uighur muslims – The Milli Chronicle https://millichronicle.com Factual Version of a Story Thu, 25 Mar 2021 03:53:42 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://media.millichronicle.com/2018/11/12122950/logo-m-01-150x150.png uighur muslims – The Milli Chronicle https://millichronicle.com 32 32 Chinese hackers used Facebook to target Uighurs abroad, company says https://millichronicle.com/2021/03/chinese-hackers-used-facebook-to-target-uighurs-abroad-company-says.html Thu, 25 Mar 2021 03:49:51 +0000 https://millichronicle.com/?p=19080 Beijing (Reuters) – Facebook Inc said on Wednesday it had blocked a group of hackers in China who used the platform to target Uighurs living abroad with links to malware that would infect their devices and enable surveillance.

The social media company said the hackers, known as Earth Empusa or Evil Eye in the security industry, targeted activists, journalists and dissidents who were predominantly Uighurs, a largely Muslim ethnic group facing persecution in China.

Facebook said there were less than 500 targets, who were largely from the Xinjiang region but were primarily living abroad in countries including Turkey, Kazakhstan, the United States, Syria, Australia and Canada.

It said the majority of the hackers’ activity occurred away from Facebook and that they used the site to share links to malicious websites rather than directly sharing the malware on the platform.

“This activity had the hallmarks of a well-resourced and persistent operation, while obfuscating who’s behind it,” Facebook cybersecurity investigators said in a blog post.

Facebook said the hacking group used fake Facebook accounts to pose as fictitious journalists, students, human rights advocates or members of the Uighur community to build trust with their targets and trick them into clicking malicious links that would install spying software on their devices.

It said hackers both set up malicious websites using look-alike domains for popular Uighur and Turkish news sites and compromised legitimate websites visited by the targets. Facebook also found websites created by the group to mimic third-party Android app stores with Uighur-themed apps, like a prayer app and dictionary app, containing malware.

Facebook said its investigation found two Chinese companies, Beijing Best United Technology Co Ltd (Best Lh) and Dalian 9Rush Technology Co Ltd (9Rush) had developed the Android tooling deployed by the group.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Facebook’s report. Beijing routinely denies allegations of cyber espionage.

Reuters was not immediately able to locate contact information for Dalian 9Rush Technology Co Ltd. A man who answered the number listed for Beijing Best United Technology Co Ltd hung up.

Western governments are seeking to hold Beijing accountable for mass detentions of Muslim Uighurs in northwestern China, where the United States says China is committing genocide.

China denies all accusations of abuse and says its camps provide vocational training and are needed to fight extremism.

The United Nations estimates that up to 1 million people, mainly Uighurs, have been detained in the Xinjiang camps.

Facebook said it had removed the group’s accounts, which numbered less than 100, and had blocked the sharing of the malicious domains and was notifying people it believed were targets.

]]> Wannabe caliph Erdogan dumps Uighurs for China money https://millichronicle.com/2020/08/wannabe-caliph-erdogan-dumps-uighurs-for-china-money.html Mon, 03 Aug 2020 09:06:36 +0000 https://millichronicle.com/?p=12440

With a changed economic scenario, Uighurs find that Turkey is no longer a welcome country.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s campaign to project himself as a leader of the Muslim world has hit a major roadblock. Under Erdogan, Turkey is arresting Uighurs and keeping them in detention centres to ostensibly deport them to China—a country where they face internment camps and ethnic cleansing.

Till a couple of years back, Turkey was one of the few vocal supporters of the Uighur movement and a welcoming country for Uighur Muslims who managed to escape China’s prisons and persecution. Because of ethnic affinity, Uighurs used to call Turkey their second home and have been settling there for decades. This changed once the Turkish Lira hit record lows, external debt ballooned and the economy nosedived in 2018.

The crisis pushed Turkey into the welcoming arms of China, which was too happy to help. Turkey received a $3.6-billion loan from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and was grateful. Since then the two have not looked back. A keen supporter of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Turkey now has Chinese investments in energy, infrastructure, tourism, transport and e-commerce. The Asian giant has been repeatedly pumping in money to keep the Turkish economy afloat—weighed down under $440 billion external debt.

With the money flowing in, Turkey has given a burial to Uighur rights, detentions and re-education in special camps run by the Chinese Communist Party. There was a time in 2009 when strongman Erdogan had said that Beijing is committing “a kind of genocide” against the Uighurs. Now that China has rounded up over a million Uighurs, and reportedly making Uighur women sleep with Han Chinese officials, Erdogan is keeping quiet.

Uighurs are a Muslim community in Xinjiang, one of China’s largest provinces. They speak a Turkic language and have long considered Turkey a natural ally with nearly 35,000 Uighurs escaping China for Turkey. However, this is an exchange between persecution and jail to living in poverty and uncertainty as Turkey has been arbitrarily rounding them up, not giving work permits and allowing Chinese policy to dictate Turkey its treatment of the Uighurs.

China has been flooding the region not just with troops but also with Han Chinese after the 2009 riots left more than 140 people dead. The riots, that lasted days, allegedly started by Uighurs over discrimination in jobs, religious persecution, cultural incompatibilities and economic deprivation were one in a series of violent unrest against the Chinese state. Determined not to allow unrest again, the Chinese government resorted to ethnic cleansing. Initiated by the Communist Party, the nearly one-million Uighur men in re-education camps in China work as forced labor where they create products for international brands.

With a changed economic scenario, Uighurs find that Turkey is no longer a welcome country. The Erdogan government is arresting them from restaurants, mid-night raids at homes, streets and anywhere they can be found. Hundreds have been arrested without charges and kept in deportation centres for months.

