Sunday, August 19, 2018

Muslims in China


China’s western province is Xinjiang and borders Muslim Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The Muslims living in Xinjiang are called Uighurs. China took over East Turkestan in 1949 and quickly made it a Province of the PRC and named it Xinjiang. Half the population of Xinjiang is Muslim. We can assume that some of the Uighurs would push for independence from China and generally not get along with non-Muslims. 

The Chinese and the Russians have a lot of experience with Muslims and their history reflects their quick suppression of dissidents.  See article below:

China accused of sending Muslim minority Uighurs to re-education camps, by Ann Corcoran, 8/18/18.

The story is bubbling around on the internet and will surely soon break out on cable TV.

The Uighurs (sometimes spelled Uyghurs) are people of Turkish origin.   https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/china-detaining-least-120000-muslim-uighurs-re-education-camps-1656603

Although, not a refugee story yet, it could be in a few years down the road. Once Trump is no longer our President, and if there has been no serious reform of refugee law, the refugee industry will be busy finding more diversity for your towns and cities.

One thing that I find fascinating is that so far I haven’t seen the international Islamic activists seriously attacking the Chinese for Islamophobia in the media (what! no Chinese CAIR?) and definitely not on Chinese soil through terror attacks.

From The Economist: China suggests its camps for Uighurs are just vocational schools While the Wall Street Journal has a more provocative title for its news yesterday:

China’s Uighur Camps Swell as Beijing Widens the Dragnet. Here is a bit of The Economist story where the Chinese say they are preventing their Muslim region of the country from becoming “China’s Syria.”

DURING the past year campaigners, academics and journalists have been shedding light on the detention for “re-education” of vast numbers of ethnic-Uighur Muslims in China’s far-western province of Xinjiang. 

On August 13th the topic was raised at the UN, when experts undertaking an audit of China’s policies towards ethnic minorities said they had heard that as many as 1m Uighurs are being locked away. 

Hu Lianhe, a Communist Party official flown in for the hearing, said allegations that the party was sending Uighurs to indoctrination camps were “completely untrue”. He explained that some petty criminals in Xinjiang were being assigned to “vocational education” facilities for “rehabilitation and reintegration”, but did not say how many.

The party appears to think that obligatory periods of forced instruction, sometimes lasting weeks or months, are a good way to tackle the Islamic extremism and secessionist thinking that it says threaten Xinjiang’s stability.

People who have worked or been detained in the centers say that inmates have had to sing Communist Party songs. According to the Washington Post, a few have been made to consume pork and alcohol. In some cases they have been subjected to physical abuse.

But Mr Hu’s rebuttal nonetheless provided slightly more detail than has previously been volunteered by officials. In May China’s foreign ministry told reporters who had visited Xinjiang that it simply “had not heard” of the situation they described.

In an editorial published on August 13th, Global Times, a tabloid with close links to the partyaccused the West of trouble-stirring. It insisted that the party’s strategies had successfully prevented Xinjiang from turning into “China’s Syria”. More here.

Back in 2008 and 2009, I posted several times about Uighurs mostly because some were being held at Guantanamo Bay after having been captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan, see here.


Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

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