Beijing: China’s new Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law, which came into effect on July 1, is pushing the ethnic minorities to integrate with Chinese identity and mandating that parents guide their children to “love” the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The law also “bans acts that ‘undermine ethnic unity or create ethnic division’ among China’s 56 officially recognised ethnicities, which include a Han Chinese majority that makes up over 90 per cent of the country’s 1.4 billion people,” a CNN report detailed.
The law also says that the curriculum of students forges a strong sense of the community of the Chinese people.
“For years, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has pushed ethnic minority groups like Tibetans and Uyghurs to adopt an identity rooted in Chinese nationality and allegiance to the ruling Communist Party,” the CNN report mentioned..
In April, the United Nations human rights experts, through a letter, said the law “could have serious implications for the linguistic, cultural, and religious autonomy of ethnic communities, including Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Mongols.”
The experts also warned of the potential for “transnational repression.” The new law gives Beijing the right to target people outside of its borders who it believes violate its rules.
China’s Communist Party “faced allegations of widespread transnational repression. A 2022 report from human rights campaigner Safeguard Defenders said it had found evidence of more than 100 so-called overseas police stations across the globe to monitor, harass and in some cases repatriate Chinese citizens living in exile.”
Critics say this law will impact activists, research scholars and discussion of ethnic minority issues globally.
According to James Leibold, a Professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne focused on China’s ethnic policies, “Beijing is no longer treating ‘ethnic unity’ as a general political slogan or a matter of local propaganda work.”
“It is making the production of a single Chinese national identity a binding responsibility across schools, families, media, museums, cadres, budgets, technology platforms and security organs,” Leibold was quoted as saying by the CNN. He added that the message is clear, that “minority identity is acceptable only when it is subordinated to a party-defined Chinese identity.”
(IANS)
