By: IBRAHIM Jaafar
Muslims in Kashmir may find themselves in a Xinjiang-style dysfunctional state thanks to Chinese technology and Narendra Modi Hindu nationalism.
Days after violent riots in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang and homeland of the mostly Muslim Uighurs, in July 2009, Chinese authorities took the drastic move of shutting down the Internet and all other communications. For 10 months, the entire region which was a home to more than 20 million residents was cut off from the world.
A decade later, just across the border, Indian authorities cut Internet, mobile, and even postal communication in Muslim-majority Kashmir as they stripped the state of its special autonomy. Although, a limited number of mobile phones were allowed to function on October 14th, Kashmir for the most part remains isolated to this day, and no one knows when communication will be restored. Thus, One wonders if India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi is taking a page from the Chinese book there.
Since 2017, the repression has taken an even darker turn, with the building of massive concentration camps hosting upward of 1.5 million Uighurs, few of whom have been charged with any crime.
Uighur Muslims are facing genocide by the Chinese state, and both India and China are using their own tactics to oppress Uighur and Kashmiri people.
It was unfortunate quirks of colonialism and history that led each Muslim majority region to become an unwilling part of a larger neighbor. Kashmir became part of India in 1947 in a move that remains contested, while Xinjiang became part of the newly founded People Republic of China in 1949, after a military invasion that ended a short-lived independent Turkic Muslim state. Neither have had referendums or any form of self-determination, making them de facto modern colonies.
In fact, Kashmir and Xinjiang, which are separated by the Himalayas, share many worrying similarities.
Both Kashmir and Xinjiang are Muslim-majority places that have ended up in non “Muslim majority countries, and that identity has been a source of some of their problems.
Not surprisingly, over the past decades, both regions have seen waves of militarism, conflict, and repression. More recently, though, it is the rise of global ethno-nationalism, a phenomenon seen in the West too, that is driving more fierce state-led oppression.
In fact, Islamophobia and online hate against Muslims has been rising in both countries. India has been seeing rising hate crimes, including the growth of vigilantes and lynch mobs, targeting Muslims across the country. In China, discussions about topics like the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, photos of the Dalai Lama, or even photos of Winnie the Pooh can not be found because of censorship, but you can find plenty of anti-Muslim content.
In Kashmir, surveillance technology, some of it possibly sourced from the very companies enabling Chinese repression in Xinjiang, are creeping in. Hikvision, a Chinese state-controlled company and one of the world largest developers of sophisticated CCTV surveillance systems, had contracts with Chinese police in Xinjiang, and is now exporting technology to India, according to a recent report from the Carnegie Endowment. Alongside CCTV systems, the use of drones and other aerial vehicles to monitor mosques and the movement of Kashmiris has become pervasive, and there is even a smart border that resembles Chinese efforts to limit the movement of people along the Xinjiang and Tibet borders.
Beyond the shutdown and the growing surveillance network, there is also worrying rhetoric from Modi's far-right Hindu nationalist government. There is talk about moving Hindu migrants to Kashmir and allowing Indian and foreign businesses to exploit the resource-rich region, enabled by the removal of laws that forbid non-Kashmiris from owning land in Kashmir. This echoes what has happened in Xinjiang. Encouraged by state policies in the 1950s and 60s, and by economic opportunities in more recent years, Han Chinese now nearly equal the Uighur population in the region, and vastly outnumber them in the capital, Urumqi. Chinese businesses have invested billions in exploiting natural resources.
For now, the best hope for Kashmir lies in the fact that India has not yet gone as far down the authoritarian path as China. There remains a civil society, although one under increasing pressure. There are several cases going through various stages of the court system that seek to force the government to end the shutdown, and respect Kashmiri human rights. But none of them will come to fruition overnight, and some worry that the courts are slowing things down deliberately, perhaps because of pressure from the Modi's government.
Ten years ago, it was Xinjiang. Today, its Kashmir. Tomorrow, it could be whatever remains in the globe of muslim majority region.