Depressing fate of women of ethnic and religious minorities in the forefront - GfbV begins a China Olympia campaign on the internet

International Women’s Day is on 8th March and the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) begins its China Olympia campaign on the internet with the depressing fate of women from ethnic and religious minorities in China. "In the run-up to the Olympic Games Peking has noticeably stepped up its repression” said the human rights organisation on Friday and called on the International Olympic Committee not to close its eyes to the severe breaches of human rights. Hardly a week goes by without women who are Christians, Falun-Gong supporters, Tibetans, Uighurs or Mongolians on account of their faith or ethnic origin being arrested, mishandled or sent to work camps.

On the new GfbV internet page every internet user can take part in the campaign, send appeals for the release of Christian women in custody or protest against the torturing of Tibetan nuns or the sending of young Uighur women from the province of Xinjiang (in Uighur: East Turkistan) to forced labour in factories far away from their homes.

As examples of how much the persecution of believing Christians who do not belong to the two official state-controlled churches has increased in the time running up to the Olympic Games the GfbV has registered several cases of brutal arrests, mishandling and imprisonment. 39 women were arrested on 12th February 2008 in the province of Shandong at a bible seminar of a not officially recognized Protestant church. There is still no indication as to where they are being held. Ten days earlier in the province of Yunnan the 55-year old Christian Meng Xiu Lan and the 53-year old Zhou Cheng Xiu were arrested because they had distributed Christmas cards. At the police-station they were stripped naked and later returned home in handcuffs. There bibles, song books and Christian calendars were confiscated. The 54-year old Liang Guihua was severely hurt on 23rd January 2008 during mishandling at police headquarters in the Xishan district of the province of Yunnan. The Christian woman was hurled against the wall by policemen and lost consciousness. Bibles were confiscated from her house.

The GfbV also has dramatic information on the fate of 8000 Uighur women aged between 16 and 25 years who have been transported from East Turkistan / Xinjiang in the west of the country to the far east of China. There they have to work as factory labourers under inhuman conditions. In order to silence the human rights activist Rebiya Kadeer her sons were sentenced to long prison sentences and in Inner Mongolia also the principle of kin liability is used against regime critics. The wife of the publisher Hada is constantly being intimidated and arrested because she publicly calls for her husband to be released from his 15 year prison sentence. In Tibet Buddhist nuns are still being tortured in the prisons. Female prisoners are often the victims of sexual violence. Falun-Gong followers in particular are the victims of torture and arbitrary arrest.