The French Uighur community expressed, Friday, May 3, its “anger at the fact that Emmanuel Macron welcomes Xi Jinping” in France, while the Chinese president is due to land in Paris on Sunday, for a state visit that will celebrate sixty years of bilateral diplomatic relations. Xi Jinping is “the executioner of the Uighur people, the number one responsible for the genocide of the Uighurs,” said sociologist Dilnur Reyhan, founder of the Uighur Institute of Europe, during a press conference in Paris.
“In this context where the genocide is still ongoing, this welcome by the French president of the executioner of the Uighur people is incomprehensible to us (…) and an encouragement for China to continue its crimes until the end,” he said. she denounced with emotion. “For the Uighur people and in particular for the French Uighurs, this is a slap in the face that our President Emmanuel Macron is giving us,” she lambasted.
The Uighurs, Sunni Muslims, represent the main ethnic group in Xinjiang, in northwest China, a region long hit by bloody attacks attributed to Islamists and separatists. Several Western countries, including the United States, France and the United Kingdom, have denounced an ongoing “genocide” against the Uighurs. In January 2022, the French National Assembly adopted a resolution denouncing China’s “genocide” of the Uighurs, calling on the French government to do the same.
Human rights violations
Since 2017, more than a million Uighurs or members of other ethnic groups, mainly Muslims, have been interned in “re-education” “camps” where human rights violations are widespread, according to studies and Western NGOs. China presents part of these infrastructures as “vocational training centers” which, according to it, have made it possible to teach residents a trade, keep them away from extremism and ensure them a better life.
Dilnur Reyhan spoke at the press briefing in Paris alongside Gulbahar Haitiwaji, who said she "wasted three years of her life" in a "camp", "just because [she is] Uighur". “China’s sole aim is to silence the Uighurs, to erase our culture, our history and our identity. Surveillance, discrimination and concentration camps have become the daily life of every Uighur,” she denounced.
Noting that it was “thanks to the involvement of France” that she was able to be “liberated”, Gulbahar Haitiwaji expressed his “disappointment” at “the welcome given to Xi Jinping by Emmanuel Macron”. “I ask the President of the Republic to raise the issue of the camps with China and to firmly ask for their closure,” she said.
“We also demand the release of millions of Uighurs who are in camps, prisons and forced labor factories,” urged Dilnur Reyhan. She denounced the fact that Mr. Macron “never wanted to receive [her], nor the two concentration camp survivors who live in France.” “But, on the other hand, he decided to welcome, not the victims but the executioner in a country which calls itself the country of human rights.”
The Uyghur Institute of Europe is planning a demonstration in Paris on Sunday afternoon, in the form of a play performed by members of the Uyghur community in France, to denounce the arrival of Xi Jinping.
