Ongoing Genocide of the Uyghur People

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists’ most recent census, China is the world’s leading jailer of journalists, with 49 imprisoned as of December 2015. Of those 49, at least 14 are Uyghurs—a startling proportion given that the Turkic-speaking Muslim ethnic group, living in the country’s northwest Xinjiang (East Turkistan) Uyghur Autonomous region, makes up less than one percent of the country’s population. That disproportionation, however, is less surprising to those familiar with the long-fraught relationship between the Uyghur people and China’s authoritarian government.

Uyghurs, unlike the rest of China’s 55 officially designated minority groups (with the other exception being the Tibetans), have a history, albeit a short one, as an independent nation. The region gained independence as the East Turkestan Republic in 1933 and again, after being sacked by the Chinese Muslim army during the Kumul Rebellion, in 1944. The Silk Road region officially came under Communist rule when the party took control of China in 1949.

Since then, the state has sponsored mass migration of the Han Chinese, China’s predominant ethnic group, to Xinjiang (East Turkistan) to support economic development; Han now comprise nearly half the region’s population. Meanwhile, the country’s central government has increasingly portrayed Uyghur separatists, who seek to govern themselves and call the Xinjiang (East Turkistan) region East Turkestan, as terrorists—claims that many human rights activists say are exaggerated and an excuse to justify oppressive policies that curtail Uyghur commercial and cultural activities. There are restrictions on Islamic religious practices, and Uyghur language instruction in schools is being phased out. Reports from the region chronicle a pattern of abuse that includes imprisonment, torture, and disappearances.

Tensions came to a head in July 2009 during a major period of discord between Uyghurs and Han Chinese. A series of riots in Urumqi, Xinjiang (East Turkistan)’s capital, left nearly 200 people dead, Chinese authorities reported, most of them Han. In the wake of the incident, thousands of Uyghurs were arrested and detained, including a number of citizen bloggers who are among the country’s currently imprisoned journalists, and others—as many as 10,000, according to exiled Uyghur leader Rebiya Kadeer—simply disappeared. 

The treatment of citizen journalists in the wake of the riots was a familiar story. Uyghurs’ access to the outside world is severely limited—following the unrest, the government enforced a complete Internet and cell service blackout in the region for close to a year—and those trying to disseminate information outside of the vague, incomplete reporting from the state-run media face severe sanctions. Even Uyghurs reporting on the region from abroad are not exempt; Chinese authorities tried to intimidate D.C.-based Radio Free Asia journalist Shohret Hoshur to abandon his reporting on Uyghurs by detaining three of his brothers still living in Urumqi and charging them with leaking state secrets (two of the brothers were released in December). Hoshur has not been deterred, however; this summer, he told The New York Times he feels an obligation to continue reporting on his homeland. 

Greg Fay, project manager of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, a nonprofit started in 2004 to promote human rights and democracy for the Uyghur people, talked with Nieman Reports about the heavy restrictions on Uyghur journalism. Below are edited and condensed excerpts of that conversation:

What do we know about the 17 Uyghur journalists—and possibly many more—that are currently imprisoned? 
Really very little. Most of them, their prison sentences are not up, but we don’t know the status of many of them. That’s pretty par for the course; it’s very difficult for us to get word from people who are out of prison because the last thing they want to do is violate this extreme restriction on information about the Uyghur people that China enforces so strictly.

One prominent Uyghur scholar/citizen journalist imprisoned is the Bejing-based professor Ilham Tohti. His website was a little different from the Uyghur websites operating at the time because his website was in Chinese. His purpose was to encourage communication between Han Chinese, Uyghurs, and all ethnic groups in China; he was trying to create a forum in which people could interact with one another and learn about issues impacting the region. He was arrested after the riots but later released and forced to move his website to overseas servers, but last year, he was imprisoned and sentenced to life, charged with separatism. That was really the nail in the coffin of this Uyghur citizen journalist movement.

