Into the Lyons Den

 He recently penned an extended essay on one of the thorniest, intractable minefields in journalism. It is hardly surprising, then, that John Lyons has ignited passions, debates and controversy. Ori Golan 

Even if you choose not to read this post, you should not say you did not know.

“My name is Mehray Mezensof. I am 27 years old. I’m an ethnic Uyghur but I was born and raised in Australia so I’m an Australian citizen by birth.” 

This was the opening testimony of one of the witnesses who took part in the Uyghur Tribunal hearing held at Church House Conference Centre in London, recently. The tribunal is attempting to determine a very simple question: is China carrying out a genocide against the Uyghur people? Mehray’s husband, Mirzat, is one of approximately 1.3 million Uyghurs living in China who have been rounded up for a miscellany of ‘crimes’. His was visiting Turkey during 2014.

Like hundreds of thousands other Uyghurs, he ended up in one of China’s notorious re-education camps where he endured a regime of humiliations, starvation, punishment and brainwashing. Mirzat was eventually released, after he had shown to be ‘re-educated’ and compliant. In May last year, he was re-detained, released and then arrested. In April of this year he was handed down a prison sentence of 25 years, for ‘separatist activities’.

Mehray has not heard from him since; he has vanished.

One witness after another, they recounted stories of extreme suffering, inhumane treatments and unimaginable horrors which included group rape, forced sterilisation, involuntary abortion and sadistic punishments. One woman was allocated the job of waiting outside the interrogation room, and then cleaning the women as they came out, after being savagely raped. The witnesses demonstrated incredibly bravery in giving these testimonies. Most of them had been threatened and harassed by China’s security services prior to the tribunal; their families back in China are now facing the consequences. Some have been arrested, others have disappeared. The tribunal, led by Sir Geoffrey Nice, is expected to reach a verdict in December this year.

But whatever the verdict, it is not legally binding and has no power to impose any punitive sanctions against individuals or states, since it is not government mandated. 

And this is the true tragedy of this tribunal. 

To date, no national or international body has shown a willingness to launch an evidence-based process to determine whether these allegations of genocide are proved. The UN, with its many delegated powers and judicial bodies, will not go there. Nor will the UK, the US or Australia, although these countries have ratified the Genocide Convention, which codified for the first time the crime of genocide under international law (Australia ratified it in July 1949).  Article I of the convention stipulates that the government has a duty to act if genocide is established to its satisfaction. But of course, if no judge is appointed, then these allegations cannot be established in a court. 

I am reminded of what a South African colleague once told me of his country. Many who lived there during the Apartheid era claim that they had no idea what the regime was doing at the time; “and it was true, because they chose not to know.” 

Meantime, hundreds of Uyghurs who have managed to escape the horrors of China and have sought refuge in other countries, are laying bare their testimonies, in all their gruesome details, to have them recorded and documented. These disempowered people are bravely speaking out, at enormous risk to themselves and their family, to tell the world, to warn the nations of the free world and to raise the alarm. They are the Jan Karski of our generation.* 

As our governments look away, not wanting to raise the ire of the big tyrant, Xi Jinping, the facts are inescapable: colossal crimes against humanity are perpetrated in our lifetime, within view and, so far, with impunity. What will our governments say in 80 years from now? That they did not see, did not hear and did not know? 

In setting up this tribunal, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who led the prosecution in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the international tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, has forced us all to see, hear and know. And all this through a legal process that is meticulously proper and undeniably fair. He and a panel of eminent jurists, are all working pro bono. They should be roundly lauded for this selfless act of humanity.

We should all be supporting this tribunal which is funded by public donations.  Looking the other way is an option. Ignoring these testimonies is an inalienable right. But claiming we didn't know is both untrue and immoral. 



* During World War 2, Jan Karski escaped Poland and gave first-hand testimony of extermination camps on Polish soil. His attempts to persuade world leaders, including US President Roosevelt and British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, to take action were unsuccessful; they did not believe the scale and scope of what he was describing.

Bedtime reading this is not.

Last Thursday, Amnesty International published a document titled China’s Mass Internment, Torture and Persecution of Muslims in Xinjiang.

It is a deeply disturbing document. The index itself, divided into chapters, gives a flavour of the reading ahead: Violence and repression; Erasure of ethnic identity; Arbitrary Detention; Interrogations; Types of Torture and other ill-treatment.

The report is a litany of spine-chilling crimes orchestrated by China’s ruler, Xi Jinping.

Since early 2017, massive numbers of men and women from predominantly Muslim ethnic groups have been detained in the Xinjiang province in Northwest China in what can only adequately be described as concentration camps. Some are held there on account of practising their Muslim faith. Many are interned for their relationships - real, perceived or alleged - with family, friends, or community members abroad. Others still have no idea what heinous crime they have committed. One person was detained for many months for the offense of downloading WhatsApp onto her mobile phone.

In these internment camps, detainees are subjected to the most gruesome physical and psychological abuse. They have no privacy; are monitored at all times, and their every move subject to restriction, including when they eat, sleep, and use the toilet. They are forbidden to speak their native language or talk freely with other detainees and are severely punished for the most innocuous misdemeanours. According to the report, they are kept in deplorable conditions where there is insufficient food, water, exercise, healthcare, sanitary and hygienic conditions, fresh air, or exposure to natural light.

The report draws on first-hand testimonies that Amnesty International gathered from former detainees of the internment camps, as well as from an analysis of satellite imagery and data. Needless to say, but I'll say it, China does not make it easy to come by these testimonies.

The accounts are stomach churning.

