Geneva: Uyghur rights activist exposes China's forced labour and surveillance abuses

Geneva [Switzerland], July 3 (ANI): World Uyghur Congress former president and a leading Uyghur rights advocate, Dolkun Isa, has raised alarm over the ongoing persecution of Uyghur Muslims in China's northwest Xinjiang region, which many Uyghurs refer to as East Turkestan.
Speaking at the 59th Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Isa described the situation as "dire," with widespread human rights violations continuing under the pretext of state security and development.
"The situation of Uyghurs in East Turkestan is still dire. Still, a million people are suffering in concentration camps. Forced labour is still an issue. There are still one million Uyghur children separated from their families and subjected to forced labour. Forced separation is still the case in East Turkestan," Dolkun stated.
Dolkun Isa criticised Beijing's persistent efforts to downplay or deny these abuses, especially through staged media tours meant to mislead the global community.
"In the last couple of years, the Chinese government is now organising propaganda tours, bringing some journalists, particularly from Global Sources and even some Western countries, inviting them and just showing them around. They use these delegations as propaganda tools, trying to whitewash the ongoing genocide in East Turkestan against the Uyghurs," he said.
He also condemned the widespread use of high-tech surveillance against the Uyghur population, describing Xinjiang as a testing ground for authoritarian technologies.
"The Chinese government calls it a so-called re-education camp, but actually, it is not, it is a concentration camp. Surveillance technology, voice recognition, face recognition, all are tested on Uyghurs first by the Chinese government," Isa highlighted.
According to Isa, these technologies are no longer confined to Xinjiang but are now being exported to other parts of China and beyond.
"Now, they use this technology in other parts of China and Hong Kong, even in territories not inside China, even exporting this technology to neighboring countries. It is an authoritarian regime using technology to control other nations and people. The Chinese government is trying to present its model as a blueprint for other authoritarian regimes," he added.
The Xinjiang region has become the centre of one of the most pressing human rights crises in recent years. The Chinese government faces serious allegations of forced sterilisation, family separation, and the deployment of advanced surveillance systems across the Xinjiang region. (ANI)