Heavy government restrictions and tight control of information make independent reporting difficult in all of China. In what ways is the Uyghur region unique?
The decimation of the Uyghur Web in 2009 is really unique. The government flicked a switch and cut off all Internet access in this region for 10 months [after the riots], from July 2009 to May 2010, and in doing so also took down all of the most popular Uyghur websites, places where these important conversations about the unrest were taking place. In general, it’s just more difficult for people to access certain tools that are available elsewhere in China, like tools to circumvent the Chinese firewalls or Sina Weibo, the Chinese microblog. We’ve had Uyghur people reporting difficulties accessing these sites, even registering their Uyghur-sounding names, and when they go to post things, we’ve heard reports of lag times of weeks and sometimes it just won’t go up [at all]. That goes far above and beyond what Chinese users experience elsewhere.

And though state-run media across China is heavily restricted, sometimes journalists have a bit more leeway, but you just don’t hear about state journalists in the Uyghur region crossing any lines. Media elsewhere in China don’t really report on Uyghur issues because they acknowledge that this is one area that is simply off-limits.

What challenges do foreign journalists reporting on the Uyghur region face?
There are plenty of restrictions even to get into the region. No international outlets have a bureau in the region or any reporters stationed there. I think also part of what’s really necessary for conducting journalism in China is to have news assistants [such as translators and mediators] regionally, and I think that would be a real challenge for someone to do that in the Uyghur region. There have been several news outlets that have tried to do critical reporting and they have just found that access is so limited; they’re trailed and harassed by authorities, especially when some kind of sensitive incident has taken place. And were these journalists to get access, it would be extremely dangerous for anyone who spoke to them. There have been cases of reprisals facing people who have reported on issues in the region and anybody who is brave enough to act as a source would be putting themselves and their families at risk.

[Following the riots], the U.S. media did its best to try to figure out what was going on at that time, but their access was extremely limited. Foreign media was trying to get the story but, at the end of the day, the kind of hard, investigative reporting that you would really need to find out what happened, particularly to the hundreds of Uyghur individuals who disappeared after the incident, who were rounded up, who were imprisoned—that never happened. There are still many, many questions surrounding those events: reports of extrajudicial killings, reports of lack of due process, and disappearances.

How does the persecution of Uyghur journalists mirror the Chinese government’s treatment of the Uyghur population as a whole?
It’s very reflective of the kind of small space Uyghur people have for freedom of expression. The suppression of journalists prevents not only the outside world but even people in the Uyghur region from knowing what’s going on. What’s going on now is an intensified crackdown on religious practice, limits on mobility and the ability to get a passport; there’s even been an introduction in the region of a new form of identification card that will prevent people from moving between cities. So these other freedoms—freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, freedom of religion—are all made that much more vulnerable by the silencing of Uyghur journalists.

How essential is a free press in promoting peace in the region?
I think it’s absolutely essential. Without a free press, people have no means of expressing what’s going on. There’s rapid change taking place in the Uyghur homeland and Uyghur people generally have very little say over what’s happening and how it’s happening. Taking away the mechanisms through which people can discuss these changes and make known how they would like to see development of their homeland take place is going to lead to unrest.

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Genetic studies show that the Uyghurs are the modern hybrid descendants of the indigenous Indo-European of the Tarim Basin and Turkic tribes that inhabited Central Asia. The Uyghurs are not Chinese, nor do they share any linguistic, cultural, religious, or historical ties to China or Chinese culture. In fact, the Uyghurs were largely independent of China and Chinese culture until more recent times (post 1884).

The term ‘Uyghur’ in proto-Turkic means “united or allied”, it has also been defined as “union” or “confederation” and first appeared in recorded history in the 6th century BCE according to ancient Chinese and Indian records. Though it was until the early 5th Century CE that the term Uyghur played a more prominent role in shaping Central Asiatic history, the Uyghur during this term referred to a confederation of 18 Indo-European (Tocharian) and Turkic tribes inhabiting present day East Turkistan (the Xinjiang (East Turkistan) Uyghur Autonomous Region), Kengsu (Gansu), and modern day western Mongolia. These Uyghur tribes we later play a crucial role in the establishment and later dissolution of the KokTurk Khaganate , and ultimately in 744 CE the Uyghur confederation would overthrow the KokTurk Khaganate and establish the Uyghur Khaganate, with it’s capital being in present day Mongolia. Though in 840 the Uyghur Khaganate would be overthrown and several of the Uyghur tribes inhabiting Mongolia would migrate southward and westward, intermixing with the local Uyghur tribes inhabiting the northeastern sections of contemporary East Turkistan (Xinjiang (East Turkistan)).

