Chinese authorities say they have outlawed the practice, but the region\u2019s Uyghurs still have to work for free.<\/p>\n
2017-02-16<\/p>\n
While Chinese officials in the Xinjiang region insist that they no longer compel Uyghurs to supply free labor for public works projects, in reality they have only changed the name of the practice, RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service has learned.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hashar is abolished, and the farmers are being informed about it in village after village,\u201d a Chinese official in Hotan (in Chinese, Hetian) prefecture\u2019s Guma county\u2019s civil affairs office told RFA in a recent interview.<\/p>\n
Hashar is the Uyghur term for compulsory labor in fields and roads, and Uyghur and other human rights activists view the practice as a means to repress the Muslim Uyghurs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe new policy will be in effect from the end of January,\u201d added the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear why Chinese officials in the region needed to announce a new ban on the hashar as China\u2019s ruling Communist Party claims to have formally banned it in Xinjiang decades ago.<\/p>\n
Still, the announcement was met with joy among Uyghurs, according to the Chinese official.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe farmers were really happy. Some were happy from the bottom of their hearts,\u201d the official told RFA. \u201cSome of them even teared up upon hearing this news, and they said: \u2018The party is good, and government is good.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
But that good will dried up after Uyghur farmers in the region discovered that they would still have to do hashar-like labor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey informed us that the hashar is abolished,\u201d a Uyghur farmer told RFA on condition of anonymity. \u201cBut they also told us that they will gather us for flood management and tree planting activities during the tree-planting festivals.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the Chinese insist that they have ended the policy, the Uyghurs say that the hashar lives on.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they announced the hashar is abolished, we believed them,\u201d the farmer said. \u201cBut we will have floods this coming June, and they will make us go and work for 10 to 15 days.\u201d<\/p>\n
State control<\/strong><\/p>\n Zubeyre Shemshidin, a researcher for the Uyghur Human Rights Project, told RFA the Chinese use the hashar to keep Uyghur farmers under the state\u2019s thumb.<\/p>\n \u201cThey use this unjust policy as way to keep Uyghur farmers poor, and to increase their control over them by separating them from their land and wealth,\u201d Shemshidin said.<\/p>\n She told RFA that she doubts Beijing\u2019s sincerity.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Chinese government\u2019s announcement abolishing the policy looks like a duplicitous act,\u201d she said. \u201cForcing Uyghur farmers to do this or that type of work is likely to continue in different forms.\u201d<\/p>\n The Guma county official told RFA that Uyghurs will still be required to work during floods \u201cunder the forced labor and charitable labor category.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf anybody fails to enforce the new policy, they will be held accountable,\u201d the official said, but he insisted that the hashar policy has changed.<\/p>\n \u201cThey made the policy change to make farmers’ burden lighter and increase their income,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Reported and translated by RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chinese authorities say they have outlawed the practice, but the region\u2019s Uyghurs still have to work for free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-3409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3409"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=3409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}