Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) did not mention Uighurs in his two-hour report during the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 20th National Congress, which is not in line with the international attention his Uighur policy has received.
The European Parliament has adopted a resolution saying China’s treatment of people in Xinjiang, where the Uighurs live, amounts to “crimes against humanity and genocide.”
The US has also called China’s actions in Xinjiang a “genocide.”
Xi did not forget the Uighurs. He intentionally avoided mentioning the issue. It is impossible to justify genocide: If you try to cover blood, it would seep out. If it is seen, people would focus on it. The only way for a murderer to escape punishment is to hide the murder scene from the world.
When then-UN high commissioner for human rights Michelle Bachelet visited China in May, Beijing delayed her visit, changed the purpose of the visit from an independent investigation to an exchange of views and forced her not to release the long-awaited Uighur report until the final minutes of her tenure in August.
Another attempt to hide the Uighurs from the world was China’s efforts at the UN Human Rights Council to reject holding a debate on alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
This was an acknowledgment that if they discussed the Uighur situation, they knew they would lose.
Although it has been six years since the Uighur situation was revealed, it has been 70 years since it began. China’s policy of concealment — and its skills — have surely played a major role in hiding the truth.
In 1997, when then-US secretary of state Madeleine Albright first raised the Uighur issue at the UN, she began by saying: “There is a people called Uighur in China.”
Clearly, it needed to be explained that Uighurs existed.
In 2001, just a few days after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York, China announced that it was also a victim of terrorism and needed international assistance. This was the first time that China admitted to having a problem called “Uighur separatism,” claiming that it had suffered more than 200 terrorist attacks in the past 10 years.
The opportunity expected from the era after Sept. 11 might not have worked for China, so it closed the subject again.
Between 2008 and 2014, the majority of protests and incidents in Xinjiang were covered by Washington-based Radio Free Asia’s (RFA) Uighur service.
Most notable reporting was on the riots caused by ethnic conflicts on July 5, 2009. About 10,000 Uighurs went missing overnight, prompting Uighur economics professor Ilham Tohti to request the government to provide information on the missing persons.
However, no response was given and Tohti received a life sentence, partially because of the request.
When a series of terrorist attacks occurred in Paris on Nov. 13, 2015, China saw another opportunity to report on its victory over a two-month manhunt for “terrorists” who carried out an attack at a coal mine in Aksu, Xinjiang, on Sept. 18.
The report said that authorities used flamethrowers to flush the suspects out of a cave, burning 17 people to death. It did not mention that the death toll surpassed 50, and that four women and three children were killed in the cave.
In 2017, China secretly established a 21st-century concentration camp detaining more than 3 million people in Xinjiang.
It was not until independent researchers revealed the location of the camps through satellite images that China acknowledged their existence, but disguised them as vocational training centers.
In 2019, leaked Chinese government documents even revealed that Xi urged security forces to show “no mercy” to the Uighurs.
On the international stage, China’s silence on the Uighur situation is a falsehood, and contradictory statements are made when it is impossible to remain silent. Silence does not occur due to the power of the Uighurs and international pressure. It is the power of truth.
The truth does not leave its enemies in peace. When attacked, it glows, flashes and sometimes explodes and destroys its enemies. This is why Xi did not mention the Uighur genocide in his report. It is a sign that the Uighur abuses continue, and that Xi fears accountability.
It is inevitable that Xi would have to confess his crimes of today when he faces the punishment of history.
Kok Bayraq is a Uighur American.
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