Though it must be noted that according to genetic studies, the intial intermixing of the native peoples of the Tarim Basin (Tocharians) and the Turkic peoples that led to the “creation” of the hybrid Uyghurs took place between 2200 and 2800 years ago. Furthermore, genetic DNA testing shows that modern Uyghurs range from 64% European (Tocharian) DNA and 36% Asiatic (Turkic) admixture overall with those in the South and Western parts of East Turkistan having a slightly higher level of European DNA and those in the Northeastern sections (bordering Mongolia having a slighlty higher level of Asiatic (Turkic) DNA.

Ultimately, the majority of the Uyghurs are descendants of the original inhabitants of East Turkistan (Tarim Basin/Jungar Basin/Turpan Basin) more so than the Uyghur tribes of what was then Turkic Mongolia.

Also feel free to read this article to understand the Uyghur-China conflict.

Contemporary Colonialism: The Uyghurs versus China

According to recent Chinese government policies and the actions that it has taken in recent years it is very likely that China is trying to exterminate the Uyghurs. Further a recent seminar that took place at Hudson Institute on May 4, 2018 with experts on the issues of Uyghurs and human rights such as Professor Rian Thum, Professor James Millward, and Senior Researcher from Freedom House Sarah Cook; suggests that China is more clear than ever before on their intent to exterminate the Uyghurs.

1. Since Communist China (People’s Republic of China) officially occupied the Uyghur homeland of East Turkistan on December 20, 1949 it has been settling millions of ethnic Han Chinese to “develop and modernize” the region.
2. Unemployment rates amongst Uyghurs in 2010 was over 70% compared to less than 1% amongst Han Chinese settlers in the Uyghur homeland. Since China’s mass incarceration of Uyghurs into “political re-education” dubbed concentration camps starting spring of 2016, the unemployment rate amongst Uyghurs not in the camps have skyrocketed to over 90%.
3. 46 Nuclear Tests were conducted in the Uyghur homeland from 1964–1996 which directed resulted in the deaths of over 800,000 Uyghurs, and left millions more with various cancerous diseases as a result of exposure to nuclear radiation.
4. According to official Chinese documents, the Chinese government has prevented the “illegal births” of over 15 million Uyghurs since 1979 through forced abortions.
5. Annually thousands of Uyghurs are executed for ambiguous “political crimes”, and tens of thousands are jailed for similar ambiguous “political crimes” namely under the pre-texts of removing the “three evils: extremism, separatism, and terrorism”.
6. Starting in Spring of 2016, China has sent over 1 million Uyghurs to “political re-education” dubbed concentration camps, however these numbers don’t include the cities, thus researchers estimate that up to 5 million Uyghurs are currently in concentration camps as of January 2018.
7. Uyghur language has been banned from being taught in schools, and official use. In fact, as of December 2017, the Chinese government has rounded up all books, texts, and documents in the Uyghur language and burned them in public.
8. All Uyghur mosques, churches, temples, and historical sites have been demolished or altered and often turned into Chinese propaganda offices in a bid to eradicate the Uyghur & Turkic identity of the region.
9. According to the Chinese government, as of November 2017, over 18.8 million peoples’ DNA samples, retina scans, and voice prints were collected as part of a mandatory “free health screening” across the Uyghur homeland of East Turkistan.
10. According to a Chinese government policy enacted in December 2017, at least one Han Chinese (usually a male) is sent to live in Uyghur homes to “monitor them and ensure their loyalty to the Chinese state”. This policy is called the “relatives policy” and is designed to “boost ethnic unity and patriotism” according to the Chinese government.
11. In line with it’s Relatives Policy, China is forcing Uyghur women to marry Han Chinese male again to “boost ethnic unity and patriotism”.

