Think of the genocides that have taken place in the past. Picture the hardened faces of the perpetrators you’ve seen in photographs on historical documentaries. Now imagine a British Foreign secretary standing beside these perpetrators, shaking hands with them, gushing about how much he values their relationship. It seems unthinkable.
As a Uyghur, I don’t need to imagine this though – it happened today when James Cleverly traveled to China to stand beside the men who are attempting to destroy my people.
Cleverly will be well aware of China’s treatment of Uyghurs. Xi Jinping initiated his genocidal campaign against them as far back as 2016. The last few years have seen the largest incarceration of an ethnic group since the Holocaust. Uyghur survivors who have escaped have described torture, starvation, sterilisation, and horrific instances of gang rape in the so-called ‘re-education camps’ that are now ubiquitous in the Uyghur homeland. It is estimated that over one million Uyghurs are currently in these internment camps.
For Muslims outside the camps, Xi has made Orwell’s 1984 an everyday reality. They live under a suffocating surveillance infrastructure. The Uyghur region now resembles a high-tech prison, using surveillance systems like the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP), called China’s ‘Big Brother App’. IJOP, according to Human Rights Watch, collects information about Uyghurs from petrol stations, street checkpoints, CCTV cameras, communities and schools to monitor every aspect of innocent people’s lives. China has even collected the DNA of Uyghurs, under the guise of a public health programme, to improve its surveillance. Unfortunately, some of China’s mass surveillance technology has been used in the UK, with Hikvision cameras used here for CCTV.
In addition to the camps and mass surveillance, the US Bureau of International Labour Affairs estimates that around 100,000 Uyghurs are being used for forced labour in China, but the real number is most likely significantly higher. The products produced in these factories have found their way into international supply chains, and even been sold in the UK. Despite being presented with strong evidence for this, the UK government has resisted calls for stricter import controls and comprehensive business audits.
Much of what is happening in so-called Xinjiang is hidden by China’s totalitarian state, but disturbing images have still been made public. In 2019, drone footage appeared online showing blindfolded, shackled detainees at a train station in China. And in 2022, thousands of mug shots of Uyghur prisoners were leaked, showing the scale of China’s incarceration programme. Other leaked classified documents and speeches clearly show that Xi Jinping has had a personal role in these atrocities.
For Uyghurs overseas, the anguish does not end. China’s oppressive reach does not stop at its own borders. I, like many others, have haunting personal stories about my time in China. Communicating with my family members is perilous, my last interaction with my own family was in January 2017. Earlier this year, I received the heart-breaking news that my sister had died. The person who told me this warned me not to contact my family afterwards, ‘for their safety’. Just days ago, I learned that a 40-year-old family friend in north west China had mysteriously died in prison. These ‘heart attack’ deaths in custody are frequent. In reality, they are often the result of torture or severe conditions.
Beijing often uses family members still inside China as leverage to silence those who have fled abroad. Many Uyghurs outside China, upon discovering the fate of their loved ones in the concentration camps, choose to remain silent to protect them from worse treatment.
Unfortunately as well, it does not seem that China’s approach to the Uyghurs is softening. This week, President Xi visited Xinjiang, his first visit there in over a year. While there, he called on his officials to preserve the ‘hard-won social stability’ in the region. According to the state broadcaster, Xi also ‘stressed that top priority must always be given to maintaining social stability… and we must use stability to guarantee development.’ These comments make it clear that the Chinese president is committed to his genocidal policy.
This is the context to James Cleverly’s trip to China today. As he shook hands with Chinese officials, we could not see the Muslim women China has sterilised, the bulldozed Mosques, or the hundreds of thousands kept in concentration camps. But they exist, and they should not be forgotten.
Cleverly’s visit could have been an opportunity: he could have risen to the occasion and publicly criticised China’s genocide. Instead, he says that he raised human rights concerns privately in ‘every single one’ of his meetings with Chinese officials, and argued that ‘engaging with China doesn’t mean that we shy away from the tough conversations.’
This will not be enough for the Uyghurs of China. And history will not look kindly on Cleverly’s chummy photographs with the perpetrators of my people’s genocide.
Comments