The Uyghur Situation in Xinjiang:
A Form of “Cultural Genocide”
Dr. Mozammel Haque
“We must talk about the crisis Xinjiang in
terms of possible “crimes against humanity” and – if not genocide, certainly a
form of “cultural genocide.” It involves the elimination of culture, and a
campaign of ‘Sinicisation’.” said Benedict Rogers, a member of the
advisory board of the International Coalition to End Organ Trafficking in China
(ETAC), and a trustee of the Phan Foundation and the Chin Human Rights
Foundation, at an event “Understanding the Uyghur Situation in Xinjiang” at the
Houses of Parliament.
Henry
Jackson Society organised the event “Understanding the Uyghur Situation in
Xinjiang” on 10th of January 2019, at the Houses of Parliament. Lord
Hannay of Chiswick hosted as well as chaired the discussion in which Benedict
Rogers, Rossie Blau, Dr. Enver Tohti and Rahima Mahmut discussed the Uyghur
situation in Xinjiang.
While
writing the report of the event, instead of the way the proceedings took place,
I would go from the basic facts of the Uyghur community in Xinjiang, then what
is happening with them in the region, what is their problems and then what the
UK government is doing and what the international community should or could do?
These are the questions I would like to deal with through the presentations and
lectures delivered by the learned speakers and natives of Xinjiang.
Rossie
Blau on Uyghur Community in Xinjiang
First
of all, let me speak first about the basic facts of Xinjiang. Rossie Blau, editor
of 1843, The Economist’s Lifestyle
and Culture magazine, gave some facts. She said, “Xinjiang – means new
frontier, new borderland began to fall under
control of what we now call China in the mid-18th Century [[Kashgar, big, mainly Uighur city in Western Xinjiang, is
far closer to Kabul and Islamabad than it is to Beijing]].
“This
region is mainly populated by ethnic Uyghurs, whose culture and Muslim faith
set them apart from much of the rest of China. Also Kazakhs and other ethnic
minorities. In 1949, when Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power, Han population of Xinjiang was 4%”
said Blau.
The population of Xinjiang was
22 million out of which Uyghur was 10 million, 45%; Han
population of Xinjiang was 4% but today Han are 42%. That huge
migration encouraged or at times forced by the Chinese Communist Party, said
Blau and added, “For decades the region has been
racked by a low-level insurgency by a small number of Uyghurs against growing
Han influence. Huge ramping up of repression in past decade in 2009
around 200 people died in ethnic clashes in Urumqi, the region’s capital.
Security has since been ramped up.”
What is happening?
Rossie
Blau who was based in Beijing from 2014-17 as China Correspondent for The Economist, reported from across the
country on everything from politics and foreign policy to society, culture and
ethnicity. She said:“Ordinary manifestations of Islamic faith criminalised,
such as *rules came into effect that banned “abnormal” beards; *women wearing
face veils or full-body coverings reported to police; *can’t give names that
“exaggerate religious fervour”; *leaked list of banned names includes Muhammad
and *under 18s can’t go to mosques or be taught the Koran at home.”
2) Huge Ramping of Security
She also mentioned about the
huge ramping of security. She said, “huge displays of paramilitary troops; *Extraordinary
level of surveillance – security cameras, extremely intrusive; *Increased spending on security hardware and personnel in
Xinjiang; *vehicles in parts of Xinjiang to install a satellite navigation system
so people “can be tracked wherever they go;” *residents have had to go to
health checks and reports of giant DNA basis. In recent months we’ve had
reports of up to 1 million Uyghurs, and some Kazakhs, being held in camps - some
go for the day; many go for months and some seem to go for years.”
What
is desired End Result?
China wants to make everyone like Han Chinese
Blau said, “What the Chinese
government wants is to turn Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang
into population who act like Han Chinese, speak Mandarin, and have very few
vestiges of any other culture or influence; Playing the long game – and this is
where an autocracy is so different from a democracy. Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) is a dynasty, not going anywhere any time soon. And so it sits and waits
this out, and then it will have pacified a population.”
She also mentioned, “Teach Uyghurs
in Mandarin even if that means they are less well educated; Remove any chance
to read the Koran or teach your children; Turn mosques into tourist attractions;
Mullahs into tour guides, as monks increasing are in temples in Inner Mongolia,
and Tibet; and Reduce links between Uyghurs and the outside world, just as
those in Inner Mongolia were effectively completely cut off from Mongolia, families
separated etc.”
Dr.
