{"id":234792,"date":"2021-09-28T21:26:27","date_gmt":"2021-09-29T04:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=234792"},"modified":"2021-10-04T13:21:16","modified_gmt":"2021-10-04T20:21:16","slug":"chinese-government-seized-and-sold-assets-of-xinjiang-detainees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2021\/09\/chinese-government-seized-and-sold-assets-of-xinjiang-detainees\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Government Seized and Sold Assets of Xinjiang Detainees"},"content":{"rendered":"

A report published by the advocacy group <\/span>Uyghur Human Rights Project<\/span><\/a> (UHRP) on Friday reveals that Chinese authorities have seized and sold off millions of dollars worth of assets held by Uyghurs imprisoned in Xinjiang. The newly revealed auctions add to the <\/span>secrecy<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>lack of due process<\/span><\/a> for the more than a million Uyghurs who have been <\/span>detained in internment camps<\/span><\/a>. They also point to the CCP\u2019s targeting of Uyghur business leaders, who once served as a link between the government and local Uyghur populations, but who now stand in the way of <\/span>the CCP\u2019s campaign of ethnic assimilation<\/span><\/a>. Eva Xiao and Jonathan Cheng from the Wall Street Journal, which corroborated UHRP\u2019s findings, described how <\/span>asset seizures by Chinese authorities coincided with the government crackdown on ethnic minorities<\/strong><\/a>:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Since 2019, Xinjiang courts have put at least 150 assets\u2014ranging from home appliances to real estate and company shares\u2014belonging to at least 21 people and valued at a total $84.8 million up for auction on e-commerce sites.<\/span><\/p>\n

[\u2026] The Uyghur group [UHRP] said it recorded seizures that were clearly linked to court cases involving charges related to terrorism and extremism. It also included cases of people identified by Chinese state media as extremists, or whose families reported they had been accused of such activities.<\/span><\/p>\n

[…] A Wall Street Journal analysis of corporate records of companies in Hotan city\u2014home to several prominent Uyghur real-estate developers\u2014indicates that orders by municipal authorities to freeze Uyghur entrepreneurs\u2019 assets increased sharply in 2018, about a year after Xinjiang authorities began interning local Muslim minorities en masse.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2017, one Uyghur business owner had company shares frozen following orders from a local court. The next year, the number jumped to 22, accounting for more than half of all individuals and firms who had shares frozen due to criminal or civil cases in Hotan city since 2013. [<\/span>Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The <\/span>policing of normal activities<\/span><\/a> has criminalized innocuous behaviors and expressions of faith, and yet little public information is available regarding the alleged criminals or their crimes in the court documents attached to the auctions. In one relatively transparent case studied by the report, a court document listed three individuals over 75 years old as having helped \u201cterrorist activities.\u201d The UHRP report demonstrated the <\/span>scope and secrecy of the government\u2019s campaign against the Uyghurs<\/strong><\/a>:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This report presents twelve cases of imprisoned Uyghurs whose property has been auctioned on the judicial auction platform of Taobao. Five of these cases involve Uyghur businesspeople whose arrests have been reported in publicly available sources. The other seven cases are of Uyghurs whose arrests on politicized charges have not been previously reported. Given the scale of the arrests and mass detention taking place in East Turkistan, this dataset likely represents only a fraction of the property dispossession occurring in the government crackdown on Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in the region, which began in earnest in 2016.<\/span><\/p>\n

[…] These judicial auctions represent further evidence of the scope of the crackdown on Uyghur society, as well as the speed and lack of due process with which the campaign is taking place. The Chinese government has not disclosed any details of the cases appearing in this report, and in most cases has not revealed the arrest of the individuals involved. These cases demonstrate the secrecy with which the government is trying and imprisoning people in the Uyghur Region. [<\/span>Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\ud83e\uddf5 THREAD \ud83e\uddf5<\/p>\n

In our new report, we uncover judicial auctions of property belonging to imprisoned Uyghur businesspeople listed on the e-commerce website Taobao, owned by @AlibabaGroup<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Assets have been auctioned as a result of dubious criminal charges.https:\/\/t.co\/TjYoZhNSP5<\/a><\/p>\n

— Uyghur Human Rights Project (@UyghurProject) September 24, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n