A sickening video was recently posted to social media allegedly showing two Chinese police officers beating a handcuffed Uyghur Muslim man.
The video was posted on Twitter and Facebook by the online project Documenting Oppression Against Muslims (DOAM), which documents violence against Muslims and incidents of Islamophobia.
(Warning: The following video depicts graphic violence):
The short video shows a man, reportedly a Uyghur Muslim according to DOAM, being pulled out of a Chinese police sedan and kicked in his stomach and back while his hands are handcuffed behind his back. Towards the end of video, drops of blood appear to be dripping out of the man’s mouth as he struggles to sit up.
While not much information accompanies the video, some key details can be drawn from the footage.
The car that the man is taken out of appears to be a Citroen C4, one of the many cars used by Chinese law enforcement.
Yellow and blue decals visible on the vehicle indicate that it is more than likely it is a Chinese law enforcement vehicle.
Uyghur Muslims, a heavily persecuted Turkic minority, primarily live in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The minority has in recent times been subjected to a number of human rights violations by the Chinese government, according to Human Rights Watch.
In the video, the vehicle license plate appears to read “F 1573,” where the license plate character “F” may indicate that, assuming this man was arrested in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, the police are specifically located in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture.
While information on the reason for this man’s arrest is not currently available, police brutality upon an unarmed and defenseless suspect is widely considered inhumane.
If the speculation on the video holds true in the context of Uyghur discrimination, that makes this a rare instance that footage of extreme abuse against Uyghur Muslims by Chinese authorities.