Enver Tohti
Dr. Enver Tohti is a human
rights activist and public speaker on the atrocities carried out against the
Uyghur. Tohti’s former role as a surgeon brought him in contact with the
horrifying crime of organ harvesting. He said, “Massive detention and arbitrary
killing are no longer a myth, but it is the fact now. The number of cases, the
number of detainees no longer has a meaning, because, one is more than enough.
With puzzled eyes closely looking at the CCP’s action one could not comprehend
it. One will question that did not the CCP’s thinktankers are educated? Did not
they know what they are doing has been tried by Hitler?”
To
understand it, Dr. Tohti decided to look back to their history, and there is
the answer. He said, “The Manchurians, they have made whole China, apart from
the language, look like Manchurians! They have dress like them. And here we are that Xinjiang is the place
that Sinisization has gone badly wrong! So they found that they can not bear
that the so called barbarians are still pretty much alive, because:
You
heart, my skin must be different! 非我族類，其心必異！”
“Therefore,
eliminating the barbarians is the ultimate duty of the CCP! So, I was puzzled,
but not surprised! They have realised that their action is under western
surveillance of satellites, so they come up the idea to remove, transfer prisoner
at nights, so your satellites cannot take pictures any more,” mentioned Dr.
Tohti and added, “The redistribution of the prisoners across the country has,
however, a hidden agenda, that is that in case of Chinese regime collapse that
the Uyghur who is believed to have power to rebel will not have enough manpower
to form a meaningful resistance.”
“An insider source said that the destinations of those
prisoners are the major organ transplant centres of China. This explains how
the CCP able to find an organ in as short as 4 hours. Just imagine a Chinese
fish restaurant, there is a water tank full of fish, and you can choose the one
you want,” mentioned Dr. Tohti.
In
this connection, Dr. Tohti reminded the background of the Uyghur community and
their nature. He said, “Sandwiched by the super powers during the history, and
as the last keeper of Nestorian Christianity, that the Uyghurs have always been
the victims of the power struggle in the region and had never thought to
conquer any other nation but always maintained peace with the neighbour.
Because there was peace in 1940s, when there were 5 million Uyghur and only
100,000 Han Chinese. Therefore, the truth should be told, and the
reconciliation has to be made.”
Rahima
Mahmut - An Eyewitness
Account
of what is happening
Rahima
Mahmut, a Uyghur singer born in Ghulja, in the north of what was Eastern
Turkestan, brought up in a large religious family; educated in Mandarin and
studied at the Dalian University of Technology from 1987 to 1992. She
participated in the famous 1989 Democracy movement. On
returning from the University she worked in the Petrochemical Industry in
Dushanzi (Maytagh in Uyghur), one of the largest Petrochemical plant in Eastern
Turkistan where she found only 10% of the workforce were from ethnic
minorities.
Rahima was speaking and telling her own account of what
she has seen during her student life and professional life. She said, “I
witnessed widespread discrimination against Uyghur people in every aspect of
their daily life, especially in the opportunities for promotion, and jobs. This
was a common phenomenon throughout Eastern Turkistan. On February the 5th
1997, people in my Home Town of Ghulja took to the streets protesting against
the governments discriminating policies against Uyghur people, demanding
religious and cultural freedom, and equality. As usual, the government crushed
the peaceful demonstrators with military force where hundreds were killed,
thousands were arrested which was followed by mass executions.”
Rahima also mentioned, “I was on my winter vacation
visiting my mother and family with my two-year-old son, I witnessed how the
military and police terrorised the whole city, searching homes and arresting
innocent people. It was heart-breaking to witness the helplessness and despair
felt by my people. Many of my relatives and family friends were arrested and
later sentenced to a long prison term.”
Rahima came to the UK in 2000 to study and have lived
here ever since. She said, “For the last 18 years, I was unable to return to
see my family and my beloved homeland because of my involvements in speaking
out against the Human Rights violations imposed on my people by the Chinese
government. And my last contact with my
brother was in January 2017 and I was told not to contact them anymore. Up till
today, I don’t know how they are, if they are safe or interned in re-education
camps. I have tried to find information indirectly, but it has not been
possible. Whoever I approach is terrified to get involved as the political environment
is so terrifying.”
Rahima also mentioned about mass detention. She said, "Not long after I spoke to my brother, news about the mass
detention of people and the placing them into so-called re-education camps
started to emerge. The gruesome details of how people were targeted and
criminalized in the claim of cracking down on religious extremism, which in
fact apply to all ordinary practicing Muslims.”
She also mentioned, “People were targeted because they
are related to the activists living abroad, or have travelled outside China, or
studied in foreign countries, or have relatives living in other countries, or
have been on a religious pilgrimage to Makkah without state authorisation, also
who display their faith in their appearance and clothing, and have been known
to listen to religious sermons in the past, or have been detained or served
prison sentence in the past.”
