China’s Zero Covid policy caused 44 Uyghurs to burn in apartment fire - a message from Justice for All

 

Justice For All and the Save Uighur team extend their heartfelt condolences to the 44 Uyghur brothers and sisters who died in the fire on November 24, 2022. On November 25th, Chinese officials in Urumqi, the capital city of occupied East Turkistan, issued an official statement on an apartment fire that happened on Thursday, November 24th, 2022. They claimed that ten people died in the fire, mostly because some occupants failed to engage in effective actions and there were too many cars parked at the apartment complex, preventing fire trucks from driving close and swiftly to the burning units.  However, the Uyghur diaspora inundated various social media platforms, including as Facebook, with posts revealing leaked videos and audios by fire victims, which give further, in fact, factual details about this tragedy. According to the information gained from those videos and audios, the death toll reached 44 people, with the youngest being a 9-month-old infant. The 44 victims that have been identified are all of Uyghur ethnicity. They were pleading for assistance in opening the door. In one of the audios, a mother described losing two of her four children in the corridor while attempting to reach the fire escape door with her children. She lost two children in the corridor because the smoke made it too dark. After failing to unlock the fire escape door and re-entering their flat, she and her two other children died in their home.  The fire door must always be kept open to allow for escape and firemen shall provide a timely help. However, in the case of the Urumqi fire, the fire door of the unit was locked. This is because to China's "Zero Covid" policy, which has confined Uyghurs in occupied East Turkistan to their homes since early August 2022. In Urumqi, and rest part of the occupied East Turkistan, due to zero covid policy, some apartments door as well as the unit doors are blocked from the outside. In addition, the flat was surrounded by fence. As a result, the firetrucks were unable to approach the building to extinguish the fire while the fire lasted for three hours.  Not to mention a lack of food and medical treatment, the Zero Covid policy has resulted in Uyghur people dying from starvation and now from fire without timely assistance.  This fire triggered public outcry in Urumqi and other places in East Turkistan, with the majority of demonstrators being of Chinese origin. The outcry quickly expanded beyond occupied East Turkistan and became a nationwide protest in China, notably in big cities like as Shanghai. Protesters shouted to end the Covid lockdown, fearing they would meet the same fate as the 44 Uyghurs. They also want Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party to resign. 44 Uyghur lives are sacrificed to highlight the severe consequences of the impractical, harsh Zero Covid policy. This is part of the price Uyghurs have paid for the rest of the world to wake up to the Chinese communist party's authoritarian, self-centered harm to the globe in a variety of ways, including forced organ harvesting, forced labor, cyber security, human rights violations, and genocide. Donate To Save Uighur

Modi’s and his Gujarat administration’s involvement in the Gujarat 2002 pogroms against Muslims In a direct admission of Modi’s and his Gujarat administration’s involvement in the Gujarat 2002 pogroms against Muslims, the current Home Minister of India, Amit Shah declared at a political rally that Modi had taught a lesson to “anti-social elements”. Modi’s involvement has been known for a while, thanks to the investigative work of Rana Ayyub and others. In 2002, there were mass killings of Muslims by the majority community aligned with Modi, who was Chief Minister of the state at the time. Mr. Shah often uses nebulous terms but in this case the meaning was clear as to who the elements he refers to were. OUR WORK Our outreach and collaboration with our Sikh brothers & sisters was manifested in a successful seminar “1984: Three days of carnage” held on Nov. 27 2022. You can watch the seminar here. While we have collaborated closely with the Sikh community, we hope these educational seminars can create a better connection between Muslims and Sikh beyond the Human Rights and advocacy level. Donate To Save India Campaign