The Persecution of Ethnic Uighurs in China
Recent drone footage shocked the world as it depicted hundreds of shackled and blindfolded men in blue uniforms being led from a train in Xinjiang, China.
In the far west of China, there live around 13 million Turkic Muslims. In recent years, the Chinese government has cracked down on anti-terrorism initiatives, leading to accusations of the government’s use of surveillance to create a controlled state, particularly in the around the area of Xinjiang. This initiative is in order to monitor the actions of the ethnic Uighur community.
Being mostly an agricultural and trade-based society, the community has seen major recent economic development projects which has dragged many Han people from Western cities into the Xinjiang province. In the 2000 census, it appears that Han Chinese people made up an unprecedented 40% of the population in the region, which is likely the cause of increasing ethnic and sectarian conflict.
In 2013, Amnesty International declared that the Chinese authorities criminalised “what they labelled ‘illegal religious’ and ‘separatist activities’”, shutting down seemingly peaceful expressions of faith and cultural identity. Islamic traditions such as fasting during Ramadan have been banned in the region, or citizens have been subject to violence if affiliated with Muslim faith in public. In an otherwise historically peaceful community, tensions have recently skyrocketed between the competing ethnic groups.
It is estimated that over a million Muslim members of this community have vanished into Chinese “re-education camps,” or detention centres which promote the denouncement of Islamic faith and adoption of Chinese principles.
China has denied the use of internment camps, rather stating that the Uighur people are receiving “vocational training” in order to avoid the three evil forces of terrorism, extremism, and separatism. China has refrained from commenting on human rights abuses, but rather has ensured that the extreme measures taken against the Uighur community are in line with their anti-terrorism campaign.
A technology known as the “Integrated Joint Operations Platform” allows Chinese police officers to receive a comprehensive profile of each citizen and flag any abnormal or suspicious behaviour. Uighur people living in China are subject to give DNA and biometric samples which can be flagged if they have relatives living in countries deemed “sensitive” by the Chinese government. Many people, however, accuse this system of picking up on dubious criteria which allows the police to arbitrarily follow and detain Muslim citizens.
Similarly, China has been masking Uighur burial grounds where hundreds of Uighur family members have been laid to rest. Activists around the world have declared this part of an operative to eradicate the ethnic group’s identity in China.
China has claimed that they are at an increased risk of Islamist extremist in their western region and that recent intelligence is the reason for the increased security and surveillance measures in the region. With the ongoing Belt-Road Initiative, nearby countries have raised concerns about how their international human rights obligations coincide with the treatment of locals in the Xinjiang region. For example, Turkish spokesperson for the ministry of foreign affairs, Hami Askoy, has declared that, “The reintroduction of internment camps in the twenty-first century and the policy of systematic assimilation against the Uighur Turks carried out by the authorities of China is a great shame for humanity.”
With increased pressure from the international community on treatment of the Muslim community in China as well as the widespread denouncement of “concentration camps,” it is hopeful that China will use a more nuanced approach to their anti-terrorism campaign. Though China is silencing activists of the Uighur community across other Turkic regions and Europe, the sectarian conflict is gaining more and more traction which should hopefully improve conditions for the Chinese Uighur community.
Image: Malcolm Brown
