dogu-turkistan-sempozyumu

The Struggle in East Turkistan and Non-Governmental Organizations / Atty Gulden SonmezTurkish non-governmental organizations in respective struggle.Civil society organizations in China and the problems encounteredThe Chinese constitution has assigned a chapter to human rights andfreedoms and has identified the rights of the individuals under this chapter. 3 TheChinese constitution also ensures and safeguards the right to establish associations.However, this provision of the constitution is restricted, like other provisions, bythe laws and practices in a manner that completely eliminates the right.This issue is also one of the primary problematic areas in which the Chinesepeople are exposed to intensive pressure. Moving from the socialist mentality andsystem, China has prioritized protecting the existence of the state by consideringcommunity rights to be more important than individual rights, and by perceivingany organization, regardless of its field as a threat to the existence of the state andto Communism, thus trying to put down such attempts in a decisive manner.The situation is much more serious for the people of East Turkistan. TheNational Regional Autonomy Law was enacted on May 31, 1984 and put intoforce on October 1, 1984. As a general law of the country, it is intended to ensureunity and solidarity in the country; the basic principles for the implementationof the law are socialism, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, loyaltyto the democratic dictatorship of the people and the Marxism-Leninism-MaoZedung ideology. 4 Like the constitution itself, the National Regional AutonomyLaw depends on the Chinese Communist Party for its implementation andsupervision. Due to the underlying central ideology, no idea can be expressed thatis not that of the Chinese Communist Party; regardless of the number of rightsand freedoms that seemingly exist in the country, the freedom of organizationhas not been provided with an environment in which it can survive. The ChineseCommunist Party is the supreme body and it defines the objectives and supervisesthe realization of such objectives for any organization or mechanism. 5 Lengthyreports of human right violations in China, reporting activities conducted overrecent years, have been prepared, particularly by international human rightsorganizations; these have reported on very unfavourable conditions and theannual reports prepared by the State Department of the USA has pushed Chinato make some changes. After facing some opposition, particularly in the UN and525