Press Releases

09/30/2019

70th anniversary of the People's Republic of China

monitored, suppressed, and forced into line (Press Release)

70th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. No reason to celebrate for Uyghurs, Tibetans and Christians! Not for the muslim Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Kyrgiz, 1,5 million of whom are arbitrarily detained in Chinese re-education camps, not for thousands of Buddhist whose monasteries in Tibet are being destroyed and who are deported, not for the millions of Christians who are forced to live their faith underground and whose churches are regularly being torn down. Picture: STP

Tomorrow, China will celebrate its 70th anniversary – and the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) will commemorate the millions of victims of dictatorial regime of the Communist Party (CP). "The history of modern China is characterized by massive human rights violations," stated Hanno Schedler, the STP's expert on genocide prevention and the Responsibility to Protect. "Under current President Xi Jinping, this has reached a new sad climax. Xi relies on merciless persecution of the Uyghurs and Tibetans, the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Mongols, lawyers, and the mothers of the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The CP does everything in its power to eliminate critical voices. Democratic constitutional states must ensure that the Chinese methods of suppression are not exported."

Over the past decades, China achieved an unprecedented rise – and the People's Republic is now using its new geopolitical power and technical know-how for increasingly sophisticated means of repression: "Most of the Chinese people can only access information on the Internet that is acceptable to the government in Beijing. They don't know anything about the country's bloody history and the millions of oppressed people today," Schedler explained. "Chinese surveillance technology – which is used to monitor millions of innocent citizens in the northwest of the People's Republic – is also being exported to Germany. Anyone who buys this technology in this country helps to finance crimes against humanity: More than 1.5 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz citizens have been deported to re-education camps. The Chinese government wants to destroy their cultural identity and does not shy away from separating children from their parents," Schedler criticized.

Millions of Chinese citizens are being persecuted because of their religious beliefs, including around one million Christians. This number has more than tripled since 2017. In Tibet, thousands of Buddhist clerics have been deported in recent years. The region has been suffering from severe repression for decades.

Several years ago, the STP had already published a human rights report on the bloody crimes that were committed after Mao took power in 1949 until his death in 1976 – with, according to estimates by historians, between 35 to 80 million victims. Millions of people got killed in periodic campaigns, and the cruelest period was the great famine catastrophe in the aftermath of the so-called "Great Leap Forward" (1958-62), which Mao and the CP had initiated. Upon request, we will gladly send you the report.

On Tuesday, October 1, 2019, the STP will commemorate the victims of the KP, together with representatives of oppressed Chinese religious communities, on the Jannowitzbrücke in front of the Chinese Embassy in Berlin – from 11 am to 1 pm and from 5 pm to 7 pm. 

Header image: STP