{"id":4481,"date":"2018-11-15T18:25:22","date_gmt":"2018-11-15T18:25:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iuhrdf.org\/en\/2018\/11\/15\/cultural-genocide-how-china-tearing-uyghur-families-apart-xinjiang\/"},"modified":"2018-11-15T18:25:22","modified_gmt":"2018-11-15T18:25:22","slug":"cultural-genocide-how-china-tearing-uyghur-families-apart-xinjiang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/cultural-genocide-how-china-tearing-uyghur-families-apart-xinjiang\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Cultural genocide\u2019: How China is tearing Uyghur families apart in Xinjiang"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Every day, US-based Uyghur journalist Gulchehra Hoja tries to call her family in the Chinese region of Xinjiang. Sometimes she tries up to 20 different numbers, just hoping that someone will pick up.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI know they won\u2019t pick up the phone, but I try \u2026 nobody picks up,\u201d she told CNN in an interview from her office in Washington.<\/span><\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t expect an answer <\/span>because<\/span> 23 of her family members \u2014 including her aunt, her brothers, her cousins \u2014 have disappeared, along with tens of thousands of other ethnic Uyghurs inside enormous state-controlled \u201cre-education camps.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Hoja, who works as a journalist for US government-funded Radio Free Asia (RFA), says her brother was the first in the family to vanish <\/span>in<\/span> September 28, 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is my brother and this is me,\u201d she says, holding up a picture. \u201cThis was taken in summer 2000, it\u2019s my birthday \u2026 this is my last picture with him \u2026. (Now) he is missing. We don\u2019t know where he is now.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Her aunt, who raised her, and then her cousins vanished into Xinjiang\u2019s vast detention system, without any explanation or trial. She says her parents, last she heard, were under house arrest, unable even to go to a doctor without permission. But even they stopped taking her calls a month ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

An estimated one million Uyghurs, <\/span>a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority in western China, are being held in camps across the region, according to a US congressional report.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The Chinese government has never explained the disappearances, which began in 2017, nor said how many people are being held in the camps, which they insist are \u201cvocational training centers\u201d that local \u201cstudents\u201d are happy to attend.<\/span><\/p>\n

Defending his country\u2019s human rights record at a United Nations forum in early November, China\u2019s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Le Yucheng said that his country had made \u201cremarkable progress\u201d in the past four decades<\/a>, including \u201clifting more than a billion people out of poverty.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But many other countries remain harshly critical of Beijing\u2019s record, especially in regards to the Xinjiang camps. More than a dozen states including Australia, Germany <\/span>and<\/span> the United States have called on China to dismantle the camps and release those detained.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey are transformation centers, and they really are aimed at completely altering Uyghur culture and identity. It\u2019s kind of a surreal practice, I would say, that is definitely unprecedented in the 21st century,\u201d Sean Roberts, director of the International Development Studies Program at George Washington University, told CNN.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hoja goes even further. She describes it as \u201ccultural genocide.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2018Brainwashed\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

Beijing has had a long and fractious history with Xinjiang, a massive, nominally autonomous region in the far west of the country that is home to a relatively small population of around 22 million in a nation of 1.4 billion people.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the ruling Communist Party says Xinjiang has been part of China \u201csince ancient times,<\/a><\/span>\u201d<\/span><\/a>it<\/span> was only officially named and placed under central government control after being conquered by the Qing Dynasty in the 1800s.<\/span><\/p>\n

The predominately Muslim Uyghurs, who are ethnically distinct from the country\u2019s majority ethnic group, the Han Chinese, form the majority in Xinjiang, where they account for just under half of the total population.<\/span><\/p>\n

This, however, is changing fast. According to government data<\/a>, in 1953 Han Chinese accounted for just 6% of Xinjiang\u2019s total population of 4.87 million, while Uyghurs made up 75%. By the year <\/span>2000<\/span> the Han Chinese population had grown to 40%, while Uyghurs had fallen to 45% of the total population of 18.46 million.<\/span><\/p>\n

Continued economic development has led to an increase in skilled Han Chinese migrants. The provincial capital Urumqi, Xinjiang\u2019s largest and most prosperous city, is today majority Han Chinese.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey named our homeland Xinjiang \u2026 Uyghurs prefer to call it East Turkistan because our land was called (that) before the Chinese occupied,\u201d Hoja said, looking at the map of her home province. Xinjiang means \u201cnew frontier\u201d in Chinese.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the past decade, perceived \u201cSinocization\u201d across Xinjiang has led to Uyghur unrest \u2014 and bouts of bloody ethnic violence.<\/span><\/p>\n

The region has also been braced by acts of terrorism, often directed at authorities. In reaction, the provincial government, which blames the terrorist attacks on independence-seeking Uyghur extremists, has greatly expanded its efforts to control the local Uyghur population.<\/span><\/p>\n

