China: Xinjiang Children Separated from Families | WPN World People News

Chinese authorities should immediately release to their families children held in “child welfare” institutions and boarding schools in Xinjiang, Human Rights Watch said on Sep 15, 2019. The government should cease unnecessarily separating Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim children from their families.

Under China’s “Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism,” an estimated 1 million Turkic Muslims have been arbitrarily detained in unlawful political education camps in Xinjiang since 2017. An unknown number are being held in detention centers and prisons. Chinese authorities have housed countless children whose parents are detained or in exile in state-run child welfare institutions and boarding schools without parental consent or access.

“The Chinese government’s forced separation of children is perhaps the cruelest element of its oppression in Xinjiang,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. “Children should be either immediately returned to the custody of relatives in China or allowed to join their parents outside the country.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed five families from the Xinjiang region now living outside the country who described having no contact with their children. Some know and others believe the authorities placed their children in state-run institutions without their family’s consent.

Abdurahman Tohti, a Uyghur living in Turkey, has been unable to contact his son, now 4, and daughter, 3, since authorities detained his wife in August 2016. In January, he spotted his son in a video posted online that showed him in a school answering questions in Chinese. “I miss my children, my wife,” said Tohti. “I want them back very much. I fear if I ever meet my children again in my lifetime, they wouldn’t know who I am, and they would’ve been assimilated as Chinese and think that I’m their enemy.”

The number of children in Xinjiang placed in state-run child welfare institutions and boarding schools without consent is not known. Government control and surveillance in the region, including severe punishments for those who speak out or have contacts abroad, prevent comprehensive reporting. Many Turkic Muslims living outside of China have completely lost contact with their families in Xinjiang. The website Xinjiang Victims Database collected accounts of over 5,000 people in Xinjiang, including more than 100 children, who have been imprisoned, detained in political education camps, or subjected to other restrictions on movement.

Xinjiang government documents provide little information on decisions to send children to state-run facilities. They do not indicate whose consent is needed, which government agencies make decisions about removal to state institutions, or whether there are procedures for determining consent or challenges to such determinations. As Human Rights Watch previously reported, certain localities have received specific quotas from higher-level authorities for institutionalizing orphans.

Beyond the transfer of children to institutions without consent or lawful justification, Human Rights Watch remains deeply concerned about practices in these facilities that appear to deny children their basic rights and cultural heritage. Chinese state media and government websites report that children in boarding schools in Xinjiang are taught in Chinese – raising concerns about the children’s right to learn their own language – and sing and dance to propagandistic songs. Government propaganda extols the benefits of children living in boarding facilities, so as not to be influenced by “extreme thought” and to develop better personal hygiene and manners.

Foreign journalists who visited Xinjiang in 2018 and 2019 were not able to visit or photograph the schools to report on the education being provided. Barbed wire, fencing, and surveillance cameras appeared more like security at a detention facility than for the children’s safety.

Various indicators suggest that Xinjiang authorities have been putting more resources into child welfare institutions and boarding schools since the start of the “Strike Hard Campaign.” There have been many policy directives on the institutionalization of children whose parents are in detention facilities, government documents on the management of children in child welfare institutions and boarding schools, and procurement notices for the construction of these facilities, which Human Rights Watch, independent researchers, and international media organizations have uncovered.

Similarly, government statistics show dramatic increases in educational expenditure, preschool enrollment, and school floor space in Turkic Muslim-heavy areas in Xinjiang in the past three years, according to a recent study. Governments have an international human rights law obligation to improve education, but this cannot be achieved by arbitrarily removing children from their families.

Article 43 of China’s Law on the Protection of Minors says that state-run child welfare institutions are responsible for caring for orphans, children whose parents or guardians cannot be found, and other children not in care. However, Chinese law does not empower government authorities to remove children from their relatives to place them in state care, nor does it outline any legal procedures to do so.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which China ratified in 1992, recognizes the family as the natural environment for the growth and well-being of children. The convention obligates governments to ensure that children should not be separated from their parents against their will, “except when competent authorities subject to judicial review determine, in accordance with applicable law and procedures, that such separation is necessary for the best interests of the child.” Such determinations may be necessary in cases involving parental abuse or neglect.

Even when alternative care arrangements are necessary, care by close family members should be given priority. Removing a child from the family’s care is a measure of last resort and should, whenever possible, be temporary and for the shortest possible duration. Officials need to ensure that a child who is capable of forming their own views has the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting them. The child’s views should be given due consideration in accordance with their age and maturity.

All decisions concerning alternative care should take full account of the desirability, in principle, of maintaining the child as close as possible to their habitual place of residence, to facilitate contact and potential reintegration with the child’s family, and to minimize disruption of the child’s educational, cultural, and social life.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child provides that applications by children or their parents to enter or leave a country for family reunification must be dealt with in a “positive, humane, and expeditious manner.” Such requests should have no adverse consequences for the applicants or their family members. Children whose parents reside in different countries have the right to maintain personal relations and direct contacts with both parents.

The convention also protects children from ethnic, religious, or linguistic minorities from being denied the right to enjoy their own culture, to practice their own religion, or to use their own language.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, 25 countries, and many human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, have called on the Chinese government to allow independent observers unfettered access to Xinjiang to assess the scope and scale of abuses there. Organizations, such as the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation, should similarly endorse such visits.

“Governments should speak out against the unbearable pain that Chinese authorities are inflicting on families as part of their campaign of repression in Xinjiang,” Richardson said. “They should make clear to China that family reunification is a fundamental human right.”

Source:Human Rights Watch