By: UMAR ABDURRAHMAN
The Uyghurs or Uygurs are a Turkic ethnicity who live in East and Central Asia. Today, Uyghurs live primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China, China’s northwest that borders Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Mongolia. It has been under Chinese control since 1949, when the communist People’s Republic of China was established. They are one of fifty-five officially recognized ethnic minorities. Uyghurs primarily practice Islam.
Xinjiang is oil and resource rich. As it developed along with the rest of China, the region attracted more Han Chinese, a migration encouraged by the Chinese government.
But that demographic shift inflamed ethnic tensions, especially within some of the larger cities. In 2009, for example, riots broke out in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, after Uighurs protested their treatment by the government and the Han majority. About 200 people were killed and hundreds injured during the unrest.
The Chinese government, however, blamed the protests on violent separatist groups — a tactic it would continue to use against the Uighurs and other religious and ethnic minorities across China.
Xinjiang is also a major logistics hub of Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative , a trillion-dollar infrastructure project along the old Silk Road meant to boost China’s economic and political influence around the world. The Initiative has appointed Xinjiang province as a key area on the Belt as it shares its borders with Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Xinjiang’s increasing importance to China’s global economic aspirations is likely a major reason Beijing is systematically cleansing the Uyghurs.
All of which means China has increasingly tried to draw Xinjiang into its orbit, starting with a crackdown in 2009 following riots in the region and leading up to the implementation of repressive policies in 2016 and 2017 that have curbed religious freedom and increased surveillance of the minority population, often under the guise of combating terrorism and extremism.
The Chinese government justifies its clampdown on the Uyghurs and Muslim minorities by saying it’s trying to eradicate extremism and separatist groups.
The United Nations among other international organisation and allies of China have attempted to intervene. However, China's foreign affairs minister responds similar to that of a letter signed by 15 Western ambassadors, including the envoys of Britain, Canada, France, Switzerland, Germany, Australia and the EU saying Ambassadors should not “interfere in the internal affairs of other countries”.
Uitghurs, haven been forsaken by the Muslim neighboring state brethren ( Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Malaysia and Mongolia), the incapacitated Asian states of Afghanistan, Iraq among others are of no help, the Arab Emirates are sold out while the Muslim world are in slumber, UN and world super powers have failed.
What's the fate of Poor Uyghur Muslim children in state-run orphanages whose parents are either martyrs or alive but sent to concentration camps where they are being forced to denounce Islam and embrace 'Chinese Natianalism'- China's state runned religion?