cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/35479079
Leaked Chinese government records show Beijing’s systematic reprisals against Uyghur reporters working for a news organization that is now in the Trump administration’s crosshairs.
The documents include a list of names with addresses, professions, phone numbers and other private details of 42 “sensitive and special” people who had allegedly been in “close contact” with Uyghur journalist Shohret Hoshur, 60. Hoshur, who escaped China in 1994, has been a reporter for Radio Free Asia (RFA) since 2007. Security officers needed to “pay close attention” to people who were once in Hoshur’s orbit, the document said, noting that one person, an author, had been “dealt with by the public security authorities on political suspicion.”
As a U.S.-based reporter for RFA, Hoshur has covered the Chinese government’s repressive policies against Turkic people in Xinjiang, including the mass internment of hundreds of Uyghurs — abuses that “may constitute crimes against humanity,” according to the United Nations. Hoshur’s deep knowledge of the region and extensive contacts have allowed him to gather exclusive information from police officers and other confidential sources on the ground. At the same time, his reporting has ignited the ire of Chinese authorities, who have accused him of encouraging terrorist acts and allegedly vowed to retaliate against Hoshur’s extended family and friends.
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When Hoshur first read the list of acquaintances under surveillance by Xinjiang officers, he was surprised to see the names of his college friends from decades earlier.
“I recognize all of them,” Hoshur told ICIJ of the classmates he said he hasn’t seen in over 30 years.
Despite the officers’ allegations, Hoshur remembered many of those acquaintances being “extremely quiet and cautious about anything political,” he said. “They avoided social events and kept a low profile. There were even a few who were openly loyal to the Chinese Communist Party, and yet they were also targeted.”
Hoshur said that four of his siblings, including three of his brothers — a cosmetics store owner, a merchant who ran a butcher shop and a farmer — as well as their spouses, have been missing for eight years and were likely sentenced to more than 15 years in prison on spurious charges. He believes his journalism is the reason for their detention because the authorities, who secretly monitored their calls, “repeatedly pressured them to persuade me to stop my work, warning that otherwise they would face consequences,” Hoshur said.
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Alongside police bulletins and internal security guidelines reviewed by ICIJ, the government documents provide new evidence of how Chinese authorities, seeing the media outlet as a threat to the Chinese Communist Party’s rule, have strictly monitored RFA reporters abroad and harassed their families and acquaintances.
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Hoshur, who worked for a broadcaster in his native Xinjiang, fled China in 1994 after he wrote two articles about Beijing’s oppression of Uyghurs, which the government’s propaganda department labeled subversive. Wanted by the authorities, he bought a fake passport and fled first to Pakistan, then to Turkey and later to the U.S., where he became a citizen. While in exile, he has continued to expose Chinese policies affecting his community.
As Uyghurs listened to his reporting on RFA broadcasting, “authorities wasted little time in making it clear to my family — and to me — that they would one day pay a price for my journalism,” Hoshur told the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China in 2015.
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