United States Ambassador Arthur B. Culvahouse meets Adelaide Uyghurs to send message to China
The US Ambassador has sent a powerful message to China by meeting Australian Uyghur leaders for the first time in Adelaide yesterday, condemning their oppression.
US Ambassador Arthur B. Culvahouse has sent a powerful message to China by meeting Australian Uyghur leaders for the first time in Adelaide yesterday and condemning their oppression by the communist regime.
In an exclusive interview with The Advertiser, Mr Culvahouse decried Chinese monitoring of Australian Uyghur leaders for protesting the alleged detention and indoctrination of about one million people in the far western Xinjiang region.
Mr Culvahouse said he met Adelaide leaders of the persecuted Muslim minority — Australia’s largest Uyghur community — to call out Chinese Government human rights abuses.
It was the first time Mr Culvahouse, a former White House counsel to President Ronald Reagan who started his appointment in March, had met with the Uyghur community in Australia.
“Sadly, it (Adelaide) is a place where leaders in the Uyghur community are brave enough to meet with the United States Ambassador and have that be public knowledge, which I think speaks volumes about the pressure that that community is under,” he said.
“I thought it was past time to meet with them face-to-face to express the support from the United States Government for the Uyghur community, and to better understand their particular concerns, the pressures they’re under.
“Not only by the Chinese Government in China, but also by the Chinese Government in Australia.” During The Advertiser interview, Mr Culvahouse also indicated scope for further co-operation between the Adelaide-based Australian Space Agency and NASA was likely to be discussed between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Scott Morrison during the latter’s US visit in September.
Mr Culvahouse also said there were continuing bilateral military talks about developing co-operation at weapons ranges like Woomera, in the state’s Far North, particularly in testing hypersonic technology. One of the Uyghur leaders with whom Mr Culvahouse met, Adam Turan, said monitoring of Adelaide’s 1500-strong community included phone calls from China’s embassy and consulate.
A UN committee last year heard that tens of thousands to upwards of one million Uyghurs were being held in the Xinjiang region, in what resembled a “massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy”.
It called for the immediate release of those detained on the “pretext of countering terrorism”.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month called China’s treatment of the Uyghur Muslim minority the “stain of the century” but the communist Government has repeatedly rejected any “so-called religious persecution” and accused anti-China forces of being behind the campaign.
Mr Culvahouse said several news reports indicated that, as Australian Uyghurs campaigning against the detention had become public and prominent, they and their families had been reported back to the Chinese Government.
“Their families have paid the penalty,” he said. “They’ve obviously been monitored.
“In our view, freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly means that foreign powers don’t follow you around.
“It’s a form of oppression that is inconsistent with the values that Australia and the United States both stand for.”
Mr Turan thanked the Ambassador for speaking out against China’s brutal policy and the dire situation in Xinjiang (East Turkestan). “We strongly believe that the US and Australia should lead the free world to condemn and press China to shut down the concentration camps where two-three million Uyghurs are held,” said Mr Turan, the East Turkestan Australian Association’s general secretary.