A Vancouver-area woman is fearful for the safety of her relatives after her parents living in western China told her people of Uighur descent are being hunted and killed.
“(Tuesday) morning, I finally got in touch with my parents and (they said) lots of Chinese people are killing Uighur people in the streets,” said Tunisha, who asked not to have her last name used for fear retribution.
Tunisha attended a rally with about 200 others outside the Chinese consulate on Granville Street yesterday afternoon.
She said that you mostly see women in the streets of her city, as Uighur men, who are part of a minority group in China, are being rounded up and jailed.
Tenzin Lhalungpa, the president of Canada’s Tibet Committee, said the crackdown is familiar.
“Last year what happened in Tibet, which was basically a revolution against the Chinese occupation, Tibetans were demonized and that seemed to work with the domestic audience in China,” Lhalungpa said.
“It was basically us against them and it was the Chinese who were being oppressed, which is pretty strange when you have a billion people.”
Lhalungpa sees the same thing happening to the Uighurs.
Omerjan Bore, one of the rally’s organizers, said Western news outlets are poorly informed about the conflict as they’re only being fed images and information from state-run Chinese media outlets.
“The Chinese media is lying, (they) are hiding the truth,” he said
“They completely shut down the Internet, telephones and satellite communications. Everything is shut off. The deaths are more than 1,000.”
