Uyghurs in China II
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“I Know you! I know your address. I know your face. I know your name.”
Surprised, I glanced up from my phone to see a stranger getting in the face of my girlfriend, who was cringing away from him, eyes downcast.
What the-
I stepped up, and got into his space as he spun around to face me; now it was his turn to be surprised. He hadn’t expected a man to be there.
He was a short, plump little Chinese man, maybe in his early twenties. He eyed me for a moment, and when I asked loudly: “Who the hell are you?”, he just smirked and stepped away into the crowd, vanishing into the bustling street. I turned to my girlfriend:
“What was that about?”
“Oh, it happens all the time. It’s because of my activism for the Uyghurs”.
Seriously? We were studying together at university in Scotland, half the world away from China. She was half-Uyghur herself, and had only recently come out of her shell with me about her advocacy for their rights. To learn that she was subjected to regular harassment like this was an incredible shock. We live in a free country, right? That harassers could strike at her regularly in the UK in the open, apparently with impunity, was for me unfathomable.
Turns out, the Chinese state has a long reach.
That night, in bed, I got to thinking. Why would my girlfriend be targeted that way? She was no professional or high-ranked activist, just a student passionate about raising awareness of the plight of her people. In person, she was one of the most gentle and harmless individuals you could imagine. How could such a woman ever be considered dangerous? What was she saying that was so threatening?
Let’s talk about genocide, and about what the Uyghurs have been facing for the last few years.
Here is the UN definition of genocide, as drawn up in Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948:[1]
“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
- Killing members of the group;
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
This legislation was passed in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, when the world looked at the crimes of the Axis powers and swore Never Again. Research was conducted on the origins and nature of genocide. Where it comes from, what causes it to begin and escalate, and how to identify and prevent it before it proceeds to full-scale mass killing. The definition was written out with the aim of preventing this crime, rather than simply identifying it after-the-fact. By then, it’s too late.
The international nonpartisan organisation Genocide Watch, which studies the process of genocide and monitors its progression worldwide, has found that genocides proceed according to ten stages, beginning with innocuous-seeming ‘us-and-them’ classification, and steadily escalating to extermination and, ultimately, to denialism.[2]
Here is Genocide Watch’s declaration of a Genocide Emergency Alert for Xinjiang. It identifies the situation there as a Stage 9 genocide, meaning that they fear the extermination has already begun:
This has been brewing for some time.
Xinjiang province is no stranger to regional strife, and the decades since its annexation by the PRC in 1949 have seen both large-scale Han immigration to the province, as well as attempts to subdue the region and integrate it more fully into wider China. Whereas in 1950, Uyghurs were about 70% of the population of Xinjiang, they are on their way to being a minority in the province.[3]
Separatist conflict in the region is a continuation of tension that has been building since 1990 or so, with the fall of the Soviet Union. At that time, many ethnic groups in Central Asia were able to secure a ‘homeland’ nation where they were the majority. Uyghurs were an exception to this trend, their separatist movements suppressed by military means. A notable example of this was the Baren incident in 1990, when regional protests were met with a military response that included actions by armed police, tanks and fighter jets, and likely led to the deaths of some 1600 Uyghur protesters[4] .
After 2001, the Chinese state began to characterise its response to Uyghur separatism as countermeasures to Islamic extremism, and although this was briefly met with approval by the United States and the International community, by 2003 concerns were once again raised that the Chinese response to unrest in the region was disproportionate.[5] Serious violence broke again out in 2009, with Uyghur riots in Urumqi leading to nearly 200 deaths.[6] This phase of unrest lasted until 2016, when Beijing seems to have implemented a new policy for Xinjiang.
A detention facility in Xinjiang.[7]
In August of that year, Chen Quanguo (陈全国)[8] was appointed as the Communist Party Secretary of Xinjiang province.[9] He’s known as a firebreather, with a Judge-Dredd-like reputation which he acquired during his time as Party Secretary of Tibet. His task there was to pacify the province, and he was notable for draconian policies, including blanket surveillance, massive police presence, and the forced introduction of Han individuals into Tibetan households.[10][11] These measures seem to have impressed Beijing, and it looks like they saw the need for his methods in Xinjiang.
Chen Quanguo, Architect of the current programme of Uyghur oppression in Xinjiang.[12]
By the spring of 2017, a new policy appears to have been implemented in Xinjiang known by the acronym fanghuijiu (访惠聚), which profiled the entirety of the Uyghur population through door-to-door interviews, the analysis of mobile data, internet consumption, and even biometric data including blood and tissue samples.[13] Processing the data using high-capacity machine-learning software, it seems that members of the population were ranked according to measures such as ‘trustworthiness’. Those who failed to reach some threshold of acceptability were detained. It is at this time that we start to see evidence of camps and mass-internment.[14]
However, due to the secretive nature of the policy, the international community only became aware of China’s new new, hardline stance on the Uyghurs in May 2018, following information leaks,[15] satellite imagery,[16] and drone footage.[17]
A frame from leaked drone footage.
