(AFP) — During the decade they lived in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, Canadians Gary and Andrea Dyck had a front-row seat to Beijing’s “very …
(AFP) — During the decade they lived in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, Canadians Gary and Andrea Dyck had a front-row seat to Beijing’s “very methodical” repression of the Uyghur people, which Canada’s parliament and others have declared to be genocide. “We saw these things starting to happen and we knew this is not going anywhere good,” Andrea Dyck said. “We started to see more and more restrictions. Every week there was a new rule or a new development.” Rights groups say up to one million Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim Turkic minority with a culture distinct from China’s ethnic Han majority, are now detained in internment camps. China has strongly denied allegations of human rights violations, saying training programs, work schemes and better education have helped stamp out extremism in the northwest region and raise income. The Dycks, who are fluent in Uyghur and Mandarin, settled in Xinjiang in 2007 and ran a composting business for agricultural waste. “We just really enjoyed life, enjoyed being with the Uyghur people and being accepted and welcomed into relationships and the culture, and it was a very special time — until it wasn’t,” Andrea told AFP on Friday from their home in Manitoba. Exclusive Video — ‘Torture and Rape’: Uyghurs in London Protest Communist China’s Concentration Camps https://t.co/NOEFHdAqq8 Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) November 9,2019 Following violent riots in 2009 that they witnessed, “traditional Uyghur neighborhoods had started to be dismantled, people were moved more and more into apartment buildings, away from their communities,” she said.
