The editors of the Wall Street Journal are criticizing the Chinese government for its treatment of China’s Uighur population, too:
China’s ethnic Uighurs are disappearing. Over the last two years and with little world attention, the authorities have detained hundreds of thousands of the Muslim minority in the country’s northwest, leaving family members to wonder where they are and why they were targeted. A network of internment camps could hold hundreds of thousands, according to Adrian Zenz, a scholar who has studied the campaign, but officials deny the camps exist.
Information is now trickling out. A handful of prisoners released from the camps have fled abroad and described the mistreatment. Guards subject the detainees to re-education sessions urging them to renounce Islam and love the Communist Party. Resisters are abused or held in solitary confinement.
Many of the detained had been abroad or have relatives who are. Others seem to be picked at random. Some are released after a few weeks, while others are held indefinitely. The arbitrary nature of the detention increases the terror. The prominent Uighur ethnographer Rahile Dawut, who preaches tolerance and isn’t involved in politics, disappeared last December on a trip to Beijing from Urumqi and hasn’t been heard from.
These extreme measures are part of a wider program to control the northwest region of Xinjiang where Uighurs and the smaller Kazakh minority make up more than half of the population. Last year the region’s security budget nearly doubled and 30,000 new police officers were deployed to urban areas.
The authorities have also installed face-recognition cameras in public places. Residents must install tracking devices in their cars and monitoring software on their phones. A region-wide DNA database is under construction using blood samples taken during mandatory “health screening.â€
The authorities say they are cracking down on Islamic fundamentalism. Some small-scale terrorist attacks may have been inspired by Islamic State or al Qaeda, and the Syrian government claimed that 5,000 Uighurs fought with Islamic State.
But Uighurs in general adhere to a moderate form of Islam and have long resisted radicalization. If that is changing, it is due in large part to the government’s punishment of any expression of Islamic faith. In recent years the authorities have forbidden Uighurs to fast during Ramadan, grow beards or give their children Islamic names. Officials search their homes for religious materials, and many mosques have been demolished.
Just in case we have forgotten who the Chinese authorities are.
Sanctioning individual Chinese officials or appealing to international accords to which China is signatory are laughably feeble measures. The Chinese Communist Party has violated so many of its international agreements it’s hard to know where to start. Let’s just say all of them.
There is plenty of hypocrisy on this subject to go around. Too many big U. S. companies are making too much money using China as a supplier. That’s the reason for all of the caterwauling about tariffs, particularly in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.
Not the least of the hypocrisy is on the part of Muslims. Islam is obviously under attack in China and Muslims have a religious obligation to defend their faith. But Uighurs are not Arabs.
The Chinese saw what happened to Russia under Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and what is happening to Europe under Merkel and the EU bureaucrats, and they will have none of it. They will fight to keep what is theirs (Han) regardless of how many have to die. Or have you forgotten Tiananmen Square?
In an era of identitarian politics, imposed on us by Progressives and cuckservatives alike, the brutality of the Chinese towards their minorities is to be expected. It will come here eventually, too. Be prepared to choose sides. They will be based on race and religion, not farm subsidies or school lunch programs.
If I had a choice, I would rather that Xi were my president than any Bush or Obama or Merkel or Trudeau. My children might have a future then.
Not just the Muslims but Christians too. Xi is a Maoist and determined to replace religion with state fealty. His operatives replace pictures of Jesus with pictures of Xi. They forbid teaching religion to children and show every sign of trying to replace all religion with state worship of Xi without unnecessary force or bloodshed, they are using social pressure instead of the bullet for now. This is not good. But where MY interest lies is in that Xi believes his Maoist system of total social control will prevail over The West. This is a conflict of cultures to the extreme, and may actually lead to war, unless, of course we are only giving lip service to personal freedom.