Rights teams and Uyghurs residing overseas have strongly condemned a go to to Xinjiang this week by a delegation of Muslim students and clerics from creating nations who voiced help for China’s insurance policies within the far-western area, saying they turned a blind eye to the struggling of persecuted Uyghurs.
The group of greater than 30 Islamic representatives from 14 nations — together with the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Serbia, South Sudan and Indonesia — arrived in Xinjiang on Jan. 8 to go to the cities of Urumqi, Turpan, Altay and Kashgar and to satisfy with authorities officers.
Statements by the top of the delegation, Ali Rashid Al Nuaimi, sparked widespread anger from Uyghurs overseas and a powerful response from U.S.-based Muslim organizations, together with the Council on American Islamic Relations and Justice for All.
Al Nuaimi, chairman of the UAE-based World Muslim Communities Council, and others met with Ma Xingrui, Communist Celebration secretary of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Area, and Erkin Tunuyaz, the area’s chairman, who each thanked them for his or her help of China’s Xinjiang coverage.
Al Nuaimi was quoted by state media as praising efforts by Chinese language authorities to eradicate terrorism and extremism in Xinjiang as the proper technique to defend China’s nationwide pursuits and folks.
Muslims in China additionally have to be loyal to the nation, contribute to its social improvement, stay in concord with others, and take pleasure in being Chinese language, he stated in an interview with China’s Xinhua official information company on Friday.
“Right here we have a look at all Muslims as Chinese language. They need to be pleased with Chinese language nationals,” Al Nuaimi was quoted as saying in a report by China’s CGTN on Wednesday.
China’s Xinjiang coverage has included intrusive surveillance, non secular restrictions, the destruction of mosques, arbitrary arrests, and the detention of an estimated 1.8 million principally Muslim Uyghurs and different Turkic peoples in an unlimited community of internment camps and prisons. Some have been subjected to sexual assaults, pressured labor and compelled sterilizations.
Although the USA and different Western nations have denounced China’s actions, main Muslim nations have defended the Xinjiang coverage, on account of Beijing’s financial and diplomatic energy and their rising indebtedness to China, critics stated.
“Sadly, as a result of profit they get from China, the Muslim world is ignoring China’s atrocity towards Uyghurs and never seeing its ethnic genocidal crime, stated Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish author and journalist who’s a senior fellow on the Cato Institute’s Heart for World Liberty and Prosperity.
“They’re prepared to simply accept China’s interpretation and attempting to enhance their relations with China,” he stated.
Maya Wang, affiliate director within the Asia division at Human Rights Watch, stated the Chinese language authorities has used Muslim governments and Islamic students to whitewash its abuses.
“The truth that these governments and students appeared to show a blind eye in direction of the their brothers’ and sisters’ proper to observe their faith, specifically Islam, may be very disappointing, however then I feel it’s a symptom to the truth that the Chinese language authorities exerts monumental political affect over these nations, governments, and even people’ careers.”
In its “World Report 2023” issued this week, which evaluations human rights practices in almost 100 nations, Human Rights Watch famous that whereas some Uyghurs have been launched from internment camps, Chinese language authorities have additionally sentenced an estimated 500,000 individuals, a lot of whom stay imprisoned.
Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, chairman of Justice for All, instructed RFA on Wednesday that the go to by the Muslim delegation is a part of the Chinese language authorities’s effort to cowl up its repression of the Uyghurs.
“To start with, China is on a mission to confuse the Muslim world about what is occurring to Uyghurs and different Muslim ethnic teams in China,” he stated.
“China’s group of this go to is nothing however to cowl their destruction of Uyghurs below the banner of opposing terrorism, radicalism and separatism,” he stated.
‘Nonetheless attempting to deceive the world’
Others criticized Al Nuaimi immediately for his remark supporting China’s Xinjiang coverage.
Robert McCaw, director of presidency affairs on the Council on American-Islamic Relations, instructed RFA that Al Nuaimi’s statements have been disappointing and that he “distorted actuality.”
“His assertion doesn’t match the truth that Uyghur and different Turkic persons are experiencing,” McCaw stated. “These Arab and Muslim leaders participated within the Chinese language-style Potemkin village propaganda go to.”
“We all know the Chinese language authorities proceed to surveil Muslims, lock them up in prisons and focus camps, proceed forcing them to work as slave labor and assault them bodily and sexually,” he stated.
RFA contacted Ali Rashid Al Nuaimi and Mohamed Bechari, basic secretary of the World Muslim Communities Council, for remark, however didn’t obtain a response.
Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, condemned the students’ go to, calling it a betrayal of “hundreds of thousands of struggling Muslims.”
“China, by inviting so-called World Muslim Communities Council leaders to the Uyghur area, remains to be attempting to deceive the world,” he stated. “It’s a indisputable fact that China has been partaking in a genocidal coverage towards Uyghurs, and on the identical time, China declared struggle in opposition to Islam.”
“This delegation’s go to is a betrayal of Islam [and] the holy ebook, the Quran’s, teachings,” he stated.
Nury Turkel, chair of the USA Fee on Worldwide Spiritual Freedom stated the go to is “a well-staged try on the a part of the Chinese language authorities to problem and undermine worldwide criticism of the federal government’s human rights abuses within the area, together with genocide and spiritual freedom violations.”
“The Chinese language authorities might then use such a go to by international Islamic students to legitimize and even bolster its draconian insurance policies in Xinjiang,” he stated in an announcement.
The Unites States and the parliaments of some Western nations have declared China’s abuses in Xinjiang quantity to genocide and crimes in opposition to humanity. In an August 2022 report, the U.N.’s human rights workplace stated critical rights violations had been dedicated within the context of counter-extremism methods that “might represent worldwide crimes, specifically crimes in opposition to humanity.”
Zumrat Dawut, a Uyghur now residing within the U.S. who was interned in a “re-education” camp and was forcibly sterilized by authorities in Xinjiang, posted on her Fb web page feedback by Uyghurs that she downloaded from the quick video platform TikTok, expressing anger over the delegations go to and help for Chinese language insurance policies within the area.
“Yeah, we’re extraordinarily comfortable!” stated one remark written in Chinese language, as have been the others. “We’re comfortable to loss of life,” stated one other. “Reward to the federal government for doing profitable propaganda,” stated a 3rd.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. Edited by Paul Eckert.