Again all of these 11 points are real issues that are actually acknowledge in part by the Chinese government, yet all of this is a direct violation to the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Essentially, it is already a Genocide that has been occurring for quite a while, however should the international community continue to remain silent on the issue, then the world will bear witness to a large scale genocide in the 21st century.

Although Mao Zedong had initially promised the Uyghurs the right self-determination and a choice for independence or federated republic status (like that of the Soviet Union), he went back on his promises and established the so called Xinjiang (East Turkistan) Uyghur Autonomous Region in 1955. Yet the Chinese government would gradually launch policies to settle millions of Han Chinese to “modernize and develop” the Uyghur homeland, significantly changing the demography of the Uyghur homeland. Furthermore, in 1958 Mao launched the large-scale collectivization programwhich forced the Uyghurs to abandon their indigenous customs and traditions, forcing them to learn Chinese and embrace Chinese culture.

During the Cultural Revolution, hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs were  massacred by the Chinese regime for being “counter revolutionary and nationalists”. It was during this period that China began to rewrite the history of the Uyghurs and East Turkistan, distorting the realities and claiming that “Xinjiang (East Turkistan) (East Turkistan), has always been a part of China since ancient times, and the Uyghurs are part of the larger Chinese family.” Millions of Uyghurs would be killed by various means, including an estimated 750,000 who died as a result of 46 nuclear tests in the Uyghur homeland. Yet over the decades, Uyghurs continued to resist Chinese domination, with numerous uprisings and demonstrations.

Following the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan in 1989, Uyghur militants launched an armed uprising on April 5, 1990, which was brutally crushed. However, with the independence of their Central Asian brethren in 1991, Uyghurs once again pushed to strive for theirs. Due to an increase in trade relations with the international community, China began to assert its economic dominance into Central Asia and across the globe to crush any sign of Uyghur political activity. Taking advantage of 9/11, China launched its own ‘War on Terror’ to crush any and all forms of Uyghur dissent. Ultimately, China used the pretext of “combatting terrorism, and extremism” to ban the teaching of the Uyghur language and restrict religious and cultural practices, while making way for the influx of Han Chinese settlers.

Over the years China intensified its repressive policies on the Uyghurs and in 2009 demonstrations erupted all across East Turkistan to protest the policies and demanding equality. The protests were brutally crushed and hundreds of Uyghurs were killed and tens of thousands more were detained as the international community stood in silence. In 2014 the Chinese government sentenced Ilham Tohti, a well-known Uyghur economist professor, to life in prison on “separatism” charges after he asked the Chinese government to uphold its own constitution and honor Uyghur autonomous rights.

Now, new settlement projects are being constructed to accommodate Han Chinese settlers. Restrictions on freedom of movement have been imposed, and tens of thousands of Uyghurs are being detained on “terrorism” charges. On July 28, 2014, thousands of Uyghurs in the city of Yarkent protested against discrimination, inequality, extrajudicial detentions, and mass executions. The result was a massacre of over 2,000 Uyghurs, all whom were labeled as “terrorists”, and again the international community stood silent. China has barred Uyghurs from obtaining passports, observing religious practices such as fasting during Ramadan, attending religious centers, holding large gatherings, and imposing forced abortion on Uyghur families; turning the Uyghur homeland into an Orwellian state. Such restrictions have forced thousands of Uyghurs to take a perilous route and emigrate out of East Turkistan, leading to a Uyghur refugee crisis largely unheard of in the media and ignored by the international community.

Yet, at the same time it has pushed disaffected Uyghurs into the arms of rebel groups and terrorist groups fighting in Syria, with promises of one day assisting the Uyghurs in fighting against the Chinese occupation. On January 1, 2016 China launched a new Counter-terrorism law specifically designed to target the Uyghurs at home and abroad, leaving the Uyghurs extremely vulnerable amidst international silence. Additionally, China’s continued assimilationist and colonial policies have radicalized the Uyghurs, forcing them to turn towards violence as a recourse.