By Maayke Vossen
“The Olympics bring people together, and it brings people together in a supposedly non politicized way,” said Peter Irwin, the primary coördinator of the campaign ‘No Rights, No Games’. “If you have a games that is hosted in a country with concentration camps—and I'll use that language—that completely does not square with the very clear spirit of the games and the Olympic movement.”
The Olympic Games for 2022 are planned on being held in Beijing. However, according to the principles of the Olympic Charter, the host country of the Olympic Games has to have respect for universal fundamental ethical principles, harmonious development of humankind, and the promotion of a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity. China is currently not living up to these standards. The Chinese government has been actively putting Uyghur Muslims in so-called re-education camps in Xinjiang.
The Chinese government justifies locking Uyghurs in these camps by stating that Uyghur Muslims are a danger for society, because they are associated with terrorism. These camps would supposedly teach them the ‘proper’ norms and values, which are the ones held by the Communist Party. Afterwards, these Uyghur Muslims will no longer be a threat to society. China claims to be maintaining order and peace this way. In 2001, a list came out with all the terrorist actions that Uyghur Muslims supposedly are responsible for. However, this list has been largely contested; some people claim that it isn’t clear at all whether Uyghurs were responsible for these crimes, and that they are falsely accused of involvement in terrorist activities.
These camps are surrounded by an air of myth. We can't know precisely what’s going on there. Most of the information is gained from experiences of people who used to be in such camps, or by ‘spying’ on these camps with cameras and satellites. The media gets limited access to the actual camps, which is always planned and under supervision. Whatever information is gained from these visits, could easily be framed and untrue. From the information that we do have, it is certain that Uyghur Muslims can be legally arrested in Xinjiang for fairly strange reasons. For example for having a beard that is too long, or having an unusual name. When they are arrested, they are deprived of a fair legal process. Once put in the education camps, Uyghurs endure physical as well as psychological torture. They are forced to sing communist slogans, sometimes for hours on end. If they refuse, they aren’t allowed to eat. Not that they get enough food to be able to sustain themselves anyway, from what we know. In some camps, people have to sleep with eighty people in one room. These are just a few examples of the myriad of horror stories about these camps.
All of this leads to the obvious conclusion that China is far from respectful to universal fundamental ethnic principles, which would make them unsuitable as the host country of the Olympic Games. Not only are these camps an enormous violation on human rights by depriving Uyghur Muslims of a fair legal process and forcing them in these camps, the Chinese government also treats these people in a completely unacceptable way. Quite some people have made comparisons between concentration camps from World War II and these re-education camps, which begs the question; why are we not doing more to stop this? Whis there so little media coverage and knowledge about these camps? After World War II , political leaders said that they never wanted anything of the like to happen again. To this day, people are still wondering why it was ever okay to put Jews in concentration camps, but at the same time they are uninformed about or ignoring likely the exact same situation elsewhere.
Furthermore, by putting an entire ethnic group in re-education camps to prevent terrorism from happening, the Chinese government is taking a very primordialist viewpoint. They claim that Uyghur Muslims are automatically ‘born’ as terrorists, that it is something about being a Uyghur Muslim that makes you a terrorist. They, as an ethnic group, are a biological threat to social order, and according to them, that is a good enough reason to lock them in these camps..
The ‘No Rights, No Games’-movement is a movement consisting mostly of Uyghur activists. They are urging the Chinese government to take down their re-education camps before the Olympic Games. Next to that, they demand the Chinese government to respect the rights of Uyghur Muslims outside of these camps as well. If China doesn’t meet these demands, the ‘No Rights, No Games’-movement is planning on calling on the International Olympic Committee to relocate the Olympics to a different country. They hope that, this way, the Chinese government will stop locking up Uyghur Muslims in re-education camps.
Comments