Under <\/span>direction<\/span> of Xinjiang\u2019s Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, authorities have cracked down hard on the Muslim beliefs and practices of the Uyghur population, including face coverings and long beards<\/a>, Quran study groups and preventing government employees from fasting for Ramadan.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyone can be sent, under the flimsiest of reasons, to \u201cre-education camps,\u201d according to Hoja. \u201cWhen my brother was taken \u2026 my Mum asked like, \u2018Why are you taking my son? What he do?\u2019 And the officer answered back, \u2018His sister\u2019s (in the US), is that not enough to take him?’\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Hoja believes the real reason he was taken was simpler than that. \u201cThey are targeted just because they are Uyghurs.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Hoja claims up to 40% of the province\u2019s Uyghur population, as many as four million people, could currently be held in the \u201cre-education camps.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey are ill-treated there. They are tortured there. Even you cannot speak your own language in there, you are brainwashed,\u201d Hoja alleged.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEvery day before your meal you have to sing a \u2018red\u2019 (communist) song, and say thank you to (Chinese President) Xi Jinping or the Communist Party.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In defense of the government\u2019s policy, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV aired footage inside what they term \u201cvocational training camps,\u201d showing smiling Uyghurs learning Chinese and skills such as sewing.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Hoja challenged the idea that her family was in such desperate need of vocational training that they should be taken to the camps.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy aunt knows more than three languages, she is also retired from the Xinjiang Museum, so what kind of education does she need to take?\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2018The worst feeling in the world\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mamatjan Juma, another Uyghur journalist working for RFA, said not knowing where your family was, or being able to help them, was \u201cthe worst feeling in the world.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEvery day I think of them, the pain is there. Because it\u2019s just like a kind of virus, it\u2019s in your mind, the pain is there every night. They were in my dreams sometimes \u2026 You cannot do anything,\u201d he told CNN.<\/span><\/p>\n

A former teacher from a big family in the Xinjiang city of Kashgar, Juma, said Chinese authorities took away two of his brothers in May 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy last brother, the third one, the youngest brother was taken away this year, in February. And since then I\u2019ve lost contact with my Mom and two of my younger sisters,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like Hoja, Juma feels that working as a journalist in the US has led to negative consequences for his family. From 2010, he began to receive calls from his brother trying to convince him to come home. They only stopped when his brother vanished.<\/span><\/p>\n

Juma said he is most concerned about his mother, who is severely unwell after suffering multiple heart attacks and being sent to <\/span>hospital<\/span> three times. \u201cI don\u2019t know what happened to <\/span>her,<\/span> if she\u2019s been taken away, or something has happened to her,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

He worries for those detained. \u201cOne Uyghur businessman told me that they were left like animals. They don\u2019t have any facilities \u2026 They don\u2019t have enough food,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Chinese government claims its actions in Xinjiang, including the mass detentions and forced home stays by Communist Party officials, are designed to make the province more secure and prosperous.<\/span><\/p>\n

Xinjiang Governor Shohrat Zakir, himself <\/span>a Uyghur<\/span>, told the state-run Xinhua news agency in October<\/a> that since the crackdown \u201cXinjiang is not only beautiful but also safe and stable.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But Juma told CNN Beijing is simply trying to \u201cSinocize\u201d Xinjiang, remove the Uyghurs\u2019 culture and identity and make them more like the Han Chinese majority. \u201cThey call it <\/span>educate<\/span> and civilize, but that\u2019s not the case,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2018Critical location\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

While a large part of the Chinese government\u2019s crackdown in Xinjiang has centered on efforts to \u201ctransform\u201d Uyghurs into model Chinese citizens, Roberts, the associate professor, said there may be ulterior motives for Beijing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at the plans for (Chinese President) Xi Jinping\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative, Xinjiang is a critical location that will serve as the jumping off point for all economic expansion into Central Asia and South West Asia and really into Europe,\u201d he told CNN.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Belt and Road Initiative, a signature policy of Xi\u2019s, plans to create trade corridors between Beijing and the rest of the world, through international infrastructure spending and diplomatic agreements.<\/span><\/p>\n

The name references the Maritime Silk Road, which will run to Africa through South East Asia, and the Silk Road Economic Belt, which will connect Xinjiang to important partners such as Pakistan, Turkey <\/span>and<\/span> Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Belt and Road is part of the reason that there\u2019s such an urgency to clean up the Uyghur population in Xinjiang at the present moment,\u201d Roberts said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat really concerns me is that, if it\u2019s really the last chance to try to transform Uyghurs, what\u2019s the next step if they decide that the Uyghurs can\u2019t be transformed into a passive benign minority that\u2019s loyal to the state?\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the threat of violence or abduction for her and her family, Hoja says she feels obligated to keep speaking out and working to raise awareness for the \u201cvoiceless\u201d Uyghur.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even with everything that\u2019s happened, Hoja says, her dearest wish would be to return home, one day, to Xinjiang. \u201cIt\u2019s my biggest dream \u2026 everybody wants to go back home right?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Source: CNN<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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