Genocide refers to an act where a particular group is killed, caused serious bodily or mental harm with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Now, the use of this term in today’s context makes obvious reference to Gaza. My today’s blog, however, touches on a different region altogether…the Uyghur Muslims in China.

For those who don’t know, exactly the above cited, or even harsher level treatment is being carried out against the Uyghur community in China’s Xinjiang. The Uyghurs, who are a distinct ethnicity than the mainstream Han Chinese have been put under detention centers; where they are being forced to adopt the mainstream culture in the name of ‘unification’, barred from their own religious practices and are being subject of constant harassment, surveillance and persecution.

Who are the Uyghurs?

Uyghurs are a predominantly Turkic-Muslim ethnic group with deep historical roots in China and Central Asia. They constitute little less than the half population of Xinjiang, China’s largest province with a surface area of 1.83 million km square. Other ethnic groups who live in the region include the Han Chinese, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Mongols, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Tatars also live in the area. The Uyghurs speak their own language of the same name, which has Turkish roots.

The World Uyghur Congress, a group of Uighur exiles advocating for human rights in their homeland, puts the number of Uyghurs living inside and outside of China at about 20 million. According to official Chinese records from 2020, there are 12 million Uighurs in Xinjiang representing around half the population.

There have been conflicting narratives about their roots from Uyghurs and Beijing. While Uighurs maintain that they are a distinct culture, Beijing continues to insist that it has an ancient claim to Xinjiang (since 206BC) and calls it an “inseparable part of the Chinese nation”.

Photo: Map showing the location of ‘Uyghur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang’ (Photo: Britannica)

History of Uyghurs in China

Uyghurs trace their origin in the present-day Mongolia – Altai Mountains and Mongolian steppes. The Uyghur Khaganate, a powerful nomadic empire was established in the 8th century in the region. The empire collapsed in 840 CE after which many Uyghurs migrated to Tarim Basin (modern Xinjiang) and northern parts of China, adoption urban and agricultural life. Initially, the Uyghur community was Buddhist and Manichaean but converted to Islam in the 10th century under the Karakhanid dynasty (a Turkic fiefdom), making Islam central to its identity.

Around the same time, Xinjiang emerged as a major hub of Silk Road, facilitating trade and cultural exchange between China, Persia, India, and the Mediterranean, with the Uyghur community working as farmers, artisans. This was followed by the Qing Dynasty – the biggest dynasty in Chinese history – ascending to power in China. The Qings conquered Xinjiang in 1759, integrating it into the Chinese empire. The region, however, was formally named ‘Xinjiang’ only in 1884.

Despite this, there were a couple episodes of independence movements: First East Turkestan Republic (1933–1934) and Second East Turkestan Republic (1944–1949) were established by Uyghur and other ethnic groups, seeking an independent state free from Chinese rule. Both republics, however, were crushed by the nationalist and communist forces respectively, effectively making Xinjiang a part of People’s Republic of China in 1949. It was officially designated the ‘Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’ in 1955.

Despite all the unification, the distinct culture of Han Chinese and Uyghurs and separatist sentiments often resulted in violent clashes. The separatist and anti-Han sentiment brew up in Xinjiang in the 1990s spiraling into violence. Hundreds of protestors were allegedly gunned down by Chinese soldiers, in an episode termed ‘Gulja massacre’ by the Uyghur community, Al Jazeera reported. The 2009 Urumqi clashes left over 200 dead. Fatalities were also reported in the 2011 clash between Uyghurs and Han Chinese in the ancient city of Kashgar.

All of this has resulted in Beijing further intensifying its crackdown and surveillance campaign in the region to crush any form of dissent. China, already infamous for its massive nationwide surveillance, has an even pervasive and sharp system in Xinjiang. Even the 9/11 attacks followed by the global ‘war against terror’ campaign led to Beijing launching its own campaign against extremism, which found Uyghurs at the receiving end.

China has carried out one of the harshest level of surveillance in Xinjiang (Photo: RAND)

What is happening in Xinjiang?

