Suppression or Preservation: Human Right Issues in Xinjiang

Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (Day 1)

The SOCHUM committee in TransMUN 2019 officially started on the morning of July 24th, 2019. This pageant involved more than 40 delegations, representing countries around the world, such as China, who had firmly stated the imperative of the current policies implemented to effectively control Xinjiang; Switzerland, who had condemned China’s behaviors for despising humanity, and Indonesia, who had been prone to support China conditionally, to collaborate and further discuss for solutions to the human right issues in Xinjiang.

The first session started accompanying with numerous buzzer noise and malfunctions of microphones. These must gave all the delegates an unexpected but unforgettable memory. Fortunately, with the technical problems of facilities gradually being solved one by one, the ambience of the committee also eased. Delegates racked their brains to come up with various methods, attempting to convince their opponents, and at the same time patiently defending their stances, making sure that all of their standpoints were out of any possible contradictory.

Next, two opposite viewpoints, with a leading delegate and several participants, emerged-- the bloc of the USA and the bloc of China. The former asserted that regarding the issue of human rights in Xinjiang, they opposed to the policies Chinese government had carried out as well as their perspective of viewing Muslims in that area as separatism, extremism, and terrorism, for these not only violated worldwide ethical concepts but also seemed more likely to be an excuse for conducting sinicization—a process whereby non-Chinese societies come under the influence of Chinese culture, language, societal norms, and ethnic identity. Furthermore, they adopted several suggestions in order to ameliorate the current situation, including establishing investigating groups to manage controversies, setting up a more comprehensive agency to deal with problems regarding Vocational Training Center, appealing to the awareness of laws in United Nations, and so on. Nevertheless, the latter seemed to stand firm and coherently to their previous position and successfully appealed plenty of delegations to join their bloc by brilliant diplomacy finesses.

Nevertheless, even until the end of the second session, the committee still seemed to be chaotic. Aside from the two major blocs mentioned above, there were a lot of delegations, approximately more than one third, that stood neutral to the debating issue, and some had be fluctuating from one bloc to the other. “We just withdrew from the bloc of China”, according to the delegation of Malaysia, “For there are still some stances unclear yet.” The delegation of Russian Federation also indicated, “We will not join either China or the USA bloc until the formations are evident.”

With more and more discussions proposed during unmoderated caucuses, and the approaching deadline of Working Papers, the third bloc, led by the delegation of Malaysia and countries with mutual standpoints, was formed. It aimed to proportionally support the stances brought up by both the bloc of China and the USA, stating for a more neutral position.

The marvelous debates had been temporarily paused after the suspension of session three. In the sessions tomorrow, each working paper will be thoroughly discussed, and delegates will start to work on their draft resolutions. More information will be provided tomorrow.