Free Republic

Welcome to Captive Nations Week. Never heard of it? You’re not alone. Yet this usually-forgotten, federally mandated occasion — now in its 60th year — is worth resurrecting in the 21st century. Congress created Captive Nations Week in 1959, making the third week in July a time to show Americans’ solidarity with the nations dominated by communism. The original law listed 22 captive nations, most of which had substantial communities of citizens in major American cities. After the law’s passage, these communities began to hold parades and rallies every year, from Miami to New York to Los Angeles to Chicago...

Since their discovery, the ancestry of hundreds of mummified bodies buried in boats in an inhospitable desert region of northwest China has puzzled and divided archaeologists.Found in the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang mostly in the 1990s, the mummies' bodies and clothes are strikingly intact despite being up to 4,000 years old. Naturally preserved by the dry desert air, their facial features and hair color can clearly be seen.Their Western looks; felted and woven wool clothing; and the cheese, wheat and millet found in their unusual graves suggested they were long-disticance herders from the West Asia steppe or migrating farmers from...

A Uyghur militant group that helped to topple Bashar-al Assad has vowed to take the fight to China. The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) threatened Beijing in a video released on Dec 8, the day the Syrian regime collapsed, showing its fighters holding machine guns and wearing military fatigues. “Now here in Syria, in all the cities here, we fight for Allah, and we will continue to do this in our Urumchi, Aqsu and Kashgar in the future,” said one masked man, listing cities in China’s Xinjiang region, from where the Uyghurs hail. “We will chase the Chinese infidels away.”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry is vowing to retaliate in a dramatic escalation of tensions after it said the United States had demanded Beijing close its consulate in Houston. Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the US made the demand on Tuesday and described the US move as “unprecedented escalation”. Wang said the Chinese embassy and consulates in the US had received both explosives and death threats recently. “China demands the US revoke the wrong decision. If the US went ahead, China would take necessary counter measures,” Wang said. Wang’s disclosure came after Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of The Global Times, said on...

Archaeologists Excavating a Tomb at the Yanghai Cemetery in the Turfan Basin, Located in the Eastern End of the Tian Shan Mountains in the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, China, Have Found a Well-preserved Soft Leather Saddle Associated With the Subeixi Culture.The emergence of the saddle brought about a significant enhancement to horseback riding, leading to a revolutionary impact on warfare and facilitating swift long-distance travel throughout Eurasia.The tomb contains the burial of an adult female in a flexed position, who was buried with a hide coat, leather boots, a pottery cup, a braided woollen band, remains of woollen fabric,...

The truth of what happened here is already being heavily suppressed in China but it certainly looks like a deadly high-rise fire that killed at least 10 people in Xinxiang China could not be put out quickly in part because of zero-COVID lockdowns which have been in place in the region for months.The fire happened Thursday night in Urumqi the capital of Xinjiang. Firefighters weren’t able to get their trucks close to the building, allegedly because streets were blocked by parked cars. This video shows a jet of water from a fire truck that isn’t quite reaching the burning building.Urumqi,...

Massive protests erupted in China’s far western Xinjiang region on Friday as long-simmering frustrations over the country’s strict COVID-19 policies hit a boiling point when claims circulated online blaming lockdown restrictions for hindering escape from a deadly apartment building fire. Multiple videos said to be from the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi and shared on social media painted a picture of residents furious at the draconian “zero-COVID” policies imposed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Crowds chanted “End the lockdown!” pumping their fists in the air as they walked down a street, according to videos circulated on social media. What sounded...

China attacked a report issued by the UN rights office (OHCHR) on alleged abuses in Xinjiang on Tuesday (Sep 13) and read out a statement backed by around 20 other countries criticising the UN body for releasing it and saying it had no right to do so. But initial support for Beijing's so-called joint statement at the UN Human Rights Council was thinner than some observers had expected - a fact that might embolden China's critics. The Aug 31 report, which China had asked the UN not to publish, stipulated that "serious human rights violations have been committed" and said...

The fact that China is abusing millions of people in Xinjiang is hardly news at this point. We’ve covered it here many times. But this particular UN report has apparently been delayed for at least a year. So, baby steps.China had urged the UN not to release the report – with Beijing calling it a “farce” arranged by Western powers.The report assesses claims of abuse against Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities, which China denies.But investigators said they found “credible evidence” of torture possibly amounting to “crimes against humanity”…“Despite the Chinese government’s strenuous denials, the UN has now officially recognised...

The New York Times asked TikTok, a social media app with known connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), to censor American users sharing election integrity concerns on its platform. In a recent article titled, “On TikTok, Election Misinformation Thrives Ahead of Midterms,” Times writer Tiffany Hsu details how “TikTok is shaping up to be a primary incubator of baseless and misleading information” ahead of the 2022 midterms, with the issue of voter fraud being a prominent topic shared across the platform. Buried within the article, however, Hsu tacitly reveals that as a result of the Times reaching out to...