According to the reports of several human rights group, over 1 million Uyghurs in Xinjiang have been held in detention in what is called “re-education camps” across 300-400 facilities. A September 2018 report from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, estimated the number of detainees in Xinjiang – between tens of thousands and a million

Many international human rights groups, forums like the United Nations and countries like the United States have already described the situation in Xinjiang as a form of genocide constituting “crimes against humanity”.

A report from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights describes “credible” allegations of torture, including rape and sexual violence, discrimination, mass detention, forced labour and widespread surveillance.

According to the Uyghur Tribunal setup by the British House of Commons, China had detained “hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs – with some estimates well in excess of a million […] without any, or any remotely sufficient, reason and subjected [them] to acts of unconscionable cruelty, depravity and inhumanity”.

A report tabled at the Canadian parliamentary subcommittee presented some harrowing details from inside the concentration camps. According to the testimonies, detainees are prohibited from practising their religion or speaking their language. Detainees are also required to learn Mandarin and praise the CCP and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Some witnesses even raised the horrifying possibility that Uyghurs are being subjected to organ harvesting, the report said.

Now, China categorically denies any allegations of ‘genocide’ and instead justifies all its repressive actions under the garb of national security. It says the Uyghur militants are waging a war for an independent state by carrying out civil unrest, and these “re-education camps” are important to counter extremism in the region.

Disturbing visuals showing blindfolded prisoners in China’s Xinjiang (Photo: CNN)

China’s Crackdown and Surveillance on Uyghurs

In 2014, the Chinese government launched the “Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism” in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang or XUAR) against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims. This crackdown, repression and surveillance intensified to unprecedented level in 2017 after Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed that all religions in the country should have a Chinese orientation in line with his “Sinification” policy.

The crackdown gradually became more intense with Uyghur activists and scholars being denounced as “terrorists” and handed jail and death sentences. Those Uyghurs, who returned to China after travelling abroad, were suspected of promoting “extreme” views and interrogated.

At the same time, millions of Han Chinese were settled in Xinjiang to dilute the proportion of Uyghurs in the population, making Han the second-largest ethnicity in the region and creating new sources of tension in the province.

The survivor testimonies presented by Canada’s parliamentary subcommittee stated that many Uyghur children are being taken away from their homes and placed in state-run schools or orphanages in an effort to assimilate them. A victim testified that close to half a million children have been separated from their families through “state‑sanctioned abduction of [Uyghur] children” aimed at totally destroying the Uyghur culture.

According to Human Rights Watch, people’s behaviour is being monitored to such intrinsic levels that even electricity usage and movement of front doors are under Beijing’s radar.

The Xinjiang Police Files – a major cache of leaked internal Chinese government documents – further highlight the harrowing situation there. The leaked reports say that many Uyghurs were targeted for their mobile phone use, for listening to “illegal lectures” or for “not using their phones enough,” which is considered a sign of the user trying to evade digital surveillance.

Using technology, residents are also being flagged for their relationships, their communications, their travel histories, or for being related to someone the authorities consider as suspicious, HRW said.

The Amnesty International, another global rights group, has described life in Xinjiang as a “dystopian hellscape.”

There have also been reports of the government banning Muslims from fasting during Ramadan, or women wearing veils and men growing their beards long. Muslims were also allegedly forced to eat pork, which is ‘haram’ (prohibited) in Islam.

In 2020, an investigation conducted by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), using satellite imagery and ground reporting, also revealed “thousands of mosques” in the region have either been damaged or destroyed in just three years.

Survivor accounts have revealed harrowing situation of women in Xinjiang camps (Photo: The Art Newspaper)

Use of ‘Rape’ and Coercive Birth Control

Several women survivors of the concentration camps pointed that physical, psychological and sexual abuse were common in Chinese detention. Some said that women are raped “daily” by Chinese authorities coercing them to follow Beijing’s dictat and ideals.

“They brought 200 prisoners to the hall, and they picked out one young girl, about 20 years old, and they forced her to accept the guilt for something that she never had done. She was crying and she was saying that she was guilty even though she was not guilty. She accepted it in front of the 200 prisoners. Then the Chinese guards started raping her, one by one, in front of all these 200 prisoners. They went down the line and raped her one by one in front of all the people,” a heart-wrenching testimony of a female survivor read, as cited by the Canada’s parliamentary report.

