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Uyghur Persecution

Xinjiang is the historical homeland of around 12 million Uyghurs.^[5] The Uyghur people have lived in the region for over a thousand years. Most of them are Muslim. Traditionally, they make up the ethnic majority in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. For decades, the Chinese government has been trying to change this in favor of ethnic Han-Chinese.^[6] This policy has turned more brutal over the last six years.^1234115103 Han-Chinese are largest ethnic group in China. They dominate culture and politics in China, as well as urban life in the capital of Xinjiang.^[8]

Journalists and academics have described China’s brutal crackdown on the Uyghur people as cultural genocide.^[9][10] The United Nations Human Rights Office assessed in their 2022 report that the actions of the Chinese government against the Uyghur people might even amount to "crimes against humanity".^1234312345 According to reports, Uyghur people are under near constant mass surveillance.^[11] The Chinese government has destroyed thousands of Uyghur Mosques, graveyards and shrines.^[12] In 2017, the Chinese authorities opened the first so-called ‘re-education’ camps.^[13] According to the United Nations, China held more than one million Uyghurs as prisoners in these internment camps at the height of its punishing campaign.^[14]12347 In the camps, guards force the imprisoned Uyghurs to drop all traditions and speak only Mandarin.^[15] Some Uyghurs have managed to escape from these camps by fleeing to neighboring Kazakhstan. They describe that camp guards frequently beat, rape, torture and forcibly sterilize people. They also force pregnant Uyghurs to have abortions.¹⁵⁵⁴³ Media outlets report that camp guards transport imprisoned Uyghur people to perform slave labor in factories all across China.^[19] Although the Chinese government has long denied the existence of these camps in Xinjiang, it now admits to it.^[20] The government calls them “Vocational Training Centers”.^[21] Allegedly, they exist to combat extremism, terrorism and separatism, the so-called “three evils” in the region.^[22] It is unclear how many people are currently held in the camps, but Human Rights Watch estimated in 2022 that nearly half a million Uyghurs and other minorities were still incarcerated in regional prisons²¹³⁹⁹

Sinopec, CNPC, PetroChina, CNOOC and Brightoil all produce or search for oil and gas close to Xinjiang internment camps.^[23] The companies provide almost no transparency about who is working at their oil and gas sites.^[24] The Chinese government prevents any independent research about whether and to what extent oil and gas companies are profiting from the repression of Uyghur people.^[25] This makes it impossible to know how many Uyghur people could be working in the country's oil and gas sector.

The oil and gas companies have an indirect but close connection to the Chinese government.^[26] The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC) is a ministry-level organization that is directly under the management of the Chinese government. It is the shareholder of the state-owned companies Sinopec, CNPC and CNOOC.^[27] Since the state owns CNPC, CNOOC and Sinopec, the companies have to implement the Chinese government's policy on the Uyghur population.^[28][29][30] It is clear that oil and gas companies active in Xinjiang are complicit in the system of mass abuse of Uyghur people by cooperating with state authorities.

Austrian company OMV and other European oil and gas players apparently consider Xinjiang the right place to invest in emission reduction projects to offset their own pollution. These projects supposedly compensate 400.000 tons of CO2 emissions by utilizing gas otherwise released directly into the atmosphere during oil extraction. Whether greening oil production is meaningful climate action is only one of many open questions surrounding the projects. Investigations by the German broadcaster ZDF have since revealed that several of the projects in Xinjiang might only exist on paper.^2140021401 A review by the German environmental agency found major legal and technical issues of the projects.²¹⁴⁰²

Silenced, but not Silent. The Chinese Environmental Movement

Environmental pollution from fossil fuels has caused growing anger in the Chinese population.^[31] Xinjiang already suffers from severe mercury pollution because of coal mining activities.¹⁵¹⁰⁵ Oil & gas extraction is sure to worsen the situation.¹⁵⁵⁴⁵ The poisonous air has a deadly effect on the people who live there. The World Health Organization estimates that 2 million people die every year in China due to air pollution.¹⁵¹⁰⁷ In 2015, the documentary 'Under the Dome' drew mass attention to the role of state-owned oil companies like Sinopec and PetroChina as drivers of poor air quality and heavy smog.^[35] It documented how those companies control China’s fuel standards and prevented emission reductions.^[36] The people interviewed called for an end of the energy monopoly of China’s state-owned conglomerates.^[37] They also demanded a reform of the oil and gas industry.^[38] However, the Chinese government quickly blocked the documentary after it received 126 million views in China alone.^[39][40] This ban prevented the mass public interest in the documentary from turning into a protest movement.

Before Xi Jinping came into power, the country had a rich history of environmental protest movements. From the 1990s to 2014, environmental NGOs mobilized many people for their causes.^[41] A newly emerging litigation movement and flourishing investigative journalism allowed NGOs to spread their messages to a wider public.^[42] The groups organized numerous relatively successful campaigns in 2007 and the years that followed.^[43] These actions mostly focused on oil and gas and chemical plants. The people stood up against those fossil fuel companies that were destroying the environment in Xinjiang, for instance, as well as in Inner Mongolia and Tibet.^[44][45][46] 

Since Xi Jinping came to power, NGOs within China have considerably less possibilities.^[48] Today, Chinese groups operate in a hostile political and social environment.¹⁵⁵⁴⁷ Many formerly active NGOs and activists must carefully consider whether to speak out against social harm and environmental degradation. They fear state reprisal and arrest. Without these NGOs and activists, the government’s human rights abuses against minorities and dissidents, to which the oil and gas companies contribute, go unchecked. Still, numerous groups outside China are fighting the oppression of Uyghurs and pressuring companies to end their activities in the region.^2140321404