Sociologist Dilnur Reyhan, a French national of Uyghur origin, calls on President Emmanuel Macron not to remain silent on Beijing's genocidal policy when hosting Xi Jinping.
Le Monde, May 7 2024
At a time when the Russian state has been legitimately banned from the Paris Olympics and severely sanctioned by Europe for its war of aggression in Ukraine, and when its recently re-elected leader, Vladimir Putin, is the subject of an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC), Emmanuel Macron welcomes Xi Jinping to France as China pursues its genocidal policy against the Uyghurs with complete impunity.
China continues to resort to forced labor and subjects hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs to slavery. Millions of Uyghurs have been imprisoned in camps and prisons on account of their ethno-religious identity. Families of French citizens of Uyghur origin are still detained in China while almost all Uyghurs in France have lost all contact with their relatives and live under constant threat and intimidation.
But France, in the name of a proclaimed reopening of the country after the Covid-19 years and a policy of rapprochement with China, hosts the architect and prime instigator of the genocide targeting my people and inexorably destroying them.
So, our nights riddled with nightmares, our dislocated genealogies, our sense of powerlessness and our fear of being erased from the history of humanity are meaningless to Macron. To invite the genocidal ogre to the Elysée Palace, to share a "more personal" time with him, all to improve our trade relations and celebrate 60 years of "diplomatic friendship" makes for a peculiar Ash Wednesday
Concentration camps and prisons
But what exactly will he still be allowed to discuss with Xi? The planned annexation of Taiwan? Tibetan children torn from their families and placed in state-run orphanages? The repression of dissident voices and political prisoners? Uyghur victims of transnational repression in Europe and France? Phantom Chinese police stations that violate France's territorial sovereignty?
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