Pakistan Protests China’s Persecution of Uyghur Muslims
By Dr Mahjabeen Islam
Toledo, Ohio
It was a wonderful start to Imran Khan’s ascent to premiership that the Dutch cartoon contest was cancelled. Appears Foreign Minister Qureshi was convincing in his dialogue with the Dutch and a crisis and killings were averted. This foreign policy winning streak is continuing, at least in some sensitive issues.
“China is treating Islam like a mental illness” is the title of an article in a recent issue of The Atlantic. And the deeply nationalistic, hardline rule of President Xi Jinping looks at Islam like the diseases of depression or addiction. He has interned one million Uyghurs in internment camps, called “re-education camps” to “cleanse” the mind of Islam which is likened to an ideological illness, akin to a virus in their brain. Here they are brainwashed to praise the Communist Party, sing nationalistic songs all day, study President Xi’s vision of China, confess to and apologize for praying. They are also forced to eat pork and drink alcohol. For resistant subjects there is torture, solitary confinement and death.
The Qing Dynasty reasserted control of Xinjiang in the 19thcentury. Xinjiang, population ten million, is in northwest China and borders Pakistan’s Gilgit Baltistan to the south. The Uyghurs are Turkic people, linguistically, culturally and ethnically close to Central Asia, despite a long history of Chinese rule. In 1933 and again in 1944, ETIM or East Turkestan Islamic Movement, tried to secede and China responded ruthlessly. Chinese officials deny the existence of the internment camps, and have hinted at terrorist activity in Xinjiang, but there is no evidence of this.
Many of the Han, the predominant Chinese group, have migrated to Xinjiang in another effort toward Sinification of Xinjiang. This Sinification was proceeding at a languid pace until a couple of years ago when Chen Quanguo arrived. Quanguo had created an intense surveillance system in Tibet from 2011-2016 and was so successful in crushing dissent there, that his system has been implemented in Xinjiang.
It is this century’s new Gulag. And is considered pre-genocidal. Reminiscent of the Rohingya genocide by Myanmar.
Teachers ask children to spy on parents and report their praying or reading the Qur’an, neighbors spy on neighbors, the entire population is monitored through GPS technology and DNA-sampled. Men are sent to internment camps, and satellite images show expansion of the internment camps, and in some villages men cannot be seen, only women and children. There are ghost towns where no one talks to others. Women are sent to internment camps also.
Ramadan is banned, no beards or veils can be publicly visible, passports have to be surrendered and saying salam-alaikum can send you to an internment camp. Copies of the Qur’an have been burned and mosques have been closed down. Factories and hospitals are converted into re-education camps. When they come a black hood is placed over the head, and in the internment camps prison uniforms, shaved heads and political indoctrination begin. Baths are rare and washing of hands and feet is not allowed, as it resembles ablution. If the prisoners comply, they are released; if they do not, insanity or death await. Those who have left the internment camps and then China itself have told the same story of conditions in Xinjiang.
Assimilation into the Chinese mold takes the form of internment camps and orphanages, both of which are overflowing. Communistically called “child welfare guidance centers” these massive orphanages house Uyghur children separated from their parents, where they are locked up like farm animals in a shed. Sinification of these children, needless to say, is easy.
Rebiya Kadeer, President of the World Uyghur Council said: “The real intent is to eliminate Uyghurs as a distinct ethnic group”. Turkey and Malaysia have protested but the most vocal protest has been from the most unlikely places: US Vice-President Mike Pence called on the Chinese government to release the one million prisoners that it is holding in re-education camps for political indoctrination and denunciation of religious beliefs. US Senator Marco Rubio and American UN representative Nikki Haley have been similarly excoriating.
China has arrested 50 Uyghur women married to Pakistani men in Gilgit-Baltistan. And Pakistan has done nothing in response.
Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Religious Affairs, Pir Noorul Haq Qadri, said strict regulations and laws fuel rather than counter extremism. To promote religious harmony, China should exercise patience, the minister told China’s ambassador to Pakistan, Yao Jing. He also suggested that a delegation of Pakistani scholars should visit Xinjiang to help.
CPEC is a $62 billion investment by China. It is a game-changer for Pakistan, economically, no doubt. Yet, why is President Xi Jinping dealing with a country that is 90% mentally ill, being that he thinks that Islam is a mental illness and the majority in Pakistan is infected by an “ideological virus called Islam”? We should not forget that China voted against Pakistan in FATF, the Financial Action Task Force.
Canceling the Dutch cartoon contest was important, and kudos to Religious Affairs Minister Qadri for protesting to China. Seems Pakistan is trying to be the voice of the Muslim world. These efforts are a good start but have not continued with the war in Yemen. More on that travesty another day.
(Dr Mahjabeen Islam is a writer and an addiction and family medicine physician practicing in Ohio. - mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com)
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