China initially denied the existence of these camps, before pivoting in late 2018 and claiming that they were ‘vocational and re-educational centres’.[18]
But since then, we’ve started to hear accounts from survivors.
Contrary to the claims of many deniers on this platform, there has been a steady trickle of refugees out of Xinjiang. There is a moderately-sized community of Uyghur refugees in Turkey,[19] which they reach mainly via Kazakhstan,[20] having established a community of refugees centred in Istanbul in the 1990s. Kazakhstan itself also has a fair number of such refugees,[21] and there are diaspora communities all around the world.[22] The tales that these people tell are of a very different sort:
Separation of children from their families, and forced assimilation of Han culture:
Forced re-education and brainwashing. Attempts to mould Uyghurs into Han:[23]
Systematic rape:
From the article:
"My job was to remove their clothes above the waist and handcuff them so they cannot move," said Gulzira Auelkhan, crossing her wrists behind her head to demonstrate. "Then I would leave the women in the room and a man would enter - some Chinese man from outside or policeman. I sat silently next to the door, and when the man left the room I took the woman for a shower."
The Chinese men "would pay money to have their pick of the prettiest young inmates", she said.
Some former detainees of the camps have described being forced to assist guards or face punishment. Auelkhan said she was powerless to resist or intervene.
Asked if there was a system of organised rape, she said: "Yes, rape."
"They forced me to go into that room," she said. "They forced me to take off those women's clothes and to restrain their hands and leave the room."
Some of the women who were taken away from the cells at night were never returned, Ziawudun said. Those who were brought back were threatened against telling others in the cell what had happened to them.
Forced sterilisation:
Murder and organ-harvesting:
From the article:
“I was called by my chief surgeon to go to a room near the Urumqi execution grounds to remove the liver and two kidneys from an executed prisoner,” Tohti told me when I spoke to him last year. “It turned out he wasn’t fully dead because they [the Chinese execution squad] shot him through the right chest [intentionally] to knock him out [without killing him], so I would have time to remove his organ.” Tohti could see the man’s still beating heart as he removed his kidneys and liver.
It makes for heavy reading.
These are the charges being laid at China’s door. This is the evidence that they must give an explanation for. I urge you to read through the accounts, then return to the UN definition of genocide given at the beginning of this answer. Ask yourself whether these allegations, and what they imply, warrant the description of genocide by the 1948 Convention’s standard. Come to your own conclusion on whether they rise to, or exceed, that threshold of severity.
If you think that they do reach the standard of genocide, then you’re in good company.[24] Here are voices from the Jewish community, taking the very unusual step of comparing the Xinjiang camps to the Holocaust itself:
And the Chief Rabbi of the UK, Ephraim Mirvis, speaking up:
Anyone who’s familiar with the contempt that the Jewish community holds for making cheap comparisons with the Holocaust will know how extraordinary this statement is. Jews hate people who cry wolf on genocide.
Deniers claim that the allegations are made by a small number of people, who presumably lie for the sake of disseminating anti-Chinese propaganda. They claim that the ‘disappeared’ people are either fabricated, or are not in fact missing. They talk of small numbers of victims and witnesses, easily falsifiable by western propagandists.
Here is a database keeping track of those who have disappeared into the camps. At the time of writing, it has logged and confirmed nearly 14,000 missing people, largely through the testimony of relatives outside of China:
Deniers also point to the apparent lack of refugees and asylum seekers fleeing the country. “Where are the waves of people spilling into neighbouring countries?” they ask, reasoning that an act of genocide will be preceded by massive movements of refugees that will be extremely noticeable and make for regional disturbance.
In normal circumstances this would be true, but there are factors that conspire to make the Xinjiang situation uniquely difficult for would-be refugees. The first thing to consider is the geography of the region:
This is a topographic map of Xinjiang province.[25] It’s a truly vast area, comparable in size to Western Europe, and can be roughly subdivided into two main areas. To the North, sandwiched between Mongolia and Kazakhstan, is the region traditionally known as Dzungaria. Historically, it was the homeland of the Dzungar people, but unfortunately they themselves were exterminated in a genocide conducted by China’s Qing Dynasty in the 18th Century.[26] Now its inhabitants are a mixture of Han, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Uyghur. This area has seen the most Han migration over the last few decades, and only about ten percent of the Uyghur population live here. The Uyghurs are a minority in this region.
To the South is the Tarim depression. The large majority of the Uyghur population live in this area, in a settlement pattern that forms a crescent around oases hugging the mountains to the South and the West of the basin.[27] It happens to be one of the most geographically isolated regions on the planet, holding the vast and arid Taklamakan desert in its interior. Huge mountain ranges hem it in from three directions.
