U.S. and Others Pay Lip Service To Protesting Against Human Rights Violations Of The Uyghur
By Umberine Abdullah
Jan/Feb 25
Since 1949, October 12 has marked a solemn day of national mourning for the Uyghur who originate from East Turkistan which China now calls Xingang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).
In remembrance, last October, dozens of Uyghurs and their supporters gathered outside the White House to commemorate and protest 75 years of China’s military invasion of East Turkistan.
For 75 years and going, China has enforced a regime of genocide, systematic colonization, and mass oppression upon these Turkic people. Officially China recognizes 55 ethnic groups such as Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other mostly Muslim-minority groups in addition to the Chinese Han majority.
China’s claims over East Turkistan are not rooted in historical truth. On October 12, 1949, Chinese communist forces invaded East Turkistan – which borders Russia, Pakistan and several Central Asian nations – with Soviet support, initiating one of the longest and most brutal occupations in modern history.
Despite recognition of China’s atrocities as ongoing genocide by the U.S. and over a dozen Western countries, as well as recognition by the UN as “crimes against humanity,” it is business as usual with China. For instance, Justice For All’s Save Uyghur Campaign expressed deep concern about the findings in a 2024 report in the Turkistan Times titled “Side Effects: The Human Rights Implications of Global Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Linkages to XUAR”. It exposes significant connections between the global pharmaceutical industry – where India is a dominant force and implicated in these supply chains – and forced labor practices in East Turkistan.
75 years after China invaded East Turkistan – now a population of 26 million people – and over a decade since it launched its campaign of genocide in May 2014, the Uyghur and other Turkic people continue to endure mass incarceration, enslavement through forced labor, forced sterilizations, and the systematic erasure of their cultural and national identity.
An example of such erasure was cited by Human Rights Watch and the Norway-based organization Uyghur Hjelp (also known as Uyghuryar) documents about 630 communities that the Chinese government has such renamed, mostly during the height of a crackdown on Uyghur that several governments and human rights bodies have called a genocide. The report adds, “The new names removing religious, historical or cultural references are among thousands of otherwise benign name changes between 2009 and 2023.” The report quotes Rayhan Asat, a Uyghur human rights lawyer and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, whose brother disappeared into the Xinjiang detention regime in 2016, told the changes were part of Beijing’s “overarching objective to eradicate the Uyghur culture and people entirely and create a system of apartheid”.
Repression under Communist rule, particularly during the violent and xenophobic 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, stirred deep animosity in Xinjiang toward the government, aggravated further by the migration of Han to the region and their domination of political and economic life.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released a report on August 31, 2022, which concluded that “[t]he extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups, pursuant to law and policy, in context of restrictions and deprivation more generally of fundamental rights enjoyed individually and collectively, may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.” The Chinese government denies having committed any human rights abuses.
The U.S. and others have labeled China’s policies against Xinjiang minorities as “genocide.” China, however, has always denied targeting Uyghurs and others for their religion and culture, denouncing the accusations as a confection of lies by the West and saying its crackdown was aimed at quashing separatism, terrorism and religious extremism.
For China, this northwest region that is about three times the size of France, is of strategic importance. The ancient Silk Road – established during the Han Dynasty 2,000 years ago – trade route linking China, and the Middle East passed through Xinjiang, a legacy that can be seen in the traditional open-air bazaars of its oasis cities, Hotan and Kashgar. Xinjiang is an important link in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), sometimes referred to as the New Silk Road, and in China known as the One Belt One Road, a massive development plan stretching through Asia and Europe, involving more than 150 countries and international organizations.
The region is also important to China because besides having the second largest pastureland, it is one of the major sheep farming areas and China’s finewool production base. It is rich in energy resources, and has the largest reserves of oil, natural gas and coal in the country.
Unsurprisingly, mindful of the riches, the Chinese government has used violent against groups like the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) to point to a larger problem with terrorism in the region, especially in the wake of events like the 2009 mass riots that broke out in Urumqi, which killed 194 people and injured thousands more. To address these concerns, Beijing has progressively strengthened its security presence over the last decade. In 2010, domestic security spending in Xinjiang increased by 90%.
On Feb. 1, 2018, XUAR revealed a stunning 92.8 % increase in its domestic security spending: from 30.05 billion RMB in 2016 to 57.95 billion RMB in 2017. Within a decade, this figure has increased nearly ten-fold, up from 5.45 billion RMB in 2007. Interestingly, it was only in 2020 that the U.S. removed ETIM from its list of terrorist organizations.
East Turkestan has experienced two brief periods of independence, The first republic (East Turkestan Republic) was established on Nov. 12, 1943, and was disestablished on April 16, 1944. The second republic was a short-lived satellite state of the Soviet Union in northern Xinjiang (East Turkestan), which existed from 1944 to 1946. It emerged from the Ili Rebellion in three districts of Xinjiang Province: Ili, Tarbagatay and Altay.
The East Turkestan Independence Movement first began to take shape in 1933. Every historical event has its elements of chance, but how was the unprecedented East Turkestan Independence Movement able to so quickly mobilize the population, and erupt ubiquitously and simultaneously across the territory of Xinjiang? These circumstances indicate that early modern Xinjiang society harbored simmering ethnic problems.
After unrest in the region and a series of riots and attacks by the Uyghur between 2014 to 2017, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, launched his Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism, leading to the establishment of the camps. The UN estimated that since then about one million people have been detained in these extrajudicial centers.
Beijing, however, calls them vocational education and training centers. But critics say they are used to indoctrinate Uyghurs and other minority ethnic groups with the goal of transforming them into devotees of the Chinese Communist party.
In a statement, Mamtimin Ala, Ph.D., president of the East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE) – who is self-exiled in Sydney, Australia – declared: “The time for words alone has passed. We call on Canada, the U.S., and all nations that champion freedom and human rights to act decisively. Recognize East Turkistan for what it is: an occupied country. Support our right to external self-determination and our struggle to recover our sovereignty. Anything less will allow China to continue its genocide with impunity.”
China’s atrocities in Occupied East Turkistan are not isolated human rights abuses – it is a deliberate strategy of genocide. The goal, ETGE contends, is to wipe out an entire people and their rich cultural heritage, a campaign that the international community can no longer afford to ignore. China’s ongoing campaign of colonization, genocide, and occupation in East Turkistan must be recognized as part of a broader global threat posed by authoritarianism and unchecked state violence.
In December 2021, U.S. enacted into law, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), establishing a rebuttable presumption that goods produced wholly or in part in the XUAR or by an entity on the UFLPA Entity List are made with forced labor and prohibited from importation into the U.S. under 19 U.S.C.
The U.S. intentions for Uyghur rights do not seem so altruistic, when it not only looks aside, but supports far worst human right abuses in Occupied Palestine.
Umbrine Abdullah is a freelance writer.