Americans forced into paying the cost of Biden’s economic war on Russia are about to be conscripted into service on a second front, as Washington confronts China over its treatment of its Uyghur ethnic minority. Effective June 21, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act will impose a guilty-til-proven-innocent regime that bars all imports from China’s Xinjiang province unless businesses prove their products are not made with forced labor. A customs official said a “very high” level of evidence will be required. Though the law was passed almost six months ago, the Biden administration is providing U.S. businesses with little or...

Government officials in China slammed Walmart and its wholesale chain Sam’s Club on Friday, accusing the retailers of “stupidity” after they reportedly pulled items sourced in Xinjiang province from stores in the country. Chinese media outlets claimed local Sam’s Club customer-service reps said the products are out of stock – an explanation that government officials slammed as a “self-deceptive excuse.” The retailers have yet to comment on why they may have pulled their products, but earlier this month, Congress passed the bipartisan Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which bans imports from Xinjiang unless businesses prove products were not made through...

The U.S. Senate approved legislation on Dec. 16 to ban all imports from China’s Xinjiang region, where Beijing is holding more than 1 million Uyghurs in internment camps, over forced labor concerns. The measure is now headed to the White House, where President Joe Biden has said he’ll sign it into law.The move complements a series of actions by the Biden administration aimed at holding the Chinese regime accountable over its repression in Xinjiang, which Washington has labeled as a genocide. The Senate approved the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act by unanimous consent two days after the House approved it...

Republicans & Democrats have united to punish China. They've passed a bill to ban all goods that are made through forced labour of Uighur Muslims. Which brands could this bill spell trouble for? Versachi, Vuitton, etc.

The House of Representatives late Wednesday passed legislation to ban all goods from China’s remote northwestern region of Xinjiang over concerns about forced labor.The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which passed the Democrat-led chamber by an overwhelming vote of 428-1, now heads to the Senate. It would need to pass the Senate and be signed by President Joe Biden to become law.Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) was the only lawmaker who voted against the measure.The measure would create a “rebuttable presumption” that all goods from Xinjiang, where the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has set up a vast network of detention...

A YouTube video of Xinjiang detention facilities has rekindled concern over China's crackdown on ethnic minorities. Researchers say the videos offer new evidence, but many fear for the vlogger's safety.A 20-minute video featuring more than a dozen detention facilities in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has offered fresh evidence and renewed the discussion around China's large-scale crackdown on ethnic minorities in the region. The video was filmed by a Chinese man named Guanguan, who went to Xinjiang after reading a series of articles from US news outlet BuzzFeed News, indicating the locations of several detention centers in the region. His...

Mihrigul Tursun, a survivor of China’s concentration camp system, urged the National Basketball Association (NBA) in remarks to Breitbart News on Friday to condemn China’s human rights abuses. Tursun also warned star player LeBron James, one of China’s biggest business partners in the league, to distance himself from the regime “because money cannot do everything.” Tursun was participating in a march Friday organized by the East Turkistan Government in Exile in Washington, DC, the purpose of which was to demand that the administration of President Joe Biden act to protect the Uyghur people from the ongoing genocide they are enduring...

The mysterious Tarim mummies of China's western Xinjiang region are relics of a unique Bronze Age culture descended from Indigenous people, and not a remote branch of early Indo-Europeans, according to new genetic research.The new study upends more than a century of assumptions about the origins of the prehistoric people of the Tarim Basin whose naturally preserved human remains, desiccated by the desert, suggested to many archaeologists that they were descended from Indo-Europeans who had migrated to the region from somewhere farther west before about 2000 B.C.

Biden administration climate czar John Kerry holds a $1 million stake in a Chinese private equity fund, Hillhouse China Value Fund, that is both invested in a tech company blacklisted for human rights abuses and is a major shareholder in a solar panel firm connected to labor abuses of the Uyghurs, The Washington Free Beacon reported on Monday. Hillhouse China Value Fund L.P. bought last December a 6% stake in LONGi Green Energy, a Chinese solar panel manufacturer, making it the company’s second largest shareholder. Human rights groups and U.S. lawmakers have accused LONGi of sourcing many of its raw...

A human rights group focused on exposing China’s slow-motion genocide of the Uyghur people and others in Xinjiang is moving videos from YouTube to another platform after YouTube repeatedly blocked some of its videos for ostensibly violating the company’s terms of service. In one case, YouTube claimed the videos promoted violent criminal organizations, echoing the Chinese Communist Party’s attacks on dissenters. “There is another excuse every day. I never trusted YouTube,” Serikzhan Bilash, one of the founders of the human rights group Atajurt, told Reuters. “But we’re not afraid anymore, because we are backing ourselves up with LBRY. The most...