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SearchToday in Islamophobia: Over 75 Members of Congress call for Stephen Miller’s resignation, as buses carrying Muslim voters is attacked during the Sri Lankan Presidential elections. ICC approves probe into Myanmar’s crimes against the Rohingya, even as Myanmar rejects the ICC’s move. Our recommended read today is by Austin Ramzy and Chris Buckley on leaked CCP files that reveal how China organized the mass detention of Uighurs. This, and more, below:
China
‘Absolutely No Mercy’: Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims | Recommended Read
The leadership distributed a classified directive advising local officials to corner returning students as soon as they arrived and keep them quiet. It included a chillingly bureaucratic guide for how to handle their anguished questions, beginning with the most obvious: Where is my family? read the complete article
‘It’s going to get worse’: Uyghur woman speaks out about China’s ‘terrifying’ detention regime
Nuria Khasim, a Melbourne-born Uyghur woman, said she fears her people may be wiped out. “As seen in the leaked documents, the Chinese government repeatedly uses this language of ‘disease’ … people are infected with ‘an ideological illness’,” she told 3AW’s Neil Mitchell. “Because of how vague this is it means that over a million people have been detained without trial, without evidence. read the complete article
Muslims detained in China camps for thinking ‘unhealthy thoughts’, leaked documents reveal
Chinese Muslim students returned home for university holidays to find members of their families had been taken away for “unhealthy thoughts”, leaked government documents show. Young people from the minority ethnic Uighur community in the Xinjiang province were told their loved ones were undergoing “training”, which is why they were not at home, The New York Times revealed after receiving 400 pages of internal documents. read the complete article
The language used to justify Xinjiang’s camps is being echoed in Hong Kong
They revealed that president Xi Jinping had demanded “absolutely no mercy” in the crackdown on ethnic minorities. They characterized the Communist Party’s campaign in the country’s far western region as “a war of offense.” And the rhetoric used to describe Uyghur minorities was chilling: they had been “infected” by the “virus” of Islamic radicalism, “unhealthy thoughts” from which they must be cured. “No matter what age, anyone who has been infected by religious extremism must undergo study,” one of the documents read. Using this justification, officials in China have been forcing Muslim minorities to undergo “re-education” in camps from which they are not free to leave—researchers estimate one million people have experienced such detention since the drive started in around 2016. read the complete article
United States
Over 80 Members Of Congress To Stephen Miller: Resign From White House Now
Over 80 members of the House of Representatives have now called on White House senior adviser Stephen Miller to resign after leaked emails published this week showed his affinity for white nationalism. HuffPost contacted the office of every House member and asked whether Miller should resign. All told, over 80 representatives, all Democrats, have said he should. “I feel pretty secure in my belief that flaming white nationalists should have no place in the White House, the halls of Congress or anywhere, for that matter,” said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.). read the complete article
White House backs Stephen Miller amid white nationalist allegations
Miller's defenders have largely focused on the source of the latest stories about him: the SPLC, a civil rights organization that works to identify and expose hate groups. The White House ripped the group as a “discredited, debunked” organization. It cited a 2018 settlement in which the SPLC paid $3.4 million after it included Muslim activist Maajid Nawaz on a list of anti-Muslim extremists. Michael Edison Hayden, the SPLC reporter who has authored the summaries of Miller's communications, argued that his work should be viewed separately from any criticisms of the organization's leadership and that Miller's emails speak for themselves. “Emails are emails are emails,” he said in an interview. “They can call us whatever names they want to call us, but he has these emails, and he has not denied these emails because he sent these emails and he knows that.” read the complete article
Why Did a Muslim Civil Rights Group Oppose Democrats’ Plans to Confront White Nationalism?
