For years, Chinese dictator “Xi Jinping has pushed ethnic minority groups like Tibetans and Uyghurs to adopt an identity rooted in Chinese nationality and allegiance to the ruling Communist Party,” reports CNN:
Now, that push has been codified into a sweeping new law that reaches into classrooms, neighborhoods and homes – and gives Beijing the right to target people outside of its borders that it believes violate its rules.
The statute, officially known as the Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law, came into effect on July 1. It bans acts that “undermine ethnic unity or create ethnic division” among China’s 56 officially recognized ethnicities, which include a Han Chinese majority that makes up over 90% of the country’s 1.4 billion people.
Under the new rules, schools and government agencies must use Mandarin Chinese as their primary language; classrooms must ensure that their curriculum “forges a strong sense of the community of the Chinese people,” and all parents must guide children to “love the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people.”
Local officials must ethnically integrate housing — which could lead to people being relocated.
Organizations and individuals outside mainland China that “undermine” ethnic unity or “create ethnic division” will also be punished, the law says.
In an address today marking the 105th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi emphasized the law’s necessity and called on all party members to “continuously consolidate and strengthen the great unity of all ethnic groups.”
Three months ago, U.N. human rights officials said the law “could have serious implications for the linguistic, cultural, and religious autonomy of ethnic communities, including Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Mongols.” They expressed concern about future “transnational repression,” due to the fact that the law applies overseas.
In other news, a judge in Indiana has dismissed a billion dollar lawsuit claiming that Notre Dame libeled China by describing genocide there.
In China’s northwest, as many as three million members of ethnic minority groups have been imprisoned in grim concentration camps. Over one million of the imprisoned people are Uyghurs, the largest minority group in China’s Xinjiang region. Torture is widespread in the concentration camps, and thousands have died in them. Uyghur cemeteries have been destroyed in a campaign some have called cultural genocide.
