No less than 71 Uighur journalists, professional or not, are in detention in China as part of the repression of this Muslim ethnic group in Xinjiang, in the north-west of the country, said Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Tuesday (December 7th).
In a report entitled “The Great Leap Back of Journalism in China”, the press freedom association denounces “An unprecedented campaign of repression carried out by the Chinese regime in recent years against journalism and the right to information around the world”. According to RSF, at least 127 journalists are in detention across the country.
The Uighurs are the most numerous among them, while the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, has initiated in recent years a reinstatement of Xinjiang, following attacks attributed to Islamists or separatists of this ethnic group.
More than a million Uighurs have been locked up in political re-education centers, according to human rights associations. Beijing disputes this figure and speaks of vocational training centers intended to remove “Trainees” radicalization.
“Information blackout”
The communist regime imposed “An information blackout” in Xinjiang by de facto preventing independent reporting on the ground, said Uyghur journalist Gulchehra Hoja from abroad, quoted in the report.
Among the Uighur perpetrators in detention is the intellectual Ilham Tohti, winner of the 2019 Sakharov Prize of the European Parliament, and who maintained a website listing problems faced by his minority. Gulmira Imin, administrator of another website, has been imprisoned since 2009.
Mr. Xi has “Brutally ended” hopes for improving press freedom in China, said RSF secretary general Christophe Deloire. Last year, eighteen foreign reporters had to leave the country and an Australian journalist working for Chinese television, Cheng Lei, was arrested.
At least ten journalists, professional or not, have been arrested for having covered, in early 2020, the imposition of quarantine in the city of Wuhan, in the center of the country, where the Covid-19 was initially discovered. One of them, Zhang Zhan, was sentenced to four years in prison. According to his relatives, the days of this “Citizen journalist”, who is on hunger strike, are counted.