I wrote recently about the Indian Government’s anti-Muslim policies and their slow-creep towards what all the warning signs are telling us is an impending genocide. I have been accused – particularly by readers across Pakistan’s Eastern border – of focusing on India’s crimes, while studiously ignoring what is happening on our North-western border with China.
Just for the record, I don’t deny that I have focused on India’s record of anti-Muslim policies and atrocities. What is happening to Muslims in India is a rapidly unfolding tragedy that impacts millions of innocent people. The anti-Muslim rhetoric and violence across India are a stain on the world’s collective consciousness, not least because it is happening on our watch at a period in history when everyone is more aware of what is happening in even the farthest-flung corners of the world.
I do, however, wholeheartedly deny that I am indifferent to the plight of other victims of anti-Muslim violence (or, for that matter, violence against people of any faith or none). We should, as human beings, always have the courage to speak out against all atrocities, whether they are committed in India or whether they happen in China where, for a long-time, human rights groups have been collecting compelling evidence of the government’s systematic ethnic cleansing of Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region.
Shameful Indifference
In the past, I have used this column to speak out against the shameful indifference of the world’s Muslim leaders who sit silently by as fellow Muslims die. Worse, in some cases, they, themselves, are responsible for these deaths – look at Yemen and Darfur – or they honor and laud those anti-Muslim leaders who have Muslim blood on their hands. Look at how Narendra Modi is feted by Muslim leaders throughout the world.
To its credit, Pakistan is one of the few countries that speak out against what the BJP is doing. But this begs the question: why, when we have been so vocal about the atrocities being committed by India in Kashmir, have we remained silent on the Uighur issue?
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, former PM Imran Khan is on record as saying that because of the longstanding friendship with China, Pakistan accepted at face value Beijing’s assurances that there was nothing untoward happening in Xinjiang.
His Special Adviser on National Security, Moeed Yusuf, – a man for whom I have enormous respect – said that Pakistani delegations had visited Xinjiang and seen what he described as the real situation there and that, according to their assessment, people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang enjoyed equal rights protected by law and even led happy lives.
If that is true, then perhaps they might care to share the details of these fact-finding visits and help restore the tarnished reputation of our ‘all-weather friends’. They have yet to do so.
So, in the absence of the magic Pakistani bullet that would vindicate China, it is important to examine what evidence we do possess. But here’s where things get a little tricky. Because, in this post-truth age, who knows who is telling the truth and who might have a hidden agenda?
The Case Against China
I could, for example, reel off a number of painstakingly detailed investigative articles from the BBC, Al-Jazeera, CNN, and dozens of other international news outlets that tell of Uighur women being forcibly sterilized, or raped and tortured in the internment camps where they have been sent for ‘re-education.’
I could cite Western media reports of Muslim girls being forbidden from covering their hair or of Muslim men being arrested and beaten for reciting Arabic funeral prayers, or even for growing “Islamic’ beards. And let’s not forget the stories of mosque demolitions and the banning of the call to prayer, or of Muslim children screaming as they are pitilessly separated from their parents and sent to State-run orphanages for Communist indoctrination. (Incidentally, does anyone need me to draw parallels between Pakistan’s reaction to China’s alleged offenses and the reaction to, say, the Hijab ban in France or the destruction of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya?)
But let’s face it, here in the Global South, the western media does not enjoy a reputation for unbiased reporting, and readers are unlikely to be swayed by what they say.
I could, instead, cite the findings of numerous human rights organizations that have interviewed victims of gang rape and torture at the hands of guards and their civilian Chinese ‘guests.’
Unfortunately, some might consider these testimonies tainted too.
So, perhaps we should, instead, look to what the Chinese Government itself has said. And this is where things get really murky for those in Pakistan who refuse to acknowledge any Chinese wrongdoing in Xinjiang. Because, on so many occasions, the Chinese Government seems to have damned itself with its own mouth.
Straight from the Horse’s Mouth
Let’s start at the very top.
President Xi Jinping, during a visit to Xinjiang in 2014, gave a speech to local police officers. In unequivocal terms, he ordered them to “show absolutely no mercy” towards the Uighurs and to unleash the “organs of dictatorship.”
In 2017, a Chinese Religious Affairs official had this piece of advice about the Uighurs:
“Break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections, and break their origins. Completely shovel up the roots of two-faced people, dig them out, and vow to fight [them] until the end.”
And then there are the internment camps. All across Xinjiang Province, internment facilities – described by Amnesty International as a “dystopian hellscape” – have been hastily constructed to imprison and torture the recalcitrant Uighurs.
Initially, the Chinese Government denied even their very existence, saying that reports of mass detention and forced sterilization were “lies and absurd allegations.”
However, when evidence was presented which allowed no further room for plausible deniability, officials began admitting the existence of what they termed ‘re-education’ centers, designed to de-radicalize those infected by the scourge of Islamic extremism. They also said that inmates were there voluntarily which would, of course, imply that they were free to leave whenever they chose. Former ‘rehabilitated’ detainees who have spoken out would beg to differ.