Rahima described the chilling and horrendous situation of
those possibly up to 3 million people who are held and detained in so-called
re-education camps or prisons. She said, “We believe that there are possibly up
to 3 million people are held in the camps. They have been detained in so-called
re-education camps or prison, their accounts about the torture is chilling and
horrendous. One person who was released only two month ago revealed that there
are people kept in detention for over a year before being moved to a so-called re-education
camp. He said that the place of detention was a nightmare. During his time of
detention of over three months, he was tortured daily, 60 people were crowded
into a 60 square meter cell.”
“When asked why he was arrested, he stated he didn’t
know, and he believed that because he is Uyghur,” Rahima said after
interviewing some people who were detained and added, “The horrific details
which he described affected me so deeply that I was unable to sleep for two
nights. What we are reading in the papers is only the tip of the iceberg, as
there are many more horrendous crimes against humanity taking place at this
very moment.”
Rahima also said, “This is just an insight to what is
happening to the people held in detention and camps, and people who are outside
of these establishment are not free of intimidation either, as they have no
freedom of speech, language, dress, eat, drink, and religion. The entire way of
Uyghur cultural heritage and tradition has been taken away from them, including
their funeral rights.”
Benedict
Rogers on
Human
Rights Crisis in Xinjiang
Benedict Rogers, one of the speakers,
is a British human rights activist and writer based in London. His work focuses
on Asia, specialising particularly in Burma, North Korea, China and
Indonesia, but has also covered the Maldives, East Timor and
Pakistan. He is the East Asia Team Leader at the international human
rights organization CSW. He is the
co-founder and deputy chairman of the Conservative Party’s human rights
commission, and authored its 2016 report on China, The Darkest Moment: The crackdown on human rights in
China 2013-2016, its report on forced organ harvesting in China
and its forthcoming report on China’s Confucius Institutes. He has written
three books which focus on Burma and co-authored two others on Christian human
rights obligations.
Mr.
Rogers provided an overview of the appalling human rights crisis in Xinjiang,
China. He said, “On Tuesday, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee was
told by a panel of China experts that “grave human rights violations” on a
“vast scale” were being perpetrated in the worst human rights crisis in China
since the era of Chairman Mao. Credible reports suggest that at least one
million, some estimate as many as three million, people are detained without
charge in political re-education camps in Xinjiang, for acts as basic as having
a Whatsapp function on their mobile phones, having relatives living abroad,
accessing religious materials online, having visited particular countries,
engaging in religious activities – or sometimes no reason is given at all. They
have no access to legal counsel, no mechanism for appeal, and the family are
not told where the detainee is held or when they will be released. Detainees in
these camps are held in dangerously unsanitary and overcrowded conditions,
where torture, beatings, sleep deprivation and solitary confinement are common.”
He
also mentioned, “In October 2018, CSW published a report based on interviews
with witnesses and family members of victims and publicly available material
including: government notices for recruitment for construction workers and
procurement for construction of the camps; Chinese state media commentary;
eyewitness testimony from former re-education camp employees, detainees and
visitors; academic research; international media and Google Maps images. Major
human rights organisations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch
and the Uyghur Human Rights Project have published detailed reports.”
What
was the UK’s response?
Mr.
Benedict Rogers mentioned about what has been the UK’s response so far, and
what more could it do? He said, “The Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has told
Parliament that the UK views the situation “with a lot of concern”, and he has
pledged to raise it “in all appropriate forums”. British diplomats visited
Xinjiang in August and they confirmed the report about the existence of
re-education camps as “broadly accurate”. The British ambassador to China
signed on to a letter by 15 western ambassadors, spearheaded by Canada, to Chen
Quanguo, Xinjiang’s Communist Party leader. The Foreign Secretary has raised it
with the Chinese Foreign Minister.”
Rogers
continued, “And in China’s Universal Periodic Review at the United Nations, the
UK issued a specific recommendation calling on China to implement the
recommendations of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination, and allow the UN to monitor the implementation. The Committee
itself has described Xinjiang as: “something that resembled a massive
internment camp shrouded in secrecy, a “no rights zone”, while members of the
Xinjiang Uyghur minority, along with others who were identified as Muslim, were
being treated as enemies of the State based on nothing more than their
ethno-religious identity.”
What more the UK should or could do?
Benedict Rogers welcome all of these steps.
But the question now is what more should or could the UK do? He said, “Firstly,
I believe the UK could be more public in its condemnation. The situation has
reached a level which merits public statements. Silence or perceived silence is
not acceptable in response to a crisis of this kind.”
