The Uyghurs have now become a strategic issue due to the Chinese persecution on one hand and an intense Western propaganda-focus on it on the other hand. The Uyghur people are a Turkic ethnic group culturally linked to Central and East Asia – a vast majority of whom later settled in the Xinjiang region of northwest China. However, some Uyghur people live in some other countries, too. The Uyghur issue is both a genuine concern and a propaganda campaign. The world has reasons to be concerned since it has been witnessing flagrant violations of human rights of the Uyghurs by the People’s Republic China for a long period of time. At the same time, it is also a propaganda issue, because those who are now vocal on the Chinese atrocities on its Muslim population are themselves greatly responsible for atrocities to and miseries of Muslims all over the world.
The number of the Muslim population in China cannot be ascertained. The estimate varies from 10 million to 40 million. But persecution is more apparent in the Uyghur region than in other places. It is due mainly to two factors. One factor is the size of the population and the other is the very distinct Uyghur ethnic identity. It is estimated that there are around 15 million Uyghur Muslims who constitute approximately one third of the total Muslim population in China. The main headache for Beijing is that Uyghur people are very much proud of their ethnicity and past history.
They were once independent in what was also known as East Turkistan. The population of its neighboring countries such as Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kirgizstan are predominantly Muslims. The Uyghur people have cultural, linguistic and religious proximity with them. China is afraid that Uyghur Muslims might try to reestablish their independence and join with them as a similar nation. They are particularly afraid of young Uyghurs. Hence, they have established some so-called rehabilitation centers which are allegedly used as concentration camps. The young people who have been placed in these correction centers or concentration camps are blamed for terrorism and separatism.
There are some genuine grounds for resentment among the Chinese Uyghurs against Beijing authorities which has grown over a long period of time. 75 years ago, around 90 percent of the people of Xinjiang were Uyghur Muslims. Now it has come down to less than 50%. The Beijing government has brought about this demographic change calculatedly. To make it possible, the “Han” Chinese were brought from other parts of China and were rehabilitated in Xinjiang. The decades-long crackdown on Uyghurs started on a large scale in 2009 when they started protesting against the state-incentivized Han-Chinese migration to Xinjiang to change the demographic character of this region. The central government allegedly adopted a policy of discrimination against the Uyghur. It resulted in widespread protests and subsequent rioting between the two ethnic groups.
Xinjiang´s importance to Beijing is enormous. It is a critical juncture of its silk route initiative. Islam came to China through this route. Xinjiang is home to one of China’s largest coal and natural gas reserves. It is also a hub of its textile and apparel industry. Besides, it cannot lose the Uyghurs, because it will give unwanted signals to other freedom-intent ethnic minority groups.
China is a closed country. It is difficult to verify the number of detainees of dozens of the so-called vocational training centers. According to Western media and think tanks, most of which exaggerate Chinese misdeeds, up to 2 million Uyghurs and other Muslims have been detained since April 2017.
It is alleged that the detainees are forced to pledge loyalty to the CCP, officially an atheist party and renounce religion. They are educated to praise Communism and encouraged to learn Mandarin. Xinjiang has been turned into a surveillance region. Detainees are being sent to factories throughout China and being used as forced labors. It is also alleged that the Uyghurs’ families are required to keep members of the communist party at their homes for a few days a month. Uyghurs women become subject to sterilizations so that their population does not increase. The Chinese authorities refute all these allegations. They assert that in the correction centers are where derailed young Uyghurs are shown the correct paths and given guidelines against extremism and that apparently, they are used as vocational training centers. The young Uyghurs are provided with employment that alleviates poverty and standard family planning policies are followed in Xinjiang, too. This is the Chinese version of the story. Many political observers believe that the truth lies in in-between these two versions of the two sides.
It is the US and its allies that are most vocal against Chinese atrocities on the Uyghur people. But their own treatment of Muslims has made their stand very much hypocritical. The Muslim world deserves a genuine apology from them for the atrocities they carried out during the last few centuries on them all over the world. One can forget about the past. But what is happening now? Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya have been destroyed and devastated by the US-led Western axis. Although in Syria, the blame also goes to Russia.
Millions of people have been killed or displaced and wealth worth trillions of dollars have been destroyed. According to Opinion Research Business (ORB), an independent British agency, more than 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed as a result of the Iraq War, which was thrust upon it by the Bush-Blair clique on false accusations of Weapon of Mass Destruction. Iraq was ruined. Its economy and infrastructure were devastated. Even the financial loss of the US was high. According to the Watson Institute of International Studies, the total financial cost of the US was approximately 1.7 trillion dollars up to 2013. The net gainer of the Iraq invasion was the US military complex. It is always this industry that profits from wars.
The US has blacklisted and penalized many high foreign officials supposedly connected to criminal activities. But the associates of the West have not been blacklisted by them for their alleged crimes. Saudi Arabia or other Gulf countries have not been ruined in that way. However, the US is using them to sell arms worth billions of dollars. In Egypt, there is practically no democracy. But the West does not care, because Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is tied to them. They are critical of Xi Jinping but not of the rulers of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries.
The Chinese atrocities on Uyghurs cannot be overlooked. Beijing must bear the consequences. But what has been happening in Palestine for the last 75 years? The atrocities and repression on Palestinians are much more intensive and extensive than the atrocities on the Uyghur people. The Palestinians have been driven out of their homes. As per UN reports, around 5.1 million Palestinians are living under UNRAW supervision and around a hundred thousand Palestinian refugees are getting UNHCR shelters in neighboring countries. Israel rejects the right of the Palestinian refugees to come back to their homes which has become a major obstacle for a two-state solution to the problem. Israel is continuously making illegal settlements in the occupied areas. There are specific UN resolutions on the Israel-Palestine issue. But Israel does not care about UN resolutions. The US not only codons but at times actively patronizes the illegal activities of Israel. A viable Palestinian state could have been established decades ago if behind-the-scene patrons of Tel Aviv had lent their full support to such initiatives. Israel is offering a Bantustan-like state to the Palestinians which in reality will be a dependent state. Israel can carry out apartheid policies towards the Palestinians only with the tacit support of its patrons.
A certain quarter in the West is now engaged in a campaign of boycotting the import of cotton produced in Xinjiang with the plea that Uyghur people are being exploited there and that they are ill-paid and ill-treated. But they will not suggest imposing bans on Egyptian cotton though there is no democracy in Egypt. They are not against import from territories occupied by Israel, either. This quarter is vocal against the Chinese repression on Uyghurs but almost silent about the Indian repression on the Kashmiri people. According to media reports, Indian-occupied Kashmir has become almost a concentration camp.
The Western double standard will not only continue, rather they will intensify their campaign against the Chinese atrocities on the Uyghurs and at the same time, they will ignore repression and atrocities on Muslims in other areas carried out by their allies. It is their deliberate policy. The so-called think tanks loyal to them will follow their instructions. Ironically, some individuals and organizations will play in their hands without understanding the whole picture. The US has adopted the policy of containing China by every means. The reason is obvious. It is the duty of the all conscious people, particularly the independent civil societies of different countries, to be vocal against all atrocities and oppressions carried out by any country against any group of people based on their ethnicity or political and other beliefs.
*The writer is a senior Bangladeshi journalist now living in Sweden.
June 1, 2021
The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of Aequitas Review.