Along its northern edge are the Tian Shan, the ‘Heavenly Mountains’, which rise to a maximum height of nearly 8000 metres above sea level.[28] They are comparable in height to the Himalayas. These ranges demark the borders with Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
To the West are the Pamir ranges.[29] They are contiguous with the Himalayas, and almost as high. These mark the borders with Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and to a certain extent with Pakistan.
To the South are the Himalayas proper. You wanna reach Pakistan or India? You gotta cross ‘em.
To say nothing of the harshness of the terrain and the dangers that vulnerable people would face passing through such ranges, mountain borders are easily policed. This is because any possible mass crossing of these ranges must follow a small number of passes, or natural choke-points which can be guarded with little difficulty. There can be no escape for most Uyghurs to the North, or the West, or the South.
A satellite view of the ranges to the West of Xinjiang. Significant peaks like K2 are marked.[30]
The only alternative is to try to reach Mongolia, over a thousand miles distant from Kashgar and the Southwest Tarim.
Xinjiang, and the Tarim Basin in particular, is a vast geographical trap. An absolute gift to any would-be genocider. In fact, it’s hard to think of a region that would be more difficult to escape as a refugee in the entire world, let alone when trying to evade as technologically sophisticated and powerful an entity as the Chinese state. Which brings us to the second unprecedented aspect to this genocide: the sheer Orwellian technological prowess that’s been deployed in its prosecution.
The crackdown is by far the largest and most technologically sophisticated campaign of mass surveillance and detention ever attempted,[31] and certainly the most secretive. Not only are the people of Xinjiang monitored by cameras in every public space, but their mobile data and metadata is scrutinised and their locations tracked.[32] Virtually every Uyghur’s biometric data is held by the state, including genomic data,[33] and they are required to present papers at regular checkpoints. It is impossible to travel without close scrutiny in Xinjiang, and this is doubly true if you are a Uyghur.
This documentary filmed undercover in Xinjiang gives a taste of just how pervasive the surveillance and control there truly is.
The third factor that stands in the way of would-be refugees is the political orientation of nations that border Xinjiang, on the far side of those enormous mountain ranges. Kyrgyzstan, for example is extremely friendly to the Chinese government and hostile to Uyghurs, and tends to hand refugees back to Chinese authorities when they manage to find them.[34]
China and Pakistan are ‘iron brothers’, and are currently closely aligned.[35] Little sympathy for refugees can be expected there.
Tajikistan is wholly within China’s orbit and has publicly supported their measures in Xinjiang.[36]
Kazakhstan is similarly within China’s sphere of influence and seems to have limited ability to protect even its own citizens from the camps. They appear to be ambivalent about the Uyghurs and their treatment.[37]
So Uyghurs lack the means to easily plan and coordinate with family members to escape without being detected by surveillance. All borders near to hand are ‘guarded’ by hardcore mountain ranges, and are with nations that are aligned strongly with China. When we additionally consider the ‘boiling frog’ effect in play after decades of habituation to government repression, we should not be surprised that we haven’t seen a substantial refugee wave after 2017.
Nobody outside of the Chinese government knows how many people are detained in the camps; the CCP naturally haven’t released figures. Nevertheless, estimates have been attempted through various methods, including interviews with relatives of victims, leaked testimonies, and even using satellite imagery to guess at camp capacities.[38] They suggest anywhere between 0.5 and 1.5 million people, with more attending detention centres on a part-time basis. Even by conservative estimates, this is the largest mass-internment of a group belonging to a particular ethnicity or religion since the Second World War .
To answer the original question: No. The Uighur genocide claims are not bogus. They are deadly real, and China’s tight control of information leakage very nearly let them get away with it undetected. But now some of the evidence is out in the open, and China’s under scrutiny. I’ve seen the narrative on Quora shift into disturbing denialism recently, but it flies in the face of what is actually known so far. You wouldn’t know it from reading Quora, but the world is taking notice. The outrage at China’s actions grows by the day.[39]
Almost all of the other answers to this question are staggeringly wrong, and I wonder at the intentions of some of the authors of those answers. I can’t believe they’re all misled. I can only conclude that this is another manifestation of the technological sophistication[40] that has been bought to bear to make this genocide happen.[41] Because the denialist speech is a part of the genocide. We have a great deal of evidence for these abuses now. Don’t fall for the propaganda. Don’t be a disbeliever of atrocities.[42]
Our fathers vowed to the world, and to future generations:
Never Again.
Don’t let that promise die on your watch.
Happy Easter, 2021.
清明平安
I’m grateful to Veronique Helmridge-Marsillian and Vazily Peste, who helped contribute some sources for this piece.
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