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Beijing: Uyghur and Tibetan groups in Australia say they fear China will use its new ethnic unity law to target their communities and they have urged the Albanese government to condemn the measures.
China has defended the law, which comes into effect on Wednesday and hands Beijing powers to target overseas actors who “undermine ethnic unity”, as legal and necessary to create a “shared” national identity among the country’s 55 ethnic minority groups.
This includes the country’s Tibetan and Uyghur groups, whose diaspora communities have campaigned against what they, and human rights groups, say is Beijing’s assimilationist agenda and the systematic cultural erasure of their identity and practices.
“These laws could be weaponised against Tibetans living in exile in Australia and Dharamsala, India,” said Zoe Bedford, executive officer of the Australia Tibet Council, which will campaign against the laws at an event in Parliament House in Canberra on Monday.
“This is not simply another policy initiative. It represents a direct threat to Tibetan identity, culture and existence.”
The law, which was passed by China’s parliament in March, lays out an extensive framework for promoting a shared Chinese identity. It mandates Mandarin Chinese as the official language of instruction in schools, and when there is a need to use minority languages in official communications, Mandarin must take primacy.
It requires each ethnic group to have the “correct perspectives” on the nation, history, ethnicity, culture, and religion and for parents to “educate and guide children to love the Chinese Communist Party”.
Under Article 63 of the law, organisations or individuals who commit acts that “undermine ethnic unity” or “create ethnic division” are to be “pursued for legal responsibility”.
James Leibold, a professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne who researches China’s ethnic policies, said the law codified the retreat under Chinese President Xi Jinping from old promises of regional ethnic autonomy for Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongols and other minorities.
Instead, minority identities “are tolerated only when they can be folded into a single party-defined Chinese national story,” he said.
Australian Uyghur Tangritagh Women’s Association president Ramila Chanisheff called on the Albanese government to more forcefully and publicly denounce the law and reassure communities of their rights to protest on Australian soil.
“We want [the Australian government] to speak up in the first instance to say this is not on,” Chanisheff said.
“We don’t have enough people speaking up as it is because of the fear of their family members back home disappearing or being reprimanded.”
In response to media inquiries, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade circulated a statement noting its concerns about the law and its “potential to curtail the rights and freedoms of individuals beyond China’s borders”.
“We have raised our concerns on the ethnic unity law directly with China and at the UN Human Rights Council,” a department spokesman said.
In April, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on the Chinese government to repeal the law, condemning its assimilationist impact on people from Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. It said it would lead to “severe consequences for EU-China relations”.
China’s Vice Justice Minister Hu Weilie last week accused Western media of having “distorted and misinterpreted” the overseas provision, which he said was a “normal legislative practice exercised by a sovereign state” and designed to counter “various unlawful acts from overseas”.
“Countries around the world all have the right to prevent separatist and destructive activities, and to maintain social solidarity and normal order, through domestic legislation,” he said.
Leibold said the immediate danger of the law was not limited to prosecution.
“It is the creation of a broader climate of intimidation, in which overseas scholars, journalists, activists and diaspora communities know that their speech may be monitored, labelled hostile and used against them or their networks,” he said.
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