That Beijing is transforming the Xinjiang region into a scene from Orwell’s 1984 has garnered little attention in the democratic West and Islamic Middle East
A United Nations committee investigating the state of human rights in China has accused the Communist government of detaining up to one million Muslim Uyghurs in what has been described as a “massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy.” The alleged “no rights zone” is located in the western region of Xinjiang, where Beijing has been waging a concerted campaign against purported Islamic separatists blamed for numerous terrorist attacks—most notably the March 2014 assault on Kunming Railway Station in Yunnan Province, in which a group of knife-wielding assailants killed 31 civilians and injured 140 others.
Xinjiang is known to Uyghurs as East Turkestan, where they twice achieved independence during the 20th century only to have their autonomous territory incorporated into the People’s Republic of China upon its founding in 1949. Among the measures apparently implemented by Chinese authorities in the region are Orwellian-like surveillance practices, armed police checkpoints, re-education centers and the bulk collection of DNA. Many view the crackdown as part of Beijing’s policy of “Sinification,” essentially forced assimilation through the adoption of traditional Chinese culture and norms.
A senior Communist Party official testifying before the UN panel denied that his government was seeking the “de-Islamization” of the area, but qualified that, “those deceived by religious extremism…shall be assisted by resettlement and education.” For its part, China’s Foreign Ministry vehemently denied the “unfounded” charges levelled by what it branded as critics with “ulterior motives.”
If the “credible” reports cited by the UN are true, then the revelation brings into stark and ugly focus what likely constitutes the most egregious non-wartime ongoing mass abuse in the world. And even if embellished, there is little disagreement outside of China that the heavy-handed tactics employed against the Uyghurs violate their most basic human rights.
“The region has essentially been turned into a police state, with checkpoints every one hundred meters, loads of security cameras and facial recognition software and IDs being asked for constantly,” according to Peter Irwin, Program Manager at the World Uyghur Congress, an umbrella organization that advocates on behalf of the religious minority.
“For at least 18 months, residents have been sent to ‘re-education camps,’ but we don’t use that language as it sanitizes the process. They are essentially prisons as people are not allowed to leave. The two primary criteria for being sent to them,” he elaborated to The Media Line, “are a connection to the diaspora and any low-level expression of religious sentiment. At least thirty-one people have died in these camps so far. The mother of the president of our organization died in one of them a few months ago.”
While China’s Uyghurs have been repressed for decades, Irwin, who attended the panel discussion in Geneva, attributes the emergence of the “political indoctrination centers” to the absence of a concerted international response. “If you ask the average person, they do not know who the Uyghurs are; it is such an unknown subject. And if you want to compare it to Tibet, for example, China has been able to package this clampdown in ‘war on terror’ rhetoric. Also, China is such a powerful economic state that others nations are hesitant to criticize it out of fear of backlash.”
Indeed, there has been at best a modest outcry over the treatment of the Uyghurs in both the democratic West and predominantly Islamic Middle East. In the former, where even legitimate condemnation of Muslim fundamentalism might be labeled as Islamophobia and where it is mainstream to promote unfettered Muslim immigration, there is virtually no public discussion over China’s subjugation of its Muslim minority. In the latter, where, for example, Israel routinely is castigated for its military presence in the West Bank and blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, there is no push-back against Beijing from self-defined Islamic societies that view themselves as an integral part of the Ummah, or greater Muslim world.
Fernando Burgés, a Program Manager at the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, likewise noted China’s economic clout and added possible prejudices against Muslims when attempting to account for the muted reaction. “China [also] has been very successful in the propaganda game,” he stressed to The Media Line. “The narrative combines a supposed fight against terrorism, especially of Islamic-extremist nature—reinforced after 9/11—with the spread of fear that ‘separatism’ threatens the country. In this context, it has been relatively easy for Beijing to frame the Uyghurs as radicals seeking to secede from China.”
The international community’s relative silence is reminiscent of another recent case, involving the ethnic cleaning of Palestinians from the Yarmouk Camp in Syria. Prior to the outbreak of war in 2011, an estimated 160,000 Palestinians resided in the district, located on the outskirts of Damascus. Today, following a half-decade-long siege imposed by the Syrian army, and after the territory was over-run by the Islamic State for three years, only a few hundred Palestinians remain.
That the wholesale liquidation by the Assad regime of an entire population—whose national struggle is otherwise a cause celebre throughout the world—garnered so little attention is counter-intuitive, if not incomprehensible.
It appears, then, that not all genocides, wars and systematic oppression are created equal.
While Burgés expressed a belief that all rights violations should be internationalized so that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is upheld, he nevertheless tacitly conceded that not every problem can enter into the world’s collective consciousness. “For a human rights issue to be ‘successful’ and earn the attention of the world,” he expounded to The Media Line, “it has to combine some elements, the main one being non-violence. Another element that contributes to the ‘success’ of a cause over others is if the issue is taking place in a region that holds economic-strategic interests for nations. Last, but not least, charismatic leaders and a united movement are fundamental. In the specific case of the Uyghurs, [their plight] attracted international attention certainly thanks to the persistent work of activists from the community.”
Burgés highlighted that there is generally a tipping point at which the scale and severity of an atrocity will induce coordinated action (although this is, given historical precedent, only a rule of thumb). “The revelation of the existence of these [Chinese] ‘camps’ where up to 1 million people seem to be detained has made the Western world particularly uncomfortable. Media are covering this because of the obvious [way] the general public feels when thinking of camps for people of a specific ethnicity. Similarly, the fact that numbers are so significant in both absolute and relative terms makes it very difficult to argue that everyone being held is an extremist.”
At the macro level, then, prevailing geopolitical dynamics; the intensity of related grassroots activism; the acuteness and inhumaneness of the disaster; and the resulting media attention given to a particular crisis appear to be primary mitigating factors in determining the level of public awareness of and, as a corollary, popular support for a human rights issue.
On the micro level, individuals are, after all, free to cherry-pick whatever cause for whatever reason they most closely associate with and are willing to fight for—be it that of the Uyghurs or the whales.