Address outside the Norwegian government’s representation quarters in Oslo
We are here to voice our protests to the escalating crackdown on basic human rights in China and in the occupied territories.
My name is Jessica Chiu, I’m the leader of the Hong Kong Committee in Norway, and I’m giving this address also on behalf of the Norwegian Uyghur Committee and the Norwegian Tibet Committee.
We are very grateful to each and everyone of you who are joining us here today.
The absolute disregard for basic human rights by the Chinese dictatorship is of course nothing new. It breaks my heart to witness how the tyrants have undertaken relentless persecution by brutal means, and label their crime as “socialism with Chinese characteristics”.
From Tibet, religious leaders such as the Dalai Lama have been forced into exile. In 1995 the Panchen Lama and his family were kidnapped by the Chinese authorities. There have been no signs of them after this.
The Chinese communist party seeks to bolster its absolute power at the expense of any dissent; ethnic, cultural or political. Controlling religious communities by elimination of religious freedom thus becomes essential. In its never-ending quench for power, the communist party seeks to force the Panchen Lama in captivity to appoint a fraudulent Dalai Lama, in an attempt to end Tibetan Buddhism.
Today, close to one million Tibetan children have been removed from their families and put in colonial-style boarding schools. They are denied access to their cultural roots, forced to speak Mandarin only, and brain-washed with the twisted curriculum written by their oppressors. The criminal government in Beijing is trying to tear apart hundreds of thousands of Tibetan families.
The all-out assault on religion and ethnicities other than the majority Han Chinese is also bringing devastation to the muslim people of East-Turkistan. Up to three million Uyghurs, Kazaks and others have been put in concentration camps. There, they are exposed to the brain-washing propaganda from modern day colonialism.
On every street corner, surveillance equipment such as face and ethnicity-recognition enabled cameras are installed. Off the streets, inside the walls of their homes, Uyghurs can also be deprived of all privacy. Beijing has sent an army of more than one million party cadres, so-called “relatives”, to forcibly stay inside Uyghur homes for days and weeks. They monitor the Uyghur families, and report any deviations from the Chinese norm. One cannot help but fear what is taking place inside the Uyghur homes, away from the surveillance cameras.
Uyghurs are exploited as slave-like labourers in the cotton fields and in the poly-silicon mining industry. Muslim women are victims of forced sterilisation. In December 2021, with an abundance of evidence, a tribunal with a panel of well-respected judges concluded that the forced sterilisation constitutes genocide as defined by the U.N. genocide convention.
Growing up in Hong Kong, I enjoyed the same freedoms as now, living in Norway. Hong Kong used to be an oasis where basic human rights for all were taken for granted. Indeed, this was Beijing’s repeated promise in the Sino-British joint declaration from 1984, and in the Basic Law which came into effect in 1997.
But Hongkongers’ yearning for democracy, a promise also given in the Basic Law, was intolerable to Xi Jinping and his puppet quislings in the government of Hong Kong. When Beijing imposed its draconian security law three years ago, a rule of fear was introduced in my home city.
Independent courts used to be a hallmark of Hong Kong society. But with the security law, the oppressors also took full control of the judiciary. The legal system in Hong Kong now lies in tatters.
As a result, a new class of prisoners are now put behind bars, for nothing but exercising their basic human rights: they are the prisoners of conscience. Alarmingly, during the past three years, the number of new political prisoners per capita is only rivalled by Myanmar and Belarus.
Recently, Taiwan has come under ever more serious threats from Beijing. A blockade aimed at strangeling the 24 million free Taiwanese, or a military attack on Taiwan, is becoming more likely.
Taiwan is Beijing’s worst nightmare: The island state is now recognized as Asia’s leading democracy. For decades, the communist party propaganda held that Chinese culture and history cannot be aligned with a rule of democracy. Taiwan’s breath-taking success, leading the world in containing the pandemic in its early phase, and being the home of the most advanced tech industry in the world, has exposed Beijing’s lies. There is no reason why the people of China cannot enjoy freedom, democracy and basic human rights. The only factor that holds the Chinese people back is the communist party’s totalitarian repression.
Taiwan’s population is larger than the population of the Scandinavian countries combined. In a tradition of international solidarity we should do everything we can to safeguard freedom in Taiwan. Standing with Taiwan, we also stand with the aspirations of our friends in Tibet, in East-Turkistan, in Hong Kong, and indeed also in mainland China.
Finally, some words for foreign secretary Huitfeldt. In her address to the Labour party congress one week ago, she said that we cannot accept a world where might is right, and large countries act as they please. That the strong men in authoritarian countries who are scared of freedom of speech and freedom of expression, in reality, are weak.
Yet she refuses to walk back the cringe-worthy statement; that Norway commends the historic and unparalleled development under totalitarian rule in China. The rhetoric from her address crashes spectacularly with her complete lack of courage to stand up to the most dangerous superpower the world has seen since world war 2.
We are all waiting for the day when the oppressors such as foreign secretary Qin have been removed from power and are held to account for their crimes against humanity.