China is guilty by investing in infrastructure, providing free education … and forcing tourists to pay to enter Xinjiang’s most sacred mosque
SCMP Columnist
My Take
by Alex Lo
21 Jan, 2024
It’s that dreaded G-word again. Given the dangerous state of the world, but especially in Palestine, where do you think “the greatest persecution of Muslims at the hands of non-Muslims since at least the Yugoslav wars is taking place”? In the parallel universe of the US news media, it’s China, of course!
“The silent genocide of Uygurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang is the greatest persecution of Muslims at the hands of non-Muslims since at least the Yugoslav wars,” so thundered, last Friday, an op-ed from The Hill, the most widely circulated publication in Washington, that is, throughout the US Congress and the White House. “China is conducting what Israel’s harshest critics accuse the Israeli Defense Forces of: a systemic cleansing of innocent Muslims at the hands of infidels. That genocide is also a guarded secret …”
“Silent”? “Guarded secret”? Seriously! Until recently, you couldn’t open a newspaper or a website from the Anglo-American media without reading about how Beijing was intent on wiping out the Uygurs. And if you tried to point out that their population was growing and that their birth rate far exceeded the dominant Han Chinese population, the critics said well, it was all about wiping out their culture and language.
If you also point out that the vast majority of Uygurs freely speak their own language at home and in public, and that their culture is actually showcased – showcased! – as a tourist attraction, well, that’s just screaming cultural genocide!
As a report from CBS News puts it this month, “What we didn’t see was evidence of the detention centres and prison …” Absence of evidence is evidence enough that they must exist because they have been hidden away. Okay?
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CBS continues: “The government has been investing heavily in Xinjiang, including a multibillion-dollar high-speed train. Everywhere we saw evidence of the eye-watering money China is spending on infrastructure, like wind farms, and tourist development. The message: forget human rights abuses, take in the sights.”
Are there military roadblocks everywhere, guarded by heavily-armed soldiers? Not quite, reported CBS, but that’s just more invisible repression: “At night in Urumqi, we did see some heavy security presence. But overall, with facial recognition cameras everywhere, the policing and the atmosphere were relaxed …” Relaxed?
“In the Xinjiang bazaars, Uygurs have been Disneyfied. Even the sacred Id Kah Mosque sells tickets to tourists,” it said.
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Selling tickets before allowing tourists into the most sacred mosque! If that’s not cultural genocide, I don’t know what is. So is investing heavily in infrastructure, providing free education and healthcare, building more roads and highways, mosques, schools and hospitals.
But guess what IS NOT genocide according to US media and Washington: murdering en masse the civilian population of you-know-who, especially women and children; bombing an entire territory with American-made weapons; levelling mosques, schools, hospitals, universities, historical sites … and killing and jailing journalists by the hundreds, and targeting medics and UN workers in complete disregard of the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war. No, that’s not genocide, more like blood libel.
The Hill’s editorial complains that the Arabs have failed to see China as the worst genocidal monster against Muslims: “In June, Arab League representatives visited Xinjiang, only to conclude that the reports of the genocide are false. That same month, [Palestinian leader] Mahmoud Abbas visited Beijing and supported Chinese policies in Xinjiang.”
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Obviously, the Arabs have no idea who’s really persecuting and killing their brethren.
“To prevent Beijing from becoming the dominant external power in the Middle East,” The Hill argued, “the United States should make China, among Middle Easterners, a synonym for the genocide.”
The State Department must get on with it, it says, as does its main propaganda organ, the US Agency for Global Media, which runs such august outlets of stellar journalism as Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.
“A synonym for genocide”? I think Middle-Easterners have already identified, correctly, that one.
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