Many fear that they are being followed and kept under watch by Turkish officials. With Beijing asking for extradition of the Uighurs, a handful have already been deported. Things have taken a turn for the worse after Erdogan’s visit to China in 2019, after which he said that the people in Xinjiang “live happily” and supported the re-education camps as de-radicalization camps. Erdogan, reportedly also said that he will not allow, “any forces to carry out anti-China activities in Turkey.”

With Turkey banging the doors on the embattled Uighurs, the community has found public support from the US, which blacklisted dozens of companies and institutions complicity in China’s human rights violations, high-technology surveillance of Uighurs, forced labor and arbitrary detentions.

Not just this, Jim Risch, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, recently tweeted his criticism of Turkey. He said: “It’s shameful that Turkey assists China in violating Uyghur human rights.” His tweet found support in Edward Markey, Democratic Senator, who criticized Erdogan by saying: “As Beijing pushes its own extradition and intimidation campaign against minorities, Turkey should rededicate itself to the protection of persecuted Uyghurs.”

The tweets did not go down well with Turkey. Serdar Kilic, Turkish ambassador to the US, mounted a strong defence of his country’s policy towards the Uighurs by referred to the tweets as unsubstantiated and biased.

Even as Erdogan looks forward to his resurrection as a caliph, a tottering economy and withdrawal of support for the Uighur Muslims might undo his dreams. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Uighurs in Turkey keep looking over their shoulders and live with nightmares as the Communist party chases them through Turkish streets with Erdogan’s help.

Article first appeared on India Narrative.

]]> US Govt. imposes Visa restrictions on China for mistreating Uighur Muslims https://millichronicle.com/2019/10/us-govt-imposes-visa-restrictions-on-china-for-mistreating-uighur-muslims.html Wed, 09 Oct 2019 16:02:47 +0000 https://millichronicle.com/?p=4573 Washington — United States Government under President Trump has imposed visa restrictions on Chinese government and Communist Party officials for putting Uighur Muslims in the concentration camps, US State Department announced on Tuesday.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted that, “Today, I am announcing visa restrictions on Chinese government and Communist Party officials believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, the detention or abuse of Uighurs, Kazakhs, or other Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang.”

However, Chinese government has denied all charges of mistreatment of Uighur Muslims, and the Chinese Embassy in Washington has not commented yet on the decision.

Meanwhile, US Senator from Republican Party Tom Cotton praised the Government’s decision and said, “officials who place Uighurs and other minority groups in concentration camps shouldn’t be allowed to visit the United States and enjoy our freedoms.”

Chinese Government has been accused of targeting and cracking down heavily on Uighur Muslim minority, which has incurred condemnation world-wide.

]]> ANALYSIS: Why Erdogan made U-turn in support of China against Uighur Muslims? https://millichronicle.com/2019/07/analysis-why-erdogan-made-u-turn-in-support-of-china-against-uighur-muslims.html Sat, 06 Jul 2019 10:57:49 +0000 https://millichronicle.com/?p=3871

Analysts said that China aims to build an alliance with a country that is at odds with the United States to gain more global political influence in the future.

China plans to provide some financial aid to Turkey, including the purchase of some yuan-denominated bonds, the South China Morning Post reported. The Chinese newspaper quoted Chinese analysts as saying that Beijing’s response to Ankara’s moves to connect with “new friends” in an attempt to collapse the Turkish lira came from a political rather than an economic point of view.

Analysts pointed to the official Chinese news agency reporting the sudden change of tone of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the repression in the territory of Xinjiang, and told his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, that Muslim minorities “Uighurs” live happily in Xinjiang, a position described by some observers that he turned 180 degrees from the last statements of the Turkish Foreign Ministry which described the treatment of Turkish-speaking Uighurs as “a great shame on humanity”.

But Beijing cannot provoke Washington

But Beijing is set to carefully consider its options in helping Turkey and will not offer a large bailout package because of the risk of wider support, which will further provoke the United States.

Tensions between US and Turkey led to the loss of the Turkish currency nearly 20% of its value against the US dollar last year, and continued to decline since the beginning of this year.

Lira threats, the stock market and the economy have raised serious concerns for Erdogan and his government, prompting them to seek new economic friends from traditional US adversaries.

Aidan Yao, a senior economic analyst specializing in emerging markets in Asia, said the opportunity for the Chinese government to extend aid to Turkey was large but would be based on political rather than economic considerations given the risks associated with such a move.

“As with any loan or bond issue, there is always the possibility of default, and this risk will be particularly high when a country is in the middle of a storm,” Yao said.

Urgent concessions

“Turkey remains committed to the one-China policy,” Erdogan was quoted as saying by Xinhua News Agency, stressing that “the fact that ethnic residents live happily in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region because of China’s prosperity is a fixed fact.

Turkey will not allow anyone to tamper its relations with China, said Erdogan. However, Erdogan expressed his willingness to enhance mutual political trust and security cooperation with China to counter extremism, the agency said.

Erdogan warned all those seeking to “exploit” the Xinjiang issue to create tensions with China, reported the Chinese agency. But it is likely that Beijing will not only make these remarks in return for some assistance to Turkey, but will also seek to benefit in the long run.

Analysts said that China aims to build an alliance with a country that is at odds with the United States to gain more global political influence in the future.

Young Friends

Sun Shinn, a lecturer in Chinese and East Asian business at King’s College London, said that Beijing’s assistance to Ankara was part of “unifying the ranks of some younger brethren” in the face of US trade threats. However, any help from China would be a political gesture rather than a major support for the Turkish lira.

The Turkish lira remains fragile due to lack of market confidence in Erdogan’s government’s willingness to take measures to support the Turkish currency, Shinn said.

Article first published in Arabic on Al Arabiya Arabic.

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