Former detainees describe the “tiger chair” – a steel chair with affixed leg irons and handcuffs that restrain the body, often in painful positions, to an extent that it is essentially renders the person immobile. One inmate recalled how, as punishment, a man was made to sit in a tiger chair in the middle of their cell for three days. His cellmates were made to watch him sit there and were expressly forbidden to help him. The man later died.

In some of these detention centres, detainees are made to sit on stools for 16 hours a day with their hands on their knees. One inmate had his feet shackled together for the first year he was in the camp.

Forced confessions, beating, torture, humiliations, interrogations and incessant propaganda lauding the Chinese Communist Party are the staple diet meted out against those China has declared an all-out war.

One former detainee described being forced to stand in a small, crowded cell with 50 other inmates all day. We slept side by side touching each other. “We don’t even put cows in that terrible condition…”

After breakfast we had to sit on our beds with our hands on our knees and a straight back. If we moved, they spoke to us through a loudspeaker [in the room] and said, ‘Don’t move.’ Then, around 11:30 or 12 they brought lunch. Then from 12:30 to 2 we could lie down [on our beds]. Then at 2pm they told us to maintain the seated position. We sat like that until dinner, but they sometimes said through the loudspeaker that we had five minutes to move, lie down, or urinate…

A man was made to sit in a tiger chair
 in the middle of their cell for three days.

On a decidedly personal level, as a grandchild of German Jews who fled Nazi Germany, I found most upsetting the description of what happened to detainees as they arrived at the camp:
Upon arrival at the camps, detainees were searched, their personal effects were confiscated, and they were made to remove certain items of clothing, including shoelaces, belts, buttons, and anything else that could be used as a weapon or as an implement with which to take their own life, just as is often done in prisons. Some women detainees had their hair cut off after arriving, and some men had their heads and beards shaved.

It is said that comparisons are odious. I say, they are necessary.

You do not have to be an expert on Sino-relations to realise that a terrible crime is being committed on a massive scale against a defenceless population who have no recourse to any legal assistance or protection. It is an appalling act of state-sanctioned terrorism that should revolt any decent human being. These acts also meet the definition of crimes against humanity under international law. And this is happening in 2021, in full glare of the world’s eyes.

And what are we, here in Australia, doing about it? In short, very little. As a member of the Jewish community, I contacted, back in November 2019, the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies. It is the representative roof-body of the NSW Jewish community. My question was simple. What is the official stand of the JBD on China’s mass arrests and construction of concentration camps, I asked. I received the following reply: It’s a federal matter and we are not buying in at this stage. That was the reply, word-for-word. [Since the author of this reply has now left the organisation, I shall grant him the privilege of anonymity.]

This attitude raises some very serious questions – not least ethical ones. What lessons have we learnt from our own history of persecution?

In the summer of 1938, as anti-Semitism was running riot across Germany and Jews were fleeing for their life, delegates from thirty-two countries gathered at the French resort of Evian to discuss how to help the refugees. It was a noble gesture, except that soon into the piece, the entire conference descended into a farce as delegates rose to the podium, one after the other, to offer reasons why their country was unable to help the Jewish refugees. Australia’s chief delegate at the conference, one Colonel White, declared: “as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one by encouraging any scheme of large-scale foreign migration”. The rest is history. Kristallnacht followed in November of that year.

It is incumbent upon all civilised nations to act; and not to be bystanders witnessing these appalling acts of barbarity perpetrated by China. We must call out China for its excessive human rights abuses and come to the aid of the Uighur minority in Xinjiang. To achieve this, our leaders, whether communal, state or federal, must commit to use all bilateral, multilateral, and regional platforms at their disposal to bring an end to these reprehensible crimes.

Five thoughts on the situation

1.The most fascinating periods in history were filled with tumult and upheaval - and art. Tales of treachery, greed and chaos provide compelling reading and fuels the imagination. So it is now, too. Songwriters, playwrights, artists and bored school kids are currently in forced confinement, but they are not in hibernation.

An Open Letter to Gladys Berejiklian- Premier of NSW

Dear Gladys,

We have not met, so here is a brief introduction: my name is Ori. I am a mathematics teacher at a public High School in NSW.

The Koala photo-op we will not remember.

Israel’s President, Reuven (Ruby) Rivlin, arrived last week for an official state visit. But his visit has been marked, or marred, by the on-going extradition dispute involving Malka Leifer. 

Where the Son don’t Shine

The French poet, Charles Baudelaire once remarked that that the biggest sickness is horror of the home.  

I cannot imagine what horrors Yair Netanyahu, Benyamin Netanyahu’s son, has endured, and neither, I don’t suppose, will I ever know. But it is patently clear that this young princeling, has not only had a life of privilege, but also of untold drama. Otherwise how can anyone explain his brutish behaviour?  

From Faith book to Facebook.

Ari Hershkowitz has already experienced a lot in life. A former member of Satmar, Brooklyn, he has endured sexual assault, substandard education, substance addiction and the loss of his faith. And yet he remains defiantly optimistic.

"Someone I had trusted had abused that trust and I had felt powerless.”

At 15, Dassi Erlich was repeatedly molested by Malka Leifer, the headmistress of the Adass community school in Melbourne. For years she remained silent. Now she is demanding justice for herself and the many other victims who don’t have a voice. But the wheels of justice, she is discovering, grind exceeding slowly.

"We need to stop the Silence".

When he reported that he had been sexually abused in the Chabad centre of Melbourne, Manny Waks discovered a culture of cover up, intimidation and ostracism. He has since fought for recognition, reform and redress. For himself and for the many other, anonymous, victims. He talks to Ori Golan.