“If some of these 200 prisoners showed pain on their faces or in their eyes, or hesitation or any negative emotion, they will say that this prisoner didn’t change, didn’t become normal, and they will pick these prisoners from the crowd and later they will start torturing them because they didn’t change. After we saw that, we had to accept it and we had to praise the party,” it added.

Beijing has also been accused of birth-control policies specifically targeting Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities using forced abortions and sterilization on women. The Canadian subcommittee was informed about some of the extreme acts of violence. A survivor even described being injected with an unknown substance that caused the loss of her menstrual period.

UK’s Uyghur Tribunal also reported evidence of reduced birth-rates particularly in indigenous Uyghur counties: Across the 29 counties with indigenous-majority populations for which we have 2019 or 2020 data, the birth-rate has fallen by 58.5% from the 2011-15 baseline average […] In those counties that are over 90% indigenous, the birth-rate fell at an even greater rate, showing a 66.3% decrease in 2019-20.

Satellite images showing increase in detention camps in Xinjiang (Photo: BBC)

Slave labour of Xinjiang

Xinjiang happens to be a resource-rich province. Along with mining resources such as coal, gas, lithium, zinc and lead, it produces about 45% of the world’s polysilicon. It also produces the vast majority of cotton (around 84%) for China’s textiles and garment manufacturing industry.

China has long been accused of carrying out forced labor on Uyghurs in Xinjiang. A network of factories have been documented within and near detention camps in Xinjiang. Leaked government documents reveal that working in these factories is often a condition for release from the camps.

In 2018, China introduced a “poverty alleviation” initiative, which aims “to move minorities from their traditional rural villages into factory work.” This policy has been aggressively applied in the Xinjiang region. Many Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims are separated from their homes and moved to factories. The program’s effectiveness stems from the number of transfers into work placements, which puts pressure on the local officials to meet the quotas, at times even coercively.

In addition to being forced to work in factories, for meagre salaries, the Canada’s subcommittee was told that working conditions are abysmally poor and abhorrent.

“We learned that they were working for either no income or pay that in the course of a year they should have been paid in a month. They were constantly guarded. They were living in dormitories and with guards. They were going on buses with guards to the factories every day. There was policing of the factories, and security. They had no idea when this would end, or how it would end. All their devices were monitored,” a survivor account said.

Following the condition of forced labour in Xinjiang getting highlighted in many reports globally, international pressure has risen on not just Beijing but also on the big companies that allegedly benefit from this forced work.

Also, a UN report noted that “labour transfer schemes” forced people from Xinjiang to work elsewhere in China, which effectively means that goods produced in factories throughout China may be tainted with modern slavery.

Why Muslim World Is Silent?

Now, while the horrific condition from Xinjiang have been exposed in multiple reports by top global bodies and countries, and there have been some action on sanction stage, but this ‘genocide’ has definitely not got the global attention that it should have. While we lament the genocide in Gaza (rightly so), there is another genocide going right under our eyes with same if not more impunity from the Chinese state.

What is particularly baffling is almost NO Muslim country seems bothered about the Xinjiang episode. Whether it is Pakistan (self-proclaimed representative of all Muslims globally), Turkiye (which actually has roots in the region) or Iran (which considers itself the strongest Islamic voice); no country is interested in even raising concern on the situation, let alone any criticism or action. The reason is simple: financial gains. All these Islamic nations have strong ties with China and are heavily dependent on the funding and exports from Beijing, so they can’t even dare to challenge it.

Now I know that many in India like to use the Xinjiang example to somehow undermine the condition of minority rights and religious freedom in India. But I know that my country fares poorly on both fronts, and no alien episode can be used to hide it. I strongly believe that instead of using Xinjiang episode as an ‘excuse’ we should indeed take it as a ‘lesson’ for how horrendous the state can become in the name of ‘nationalism’ and ‘national security’ if kept unchecked.

My only aim with this blog was to shed some light on the precarious situation of the Uyghur and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. Dominating its way out has been Beijing’s playbook, whether it is Tibet, Hong Kong or who knows Taiwan in future. The Xinjiang episode is no different. I hope this topic gets more global attention and draws some strong action on People’s Republic of China, which everyone knows, is least bothered about any freedom of expression, religion or life.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER