Uyghurs protesting in London, England urging the government to accuse China of a genocide against Uyghurs and take action to end this hate (Credit: PA Media).

What We Know About the Situation and The Possible Solutions

Why is the Chinese government surveilling and detaining members of a minority group?

Who are the Uyghurs?

Uyghurs (Name explanation from the verb “follow, accommodate oneself” and adjective “non-rebellious”) also spelled as Uighurs, are a Turkic ethnic group native to Xinjiang, China. They are distinct from the Han Chinese who are the predominant ethnic group in the country. The Uyghurs are just one of the 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities of China. There are over 12 million Uyghurs, mostly Muslim, living in Xinjiang, which is officially known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Because of the location of Xinjian along the ancient Silk Road, the city has a long history of cross-migration by different minority groups, explaining how the Uyghurs and other ethnic groups ended up there. The actual size of the Uyghurs in China has been the subject to much dispute. Chinese authorities place their population in Xinjiang to be over 12 million but starting in 2003, Uyghur activists said that that their population was being vastly undercounted, claiming that their population actually exceeded 20 million. According to groups like the Uyghur Congress and Uyghur American Association, the population ranges between 20 and 30 million while others claim the real number is more than 35 million. Uyghurs are a regional minority and the titular (Single dominant ethnic group in a particular state) people of Xinjiang. They make up less than half of the Xinjiang population. Uyghurs are the second-largest predominantly Muslim ethnicity in China, Islam is an important aspect of their identity. They gradually started to become Islamized in the 10th century and most identified as Muslims by the 16th century. Islam has since played an important role in Uyghur culture and identity. Also, the Uyghurs speak their own language that is similar to Turkish, and see themselves as culturally and ethnically close to Central Asian nations.

The Uyghurs were mentioned in Chinese records from the 3rd century CE but first rose to prominence in the 8th century when they established a kingdom along the Orhon River which is now North-Central Mongolia. However, in 840 this region was overrun by the Kyrgyz (Turkic-speaking people of Central Asia) so they migrated southwestward to the Tien Shan mountain range (One of the largest continuous mountain ranges in the world) where they formed another independent kingdom but it was soon overthrown as well by the expanding Mongols in the 13th century. Moreover, the Uyghurs traditionally inhabited a series of oases in the Tarim Basin but just like the Tien Shan mountains, they became controlled by China, the Mongols, the Tibetans and various Turkic polities. Despite all the hate, you would be suprised to learn that 80% of Xinjiang’s Uyghurs still live in this basin, the rest are in the capital city of Xinjiang, Ürümqi. Uyghurs began migrating out of the region as early as the 1960s and there are significant diasporic communities of Uyghurs in Turkic countries like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkey; and smaller communities live in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Australia, Russia, Sweden, United States, and Canada. Beijing insists it has an ancient claim to Xinjiang dating back to 206 BC and considers it an “inseparable part of the Chinese nation”. The Uyghurs disagree saying that borders have been drawn and redrawn for centuries depending on the dominant power.

The Uyghur people are characterized by both West and East-Eurasian genetic heritage and just like any aspect of this ethnic group, there has been a lot of controversy. A 2018 study performed ancestry-informative SNP analysis on 206 Uyghur samples from Xinjiang which found that the average genetic ancestry of Uyghurs is 63.7% East Asian and 36.3% European.

In the tenth century, the Karluks, Yagmas, Chigils and other Turkic tribes founded the Kara-Khanid Khanate empire that ruled Central Asia from the 9th to the early 13th century. The Karakhanids converted to Islam in the 10th century beginning with Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan, the first Turkic dynasty to do so. As a result, the Uyghurs who were located in this region, gradually started to become islamized in the 10th century. Islam has since played an important role in Uyghur culture and identity. In previous centuries, Uyghurs followed other religions like Zoroastrianism and Buddhism. The integration of Islam was a major reason into the problems that the Uyghurs would face later on, it really started the buildup to the crackdown.

In the early 20th Century when the Uyghurs briefly declared independence but it was brought under complete control of China’s new Communist government in 1949. Since the formation of this communist party, Muslim Uyghurs have faced prohibitions on their religious and cultural practices. During the 1990’s anti-Han and separatist sentiment rose in Xinjiang oftenly flaring into violence. The collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990’s resulted in frequent calls for Uyghur independence from China. During this time, there was the formation of independent Central Asian states like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan but no equivalent liberation arrived for the Uyghurs. This time also marked the beginning of China categorizing Muslim Uyghur activists as terrorists. In 1996, the Communist Party grew increasingly worried after the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan and further after the 9/11 attack. In 2009, about 200 people died in clashes in Xinjiang with the government reporting the majority of the dead were Han Chinese. Fast-forward to 2017, this is the moment when President Xi Jinping issued an order saying all religions in China should be Chinese in orientation, the government quickly began working to eradicate Uyghur culture. Nowadays, the region of Xinjiang is covered by a pervasive network of surveillance. The severity of this watching includes police, checkpoints, and cameras that scan everything from number plates to faces. This was built on the historical precedence within the party’s governance of Xinjiang, they have carried out anti-religious campaigns and controlled ethnic minority cultural expression for as long time can remember. What is different now is the intensity and duration of the campaigns. China has a history of targeting ethnic minorities like Tibetans and African immigrants.

Human Rights Abuses and a Genocide on Uyghurs in Xinjiang

In 2014, China launched the Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism and since then, Uyghurs in Xinjiang have been affected by extensive controls and restrictions that the Chinese government has imposed upon their religious, cultural, economic and social lives. During 2014, China began advocating intermarriage between Han Chinese and Uyghur people, the first step into diluting the Uyghur population in Xinjiang. Then authorities fined families Uyghur families with too many children, a one-child policy was made, and then hundreds of thousands of Turkic Muslim women had to use forcible intrauterine device (IUD) insertions, sterilizations, and abortions. Scholars estimate that over a million Uyghurs have been arbitrarily detained in the Xinjiang internment camps since 2017 termed “re-education camps” (Reminds me of the residental schools in Canada which abused the First Nations). When Chinese government officials are asked about that these camps, they say it was created to serve the goals of ensuring adherence to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ideology, preventing separatism, fighting terrorism, and providing vocational training to Uyghurs. However, it is widely known to be aimed at changing the political thinking of these detainees, their identities, and religious beliefs. Inmates are held captive in the camps for a minimum of 12 months depending on their performance on Chinese ideology tests. The New York Times journalists have reported inmates being required to perform actions such as to “sing hymns praising the Chinese Communist Party and write ‘self-criticism’ essays,”. In 2017, after there was considerable information leaked about the events occurring, the Human Rights Watch said “The Chinese government agents should immediately free people held in unlawful ‘political education’ centers in Xinjiang, and shut them down.” In 2018, many investigative journalists such as from BBC, claimed that based on analysis of satellite imagery, thousands of Uyghurs were being interned in rapidly expanding camps. Also, in 2019, it was reported that hundreds of writers, artists, and academics were being imprisoned as an attempt to punish any form of religious or cultural expression among Uyghurs. What was the most shocking was that the Chinese government denied all allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang. They denied the existence of the camps completely for sometime but then changed their stance to claim that the camps were something good and purposeful. In 2019, China claimed it had released everyone from its “re-education” camp system. They say the Uyghurs must be re-educated to keep the country safe, to prevent terrorism and root out Islamist extremism. China says that because of this counterterrorism, there have been no violent terrorist cases for over four consecutive years in the region. They added on saying that since 2018, 151,000 people in “poverty-stricken families in southern Xinjiang” have secured jobs away from their home as well as many now earning an annual income of 45,000 yuan ($7,000) which is significantly higher than that of what is earned from working in their hometowns.

The campaign did not stop at the forceful detainment of millions of Uyghur adults, over half a million children were also forcefully separated from their families and placed in pre-school camps with prison-style surveillance in 2017. Additionally, it was discovered in 2019 article that the Chinese government was using technology from US companies and researchers to collect DNA from Uyghurs. China was building a comprehensive DNA database to be able to track down Uyghurs who were resisting the re-education campaign. Later that year, satellite photos confirmed the systematic destruction of Uyghur cemeteries. Year after year, more was being unraveled about this genocide towards the Uyghurs. There is also evidence that Uyghurs are being used as forced labour and of women being forcibly sterilised. Some former camp detainees have also alleged they were tortured and sexually abused. In 2020 BBC researchers found that half a million people were being forced to pick cotton, factories were being built in the re-education camps.

This is the largest mass internment of an ethnic-religious minority since World War II.

In July 2019, 22 countries including Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany and Japan, raised concerns about “large-scale places of detention, as well as widespread surveillance and restrictions, particularly targeting Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang” and accused China of a commiting a genocide. In June 2020, former United States President Donald Trump signed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act which authorizes the imposition of U.S. sanctions against Chinese government officials responsible for re-education camps. The European Union, United Kingdom, and Canada also imposed sanctions on Chinese government officials accused of committing human rights abuses. Other nations have been joining on in this accusation like the UK parliament declaring the genocide in April 2021. This heavy term is defined by international convention as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. The United Nations definition of genocide is broken into five parts: killing members of a specific group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, imposing measures to prevent births, forcibly transferring children from one group to another, and creating conditions to destroy the group. The Uyghurs are the victims of a cultural gencoide in which the language, religion and cultural practices of a group are outlawed. The treatment of Uyghurs is literally appalling violations of the most basic human rights. Although there have been attempts to stop this violence, stating that it is a genocide and putting some sanctions will not stop the China Communist Party, just like the Ukraine-Russia conflict, far more needs to be done for these idiotic actions. During this continued brutality, Uyghurs are seeking asylum in other nations, specifically those that are Muslim-majority like the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

Just a few months ago, countries like the United States, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, and Denmark decided to diplomatically boycott (An act of nonviolent and voluntary abstention) the 2022 Beijing Olympics. The United States also recently passed bi-partisan legislation that will require all companies operating in Xinjiang to prove that they do not use forced labor if they wish to import products into the United States.

Solutions and Future

For several years now, China has been systematically repressing its Uyghur Muslim minority and those who manage to avoid the camps still live under oppressive government surveillance and countless restrictions. This is a human tragedy and we need to continue looking at what countries can feasibly do right now like policy options.

We must build an international coalition of like-minded countries to put diplomatic and economic pressure on China over the Uyghur issue. Countries like the US could also try to coax major Muslim-majority nations, namely Saudi Arabia, to form part of the coalition despite their general silence on the issue. Just like with the Ukraine-Russia conflict, we need to cause China economic pain until it reverses course. One example of this is to stop supporting forced Uyghur labour but that means changing globalization and how we rely on other countries, we need to be more independent and self-reliable which the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic have encouraged. Many reports have documented products made by Uyghurs against their will in the supply chains of major companies including Adidas, Calvin Klein, and H&M. In fact, about one in five pieces of cotton clothing contains cotton or other materials from Xinjiang, which produces about 84 percent of China’s cotton output. Another method of economic damage is to cease any assistance to China’s mass surveillance and repression capabilities. The Chinese government uses mobile apps, facial recognition software, and other programs to track Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The Trump administration blacklisted nearly 50 Chinese companies solely based on their connections to the mistreatment of Uyghurs so that those firms are no longer allowed to buy any parts from US firms without explicit approval from the US government.

China’s Anti-Uyghur campaign has been successful in part because it takes place in a remote part of the world far from public view. We need the international community to be more involed in the issue by continually publishing intelligence documents and other reports that show just how morally appalling the situation in Xinjiang really is. Publishing documents like satellite images would even further severely embarrass the Chinese government. We must also counter China at the UN, however, China is one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council, which means it has veto power over any proposal brought to the body.

These were all ways to punish China but it is equally important to focus on directly helping the Uyghurs in need like sending donations and supporting Uyghur-owned businesses. Developed and Western nations like Canada and the US need to allow Uyghur refugees to start a new life, it would be a safe haven for the growing diaspora. As mentioned, many have fled to countries like Turkey and Kazakhstan but remain undocumented so they will soon be deported back to China.

Bye for now :)

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