Indeed, despite official denials, the most compelling evidence for the existence of these camps, and the fact that a stay is anything but voluntary, can be found in official government tender papers.
These documents invite contractors to bid for massive construction projects, including for the installation of security measures including watchtowers, razor wire, cameras, alarms, and guardrooms. Hardly necessary if ‘guests’ are there voluntarily.
And if that’s not enough, we again only have to listen to Chinese officials who sometimes have an awkward habit of saying too much and giving the truth away. The Communist Party Chief in Xinjiang is on record, for example, as saying that the centers should “teach like a school, be managed like the military and be defended like a prison” to prevent escapes.
Islamophobia and Ethnic Cleansing or Counter-Terrorism?
Despite what the Chinese Government claims, evidence from their own official sources only confirms what other countries – ironically, predominantly non-Muslim – have been claiming: that the Uighurs are being persecuted because of their cultural and religious identity.
The aforementioned targeting of Islamic symbols and the separation of children from parents is a direct attack on the two central pillars of Uighur culture – faith and family.
The effects on future generations of Uighurs of forced sterilization are being felt already. This is not a genocide of sudden mass killings. It is, instead, a slower, but equally devastating creeping genocide whose terrible effects can be gleaned from official census records: between 2015 and 2018, birth rates plunged by more than 60% in some mostly Uighur areas. That is against the national average of 4.2%. These statistics speak for themselves.
Reaping the Whirlwind
The Uighurs – already inured to years of persecution – are simmering with resentment. While the Chinese Government disguises its true motives under the catch-all excuse of acting to eliminate violent extremism, the arbitrariness – not to mention the awful brutality – of these crackdowns speaks of something far deeper and far more alarming.
And we should not forget that history has taught us that they may, one day in the not-so-distant future, have to reap the whirlwind. The world learned to its cost with the rise of Al Qaeda and ISIS, that there is no better recruiting sergeant for extremist groups than injustices committed by a stronger power over weaker populations.
The Chinese cannot even hide behind the excuse that sometimes the innocent inadvertently get swept up with the guilty. These are no ordinary dragnet operations. What is happening in Xinjiang is nothing less than a systematic targeting of Muslims and all things associated with Islam.
Official records show that people have been arrested just for eating halal food or observing prayers and religious holidays. Their very appearance – beards, hijab, covered female legs – have been used as a pretext for internment. Even having overly Islamic names has resulted in arrest, followed by an “education” process described in one official document as “washing brains, cleansing hearts, strengthening righteousness and eliminating evil”.
In contrast to those speaking out against the ethnic cleansing of the Uighurs, many of the countries who have supported China – including Pakistan – are Muslim nations: members, no less, of the Organisation for Islamic Co-operation.
Sacrificing Principles
No doubt, Pakistan is in a difficult position here. China has, after all, invested over $60 billion in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor and this lifeline is one Pakistan can ill afford to jeopardize over a principled stand. In the real world, it has always been an uncomfortable reality that certain unpalatable truths end up being ignored in order to safeguard relationships that have the potential to ensure future economic stability.
In this, Pakistan seems to be following the Groucho Marx doctrine on pragmatic principles. He once famously said, “These are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”
But surely the Uighurs have a right to be outraged by our seeming lack of outrage; by our indifference and at the ease with which we have sacrificed our principles for economic gain. They must resent all those whose economic aspirations are being watered by the blood of their children. Our silence might perhaps be less damning if we had remained silent on other similar issues.
But Pakistan – a nation with enormous influence in the Muslim world – has, to its eternal shame, been less than consistent on the subject of global human rights abuses. Our silence, reprehensible as it is, might have been less shameful if it wasn’t coupled with such obvious hypocrisy.
As a nation that is at the vanguard of the global fight against Islamophobia, the Uighurs could have been forgiven for seeing in Pakistan a true ally – their last hope against a regime determined to eradicate their very existence.
Unfortunately, while they continue to suffer and bleed; while they are systematically wiped out, the truth must by now have dawned on them: that nobody from the Muslim world is coming to save them.
It just doesn’t make good enough business sense.
We hv interests with China but as being a Muslim we shld speak up but our army or political parties will not do so hope we could hear from them too on it as we r one community n one nation Muslims r one not two as our Prophet PLEASE BE UPON HIM SAID MUSLIM one like a fist which can’t be broken so what we r doing
I think we all know that beggars can’t be choosers and this is another example of this. shabbar zaidy recently said saudis, emirates, American and Chinese are quite insulting to Pakistani diplomats and think of them as slaves.
IK was asked repeatedly by western journalists about Uyghurs and I wonder will they ask Shareefs or Zardari about them too or not? Uyghurs have no one but themselves to blame when they accepted communist help and from USSR and then joined Communist Mao.