China: Travel for Uyghurs Heavily Restricted
www.hrw.org
The Chinese government is maintaining severe restrictions, conditions, and controls on Uyghurs who seek to travel abroad in violation of their internationally protected right to leave the country.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/1873878

The Chinese government is maintaining severe restrictions, conditions, and controls on Uyghurs who seek to travel abroad in violation of their internationally protected right to leave the country, Human Right Watch said today. The government has permitted Uyghurs in the diaspora to make restricted visits to Xinjiang, but with the apparent aim of presenting a public image of normalcy in the region.

Since the start of the Chinese government’s abusive Strike Hard Campaign in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in 2016, Chinese authorities have arbitrarily confiscated passports of Uyghurs in the region and imprisoned Uyghurs for contacting people abroad. While the authorities are now allowing some Uyghurs to apply for or are returning passports for travel internationally, they exert tight control over those who travel.

“The modest thaw in China’s travel restrictions has allowed some Uyghurs to briefly reunite with loved ones abroad after having no news for years, but the Chinese government’s travel restrictions are still used to oppress Uyghurs in Xinjiang and in the diaspora,” said Yalkun Uluyol, China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Chinese government continues to deny Uyghurs their right to leave the country, restrict their speech and associations when abroad, and punish them for having foreign ties.”

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  • pancake@lemmygrad.ml
    2·
    11 hours ago

    That statement might sound obvious to you, and it certainly might be true, but stating it as a fact is something that imo should be backed by evidence. The Chinese Constitution mentions that local representatives (the ones we’re talking about here) are directly elected by people. Might be the case that this “works in theory yet not in practice”, which again seems not to be the case, as local governments tend to score pretty high in satisfaction polls.

    I would like to clear some likely misunderstanding regarding CCP control in China. “Parties” in socialist politics have a different meaning from what we are used to; they don’t represent different opinions or ways to approach decision-making, but they represent the interests of different societal groups, and their internal election process represents the actual decision-making within the group. Think of them as having multiple “governments” where you appoint officials to enact your desired policies to the one that represents you. This results in a situation wherein the largest group with shared interests (workers) has explicit, streamlined access to political power.