During his visit to East Turkistan (Xinjiang) on Aug. 25, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) described the situation in the region as “hard-won stability.” It makes one wonder what exactly the hardships were that this arrogant authoritarian was referring to.
The Chinese authorities have proudly and repeatedly claimed that violence in the region has dropped to zero since 2017. This was only because 3 million Uighurs, almost all of whom were of military age, have been imprisoned. Apparently, Xi might have considered the economic, technical and moral costs of China’s concentration camps.
However, considering the military and police forces that have been stationed in the Uighur region for a long time, it is not impossible for 100,000 troops to have thrown 3 million unarmed people into camps. It is enough to set aside law and conscience, and risk the adverse consequences that might occur.
Considering the natural resources of the region, the economic cost of establishing and operating the camps should not have been a problem.
Let us look at the critical challenges: This inhumane camp operation should have elicited a reaction from the Han Chinese living in the region, at least for the safety of their own future generations. However, Xi did not face a backlash or criticism from Han Chinese residents, except for when Yarkant County secretary Wang Yongzhi (王勇智) created “serious disciplinary violations” by releasing 7,000 detainees without Beijing’s permission
So then, at what point did Xi experience hardships? I think that in terms of said stability, he has encountered enormous difficulties from outside of China’s borders, in the international community, and not from within.
In the past five years, 22 governments and parliaments of the US and Europe have defined China’s Uighur policy as genocide and crimes against humanity. Xi has affixed this cursed judgement to his nation for the first time in Chinese history. To erase this stain, China then clashed with the US and European countries in many areas, and they argued and imposed punitive sanctions on each other.
Not wanting the issue of Uighur genocide to be brought to the UN table, China then influenced Third World countries to go along with it through the use of its economic and diplomatic power. Through the creation and mobilization of more than 900 non-governmental organizations from around the world — most of them fake — they demanded that the report on Xinjiang prepared by the UN last year not be published.
China changed the description of former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet’s Xinjiang investigation to that of a friendly visit, changing the wording of her statement from an expression of admiration of China’s economic development to one of admiration for its human rights situation. But this did not work either. At the last moment, as she was leaving her post, she published the official report on the situation in the region, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ Assessment of human rights concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China. Although the UN report does not use the term “genocide” outright, the explanation of the issue in the report leads the reader to the conclusion that it is indeed a genocide.
China’s efforts to cover up the Uighur genocide through Muslim countries have sometimes had unexpected results. Albanian Muslim researcher Olsi Yazichi, one of those included in the orchestrated Xinjiang visit, broke the game by saying, “My Chinese friends, what you are doing is not vocational training, it is torture” and shared his criticism with the world via YouTube. Former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan — a close partner to China — pulled back the curtains on Sino-Muslim cooperation by essentially saying that he believed China’s version of the Uighur issue and not the West’s, all because Pakistan needs China’s help. Such an admission is even more corrosive than the US’ criticism of the genocide.
The economic cost of covering up the Uighur genocide is impossible to calculate, but if we consider China’s budget of US$200,000 given to UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur Alena Douhan for helping China to whitewash its Uighur genocide, then perhaps we could get some sense of the total economic loss for this effort.
Yes, fighting against the truth is not easy. It is very difficult to maintain respect earned through lying.
As it so happens, Chinese officials are tired of making up lies and making others believe them, rather than report on economic losses.
Therefore, the true interpretation of “hard-won stability” is the measure of everything that has gone into maintaining it: wearing the mantle of genocide, tarnishing China’s glory and image and sometimes even tarnishing its pride. Having paid such a heavy price already, the country is forced to stick to its course, to see the genocide through to its conclusion.
Xi has called on his officials to “improve the mechanism to eliminate the threat from the main source,” to “continue the fight against terrorism and separatism in peaceful conditions,” to “continue the Sinicizition of Islam,” along with “forcing Uighurs to accept a Chinese identity,” the “relocation of Uighurs to other Chinese provinces and acceleration of resettlement of Han Chinese immigrants to Uighur areas” and “countering negative international opinion through a ‘Xinjiang Story’ campaign.”
All of these calls violate separate articles of the UN’s Genocide Convention. This is an order to continue the genocide regardless of what the world says. Xi’s reminder of “hard-won stability” is, in essence, the justification of his order to continue the Uighur genocide.
Kok Bayraq is a Uighur-American observer.
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