The civil rights group Muslim Advocates recently called on Democratic presidential candidates Kamala Harris and newly-minted Iowa frontrunner Pete Buttigieg to stop supporting CVE, a series of programs that aim to identify potential ‘extremists’ before they commit violence. This, despite the fact that both Buttigieg’s and Harris’ proposals focus exclusively on combatting the scourge of white nationalist violence and never mention Islam or Muslims. Even when white nationalism is the purported target, these programs focus overwhelmingly on Muslims. In theory, CVE programs aim to identify individuals at risk for becoming ‘extremists’; in reality, they promote the notion that dissent leads inexorably to violence while dividing targeted communities against themselves. read the complete article
Colorado’s U.S. attorney first says mosque threat wasn’t bias-motivated, then backtracks
The U.S. attorney for Colorado backtracked Saturday after sending an email to leaders in Denver’s Muslim community saying the man accused of wielding a gun outside a Denver mosque on Thursday was not motivated by anti-Muslim sentiment. Dunn sent a second email Saturday afternoon to Muslim community members to clarify his comments and to apologize for creating “a false impression that any investigation had reach definitive conclusions.” “While I had received some initial reports from my staff that it did not appear to be a hate-motivated incident, I should have been more clear that it was still an open investigation by DPD and that any ultimate conclusions about what happened or what was motivating the individual would be up to that agency,” Dunn wrote. read the complete article
India
Assam NRC a tool to render Muslims stateless: US panel on religious freedom
Observing that the final NRC list, which validates bona fide Indian citizens of Assam, has excluded 19 lakh residents, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) on Friday said that a number of domestic and international organisations have expressed concern that the NRC is a "targeted mechanism to disenfranchise Assam's Bengali Muslim community, implicitly establishing a religious requirement for citizenship and potentially rendering large numbers of Muslims stateless." The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is a register containing names of all genuine Indian citizens. read the complete article
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka presidential election: buses carrying Muslim voters attacked
Buses transporting Muslims to cast their ballots in Sri Lanka’s presidential election have been attacked by gunfire, fuelling fears that minorities are being targeted to stop them from voting. Police officials confirmed that the buses, which were carrying hundreds of Muslim residents from the north-west town of Puttalam, were hit on Saturday morning when attackers burned tyres on the road and set up makeshift roadblocks to ambush the convoy of more than 100 vehicles. read the complete article
'There will be no hope': Muslims fear Rajapaksa win in Sri Lanka election
Hilmy Ahmed, the vice-president of the Sri Lanka Muslim Council, did not recognise the voice but there was no mistaking the threats: throw your support behind Gotabaya Rajapaksa for president or we will set fire to your house, rape your wife and then kill your family. “This election campaign has the whole Muslim community of Sri Lanka very scared,” said Ahmed, who fled abroad after the calls and direct harassment of his staff. “Almost all the nationalist extremists have banded together behind Gotabaya Rajapaksa and should he win, we fear they will come out in full force with their racist, anti-Muslim agenda and attacks.” read the complete article
United Kingdom
LBC obtains dossier showing 10 Tory councillors sharing Islamophobic comments
Ten serving and former Conservative councillors have made or shared Islamophobic comments on social media. The comments, set out in a dossier obtained by LBC, contain some disturbing far right and racist material. The revelations will fuel an escalating row over Islamophobia, after the Party’s decision not to hold an independent inquiry into the issue. read the complete article
International
ICC approves probe into Myanmar's alleged crimes against Rohingya
ICC judges on Thursday backed a prosecution request to investigate allegations of crimes against humanity and persecution over Myanmar's bloody 2017 military crackdown against the majority-Muslim group. The ICC's decision came after Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's de-facto civilian leader, was named in an Argentine lawsuit over crimes against the Rohingya and Myanmar faced a separate genocide lawsuit at the United Nations's top court. read the complete article
Myanmar rejects ICC probe into alleged crimes against Rohingya
Myanmar has rejected an International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into alleged crimes against the Rohingya, as its faces mounting global legal pressure over its treatment of the minority ethnic group. The Hague-based court on Thursday approved a full probe into Myanmar's bloody 2017 military crackdown against the mostly-Muslim group - a move welcomed by the rights groups. read the complete article