He also said, “Secondly, I would urge the UK
to work with others in the international community to establish an independent,
international, impartial and comprehensive UN-led investigation and to work
towards the establishment of a mechanism for accountability.”
Thirdly, Rogers said, “at a domestic level,
the UK Home Office should ensure that no individual who would be at risk of
arbitrary detention and other abuses in Xinjiang is forcibly returned to China
from the UK.”
Benedict Rogers said, “I would also urge
members of both Houses of Parliament to seek a debate in both Houses on the
situation in Xinjiang. There have been parliamentary questions, oral and
written, but we believe it is now time for a full debate, in both Houses.”
Concluding
Remarks of Rogers
Rogers concluded his speech with three final
points and then the words of a survivor of the camps. He said, “First, I want
to highlight concerns around DNA testing of Uyghurs and others, which has been
reported recently, and the forcible transportation of Uyghurs from Xinjiang to
other parts of the country, including Heilongjiang. The concern here is
two-fold – first that the DNA testing could be used for biometric surveillance,
and/or that it could be used in connection with forced organ harvesting – an
abuse that is currently being investigated by the independent China Tribunal[1]
chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who prosecuted Slobodan Milosevic, and which
has issued an interim judgement concluding that this practice has been
committed “beyond doubt” on a significant scale.”
“Second, we must talk about the crisis
Xinjiang in terms of possible “crimes against humanity” and – if not genocide,
certainly a form of “cultural genocide”. It involves the elimination of
culture, and a campaign of ‘Sinicisation’.” said Rogers and added, “China’s
state media, as quoted by the New York Times, has stated that the goal in
Xinjiang is to “break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections
and break their origins”. As the Washington Post put it: “It’s hard to read
that as anything other than a declaration of genocidal intent.””
Rogers also said, “Finally, it is very
important to see this in the context of Xi Jinping’s wider crackdown on human
rights throughout China. While it is absolutely right to focus on Xinjiang
right now, the crisis there must be seen alongside the crackdown on Christians
– involving the destruction of crosses, closure of churches and imprisonment of
pastors – as well as the continuing repression in Tibet, the campaign against
Falun Gong, the pressure on freedom of expression, the crackdown on human
rights lawyers and the erosion of freedoms and autonomy in Hong Kong.”
Benedict Rogers closed his speech with the
words of Mihrigul Tursun, who told the United States Congress at a hearing last
year that:
“I
was taken to a cell, which was built underground with no windows. There was an
iron gate and the door opened through a computerized lock system. There was a
small hole in the ceiling for ventilation and we were never taken outside for
fresh air. There was a toilet bowl in the corner out in the open without toilet
papers. There were cameras on all four sides so the officials could see every
corner of the room, including the toilet area, and they could hear every noise
we make. There was one light that was always on.
“I
knew most of the women in my cell. They were my neighbors, young daughters of
my former teachers, and doctors, including a doctor, who had been educated in
the UK and treated me in the past. They were mostly well-educated professionals
such as teachers and doctors. There were around 60 people kept in a 430 square
feet cell so at nights, 10 to 15 women would stand up while the rest of us
would sleep on sideways so we could fit, and then we would rotate every 2
hours….
“We
had 7 days to memorize the rules of the concentration camp and 14 days to
memorize all the lines in a book that hails the Communist ideology. Those women
whose voice were weak or cannot sing the songs in Chinese, or remember the
specific rules of the camp were denied food or beaten up…
“They
forced us to take some unknown pills and drink some kind of white liquid. The
pill caused us to lose consciousness and reduced our cognition level. The white
liquid caused loss of menstruation in some women and extreme bleeding in others
and even death. I was also forced to take some unknown drugs. They checked my
mouth with their fingers to make sure I swallowed them. I felt less conscious
and lethargic, and lost appetite after taking these drugs.
“I
clearly remember the torture I experienced in the tiger chair the second time I
was incarcerated. I was taken to a special room with an electrical chair. It
was the interrogation room that had one light and one chair. There were belts
and whips hanging on the wall. I was placed in a high chair that clicked to
lock my arms and legs in place and tightened when they press a button. My head
was shaved beforehand for the maximum impact. The authorities put a helmet-like
thing on my head. Each time I was electrocuted, my whole body would shake
violently and I could feel the pain in my veins. I thought I would rather die
than go through this torture and begged them to kill me.”[2]
“The
time for action is long overdue,” Benedict Rogers concluded his speech after
quoting the long words of Mihrigul
Tursun and said the time for action is long overdue.
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