Letter to the Editor: Why no protests on behalf of the Uighurs?
One hopes that the protests over the killing of George Floyd reduce the number of unnatural deaths in police custody in the US, whilst allowing the police there to still do a very difficult, and often thankless, job.
Meanwhile, in western China, right now, today, 1m Uighur Muslims remain locked up in concentration camps for daring to resist efforts by the authorities to erase their culture and replace them with eastern Han Chinese. Camp inmates — male and female — are routinely subjected to unspeakable tortures and rape by guards who hold power of life and death over them.
Uighur women whose husbands are incarcerated have to share their homes — and beds — with Chinese officials sent to live with them by the state to ensure their submission. All of this has been documented at UN level, and still not a single protest outside a Chinese embassy anywhere, nor calls for the Chinese premier to resign. There has been silence from left-wing protesters. Is it only black lives that matter? Perhaps the protesters take their cue from Josef Stalin, who said “the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million men is a statistic”.
Nick Folley
Ardcarrig
Carrigaline
Co Cork
