafur, who began her activism after her father in Xinjiang dropped out of contact in 2017.
Abdulghafur finds the explanation of her father’s death difficult to believe because she was unable to access his medical records and he did not have a history of suffering from either disease. She suspects her father was taken to a re-education facility.
“I see lots of people try to talk to us and they have empathy, so I am very grateful,” said Abdulghafur, adding that she has overheard people talking about Uygurs and Xinjiang on the street in Burwood, a Sydney suburb known for its large Chinese population.
“Those people on the street were not talking to me … it was random conversations with their friends,” she said.
“So that’s how common these buzzwords have become.”
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It comes amid international condemnation of Beijing, based on activists’ reports that say more than 1 million people are being held against their will in mass detention camps where they have been subject to forced sterilisation and forced labour.
In Australia, while lawmakers have debated motions to criticise Beijing over its Xinjiang policies, Canberra has not taken direct action against China.
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While Canberra expressed support for the US-led sanctions campaign, it did not announce sanctions of its own, which observers attributed to the absence of Magnitsky legislation in Australia that would allow the government to apply targeted sanctions against individuals accused of human rights violations.
An Australian parliamentary committee is currently considering a private member’s bill that would ban the import of all goods produced in Xinjiang, although it is unclear if either of the two major parties will give the proposals the needed backing to become law. Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government has said it wants a less combative relationship with its largest trading partner.
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Nathan Attrill, a researcher with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which is partly funded by the US, British and Australian governments, said there was a wider “gap between rhetoric and action” than might be assumed given the heightened state of political tensions between Canberra and Beijing.
“Any meaningful action is going to require the US and major European countries to be involved,” said Attrill.
“We have seen evidence of this in recent months and perhaps Canberra is happier to help support these efforts than be seen as leading them.”
“It’s just condemning the abuses at the moment, there is really no government-level concrete action going on,” said Ali Osman, president of the Uygur Association of Victoria.
“For me as an Australian, the Australian government is very slow on defending human rights, especially in China.”
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Bahtiyar Bora, secretary of the Australian Uygur Association, said activists were working to lobby politicians and had gained support from Individuals across the political spectrum.
“Some more than others, but the tide of change is happening,” said Bora, who moved to Australia in 1988 and lives in Sydney.
He claimed that the Uygur issue was getting more attention from ordinary Australians, even those who did not follow politics because “there is so much evidence of genocide”.
“Most important are the stories of Uygur people around the world who have relatives in China who have been locked up. Often families are torn apart with parents unable to contact children,” he said.
The Chinese embassy in Canberra this month sought to state its position on the issue, by organising a rare press conference where journalists were shown a number of videos featuring Uygur people denying that their rights were curtailed and insisting instruction received at re-education facilities had improved their lives.
A number of Xinjiang officials addressed the event via video link, including Vice-Governor Erkin Tuniyaz, who blasted allegations of rights abuses as “preposterous” and “downright lies”.
The event, which featured Chinese ambassador Cheng Jingye warning Canberra against following the lead of other countries that had imposed sanctions against Chinese officials, attracted a backlash from Australian human rights groups.
Attrill said Canberra’s appetite for strong action in the near future could be limited due to a “settled change of mood” on both sides of politics that acknowledged past actions to influence China’s behaviour had “limited results thus far and new tactics may be needed”.
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Bora acknowledged that Australia also had human rights issues, “especially with regard to refugees and indigenous people”, but said Beijing could not use accusations of hypocrisy to shield itself from criticism.
“Those issues [in Australia] need to be addressed,” he said. “But they should not stop us from strongly criticising China’s treatment of Uygurs.”
Abdulghafur, whose remaining family in Xinjiang has cut all contact, which she believes is due to monitoring by the authorities, said Beijing had “underestimated the voice of people like us”.
“We didn’t just shut up,” she said.
