China's surveillance of Uighurs' relatives abroad exposed in attempt to gag Sweden settler

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), led by Xi Jinping continues to repress and exploit the Uyghur Muslims in the country, it has gone a step ahead and has devised a new social media surveillance system to keep a tab on the people of the ethnic minorities staying overseas.  

'Stop your daughter from tweeting': Chinese officials

Concerned about international opinion, the CCP has started to monitor social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and WeChat, according to a CNN report. In a bizarre turn of events, Nyrola Elima, an Uyghur settled in Sweden, faced the repressive action by the Chinese officials. 

In September 2020, one of her relatives Mayila Yakufu was freed from a Chinese internment camp based in Yining Detention Center and she contacted Yakufu through a video call. "I didn't recognize her at the very beginning, because she looked so pale. She looked so weak and she had short hair," said Elima.

"She was terrified, she didn't dare to speak too much with me," CNN reported. Elima (Nyrola) quickly passed on the news to Yakufu's parents and sister who live in Australia. As per the officials, Yakufu's apparent crime was transferring savings to her parents in Australia, to help them buy a house. 

But her freedom was short-lived as a day after, Chinese officials took her away again, this time to Yining People's Hospital in western Xinjiang. They said the authorities didn't give them a medical reason for her admission to the hospital, but they did pass a message to her aunt and uncle: 'stop your daughter, Nyrola, from tweeting,' according to the report. 

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A day after Elima's interview with CNN in December, the family got more bad news. They were told via a phone call from the authorities that Mayila Yakufu had been taken from the hospital to the detention centre in late November. The US State Department estimates that since 2017, up to two million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minorities could have passed through the camp system, which China calls vocational training centres designed to fight extremism.

China has consistently denied allegations of forced labour and other claims of human rights abuses in the area, which is home to about 11 million Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority that speak a language closely related to Turkish and have their own distinct culture. Earlier this month, the US blocked cotton imports from Xinjiang over forced labour concerns.

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(With ANI inputs)