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Nuria Zyden came to Ireland in 2009, became a naturalised Irish citizen and has three children who were born in the Republic.

A Uyghur, she grew up in Xinjiang, a majority Muslim province where locals are regarded with extreme suspicion by the Chinese Government.

“As a Uyghur person, growing up we were seen as politically disloyal and culturally disadvantaged,” Ms Zyden told Newstalk Breakfast.

“The State media frequently portrayed Uyghurs as extremists and discrimination in jobs and education left us with limited opportunities.

After 9/11, the Chinese Government rebranded its repressions as a war on terror, using it as a pretext to expand mass surveillance.”

[…]

Determined to keep her culture alive and speak out against Beijing’s oppression of her people, she helped found the Irish Uyghur Culture Association in 2014.

Like many Uyghurs living outside of China, she soon found that her advocacy had not gone unnoticed by Chinese officials.

“My activism has become a target [with] phone calls from the Chinese Government and all different types of harassment,” she said.

Most disturbingly, she feels they are blackmailing her elderly mother.

“My gentle, 74-year-old mother told me to not come home,” Ms Zyden said.

[…]

“I don’t know what is really happening to her but I guess she has been questioned and probably she was in detention.

“I’m not really sure; she begged me, do not forget about the Chinese Communist Party raising us and wherever we go, we should appreciate [them].”

[…]

  • Omega@discuss.online
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    1 day ago

    Call me a conspiracy theorist but these news about Uyghurs, and china hunting them down abroad came out right as Europe, SK and Japan was reconsidering their affiliation with China

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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      5 hours ago

      You’re a conspiracy theorist.

      These stories have been coming out for years, it’s nothing new

    • randomname
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      16 hours ago

      Call me a conspiracy theorist but these news about Uyghurs, and china hunting them down abroad came out right as Europe, SK and Japan was reconsidering their affiliation with China

      In his seminal book, The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History, published in 2014, Professor Rian Thum from the University of Manchester in the UK, documents …

      … how the Muslims of the region now called Xinjiang understood their past in the three centuries before the Cultural Revolution. Then he explains how that historical identity was torn apart, […] in the course of the 20th century.

      This is really just one of an awful lot of very good sources on the subject that proves your statement that “these news about Uyghurs, and china hunting them down abroad came out right as Europe, SK and Japan was reconsidering their affiliation with China” simply false.

      What I find weird here on Lemmy is that the obvious crimes against humanity committed by China are downplayed and often completely denied, even by some administrators and moderators.

      • biofaust@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        I don’t know if those as well are called tankies in English, but yeah, there are a lot of those here.

    • amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      18 hours ago

      “call me a conspiracy theorist but these news about Jewish concentration camps and Germany hunting them down came out right as the USSR was reconsidering their alliance with them”

    • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      Are you saying the genocide isn‘t happening or what‘s your concern here? And these stories aren‘t just coming out now. They‘ve been published over the last few years as China is seemingly ramping up their efforts of ethnic cleansing.

      Looks to me like China is speeding up things on all fronts right now which may raise alertness of the free press and the public about these topics. I mean when will we properly act on their crimes against humanity, their garbage flooding our market or their illegal Police stations? It‘s moving all too slow and too little on our front.

    • Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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      24 hours ago

      Can you provide any evidence for your claim? It’s clearly wrong, as there has been strong evidence for the suppression of Uyghurs, Tibetans, and other minorities by the Chinese government for a very long time, from many independent sources.

    • NastyNative@mander.xyz
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      14 hours ago

      Yeah and unlike the US, China is not actively bombing anyone. I have a hard time believing that China is doing this.