Uyghurs in Austria protest against hunger genocide in China

Armed civilians patrol the area outside the Hotan Bazaar where a screen shows Chinese President Xi Jinping in Hotan in western China's Xinjiang region, Nov. 3, 2017.[AP]

The Uyghur community in Austria has held a protest against the genocide of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in China on the pretext of controlling the Covid-19 pandemic by forcing a lockdown in areas of East Turkestan and imprisoning people inside homes without food and medical aid.

According to local media reports, several protestors carrying pictures of the Uyghurs who were killed by the Chinese government took out a rally from Christian-Broda-Platz to Heldenplatz in Vienna.

A large number of Uyghurs participated in this demonstration and raised slogans against the human rights violations and genocide by the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

The demonstration was led by the President of the Uyghur Diaspora in Austria, Mevlan Dilshat. The protestors condemned the Chinese policy of hunger genocide in East Turkestan in the garb of efforts to control the Covid pandemic.

The Chinese government, on the pretext of the COVID lockdown, trapped residents in their homes leaving them to starve. Hundreds of viral videos and other posts on social media from East Turkistan show families across East Turkistan suffering starvation after being locked up in their homes for weeks. Videos show the Uyghurs pleading with the Chinese government to let them out and bring them food to feed their starving children.

They even include young children who are starving or have died due to hunger or high fever but did not get access to food or medicine, local media reported.

Uyghur activists are accusing the Communist Party of China of now using this new way and pretext to exterminate the Uyghur race but so far no single foreign government or international organisation has done anything.

The contemporary situations of East Turkistan are that East Turkistan people are suffering from massacres, genocide and other human rights violations for more than 70 years under Chinese autocracy.

Since 2014, the Chinese government, under the administration of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping, has pursued policies that incarcerated more than one million Muslims (the majority of Uyghurs) in internment camps without any legal process.

This is the largest detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II. However, China publicly denies that it has committed human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

Last Month China denounced a long-delayed UN report that was released over its protest and that said the government's arbitrary detention of Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups in the western region of Xinjiang may constitute crimes against humanity.

Human rights groups and the Japanese government welcomed the report, which had become caught up in a tug-of-war between China and others, who were critical of the delay and lobbying for its release.

The assessment by the UN human rights office in Geneva concluded that China has committed serious human rights violations under its anti-terrorism and anti-extremism policies and calls for "urgent attention" from the UN, the world community and China itself to address them.

The report was drawn in part from interviews with former detainees and others familiar with conditions at eight detention centres.

It said that descriptions of the detentions were marked by patterns of torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment and said that allegations of rape and other sexual violence appear credible.

"The extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups ... in (the) context of restrictions and deprivation more generally of fundamental rights ... may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity," the report said.