Hello everyone! Libra’s 8 is back at it again to keep you posted on what has been happening since the last issue. I hope you enjoyed my section along with my classmates’ as well! Now for the September issue, I decided to cover two topics, the Muslim Uigher camps in China and the Belarusian protests.
By Libra’s 8
The Xinjiang Re-Education Camps
As many of you know thousands of innocent Muslims are being held in re-education camps in Xinjiang China. According to the governor of China's far-northwestern region of Xinjiang, he defends these camps by stating that there are very effective ways to decrease terrorism, but in reality, there is a whole totally different story happening. About 1.5 million inmates are in these camps as we speak and there are claims that state that there could be even more. Many are being killed and tortured. While being held prisoners in these camps, inmates are being forced to do the things that are against their religion such as drinking alcohol and eating beef and pork. They are being forced to do labor work and are brainwashed for absolutely no reason. They are being forced to work or how the Chinese Government calls it “re-educated” just because of their own personal beliefs. These people aren’t criminals, they aren’t murderers or threats to society, these are people who are suffering for having different beliefs. Families and lives are being torn apart and remember, just because it isn't happening here doesn't mean that it isn’t happening anywhere else.
In the present day, we complain about the Holocaust and how we let that event be an actual thing while it’s happening all over again. We are letting thousands of people that are innocent die and get mistreated instead of actually doing something about it, so if you can, please try to spread awareness about it.
Want to further your research? Read this article by The Guardian .
The Belarusian Protests
Now this topic is a little less talked about so I decided to cover it for my current events column. I feel like it should be talked about as well. The 2020 Belarusian protests are as the title states they are, protests and ongoing political demonstrations against the Belarusian Government and President Alexander Lukashenko. These protests have been going on for quite a while now, the reason? People calling for a fair count of votes. As most protests, the Belarusian ones started peacefully, but when the government ignored and didn’t listen to them, they started becoming more violent. Protests are known to be peaceful as they are likely to succeed, but when the government doesn’t listen, people don’t back down, and that is the case for Belarus. People want the longtime president to resign, they want him out. When it was stated that he won the election by 80% even though another candidate was running as well, people were furious.
The majority of the Belarusian population did not believe that to be the truthful result, this led to anger and frustration. This of course also didn't sit well with the police as many people got hurt during protesting. This is an example of abuse of power, citizens have to go through a mess because their own “leader” doesn’t listen to them.
Want to further your research? Read this article by The Guardian .