thought liberation in Xinjiang

12-28-18

 -Uighur children sit outside a locked mosque closed by authorities, in Kashgar Old Town, June 27, 2017  Kevin Frayer—Getty Images

   Local Uighurs, however, were adamant that the disappeared almost never make it out.  A female professional in her 30s in Kashgar confirmed under her breath that next to no one is emerging from the camps, adding that the only ones released are “those who have fallen ill.”  In another hushed conversation in Urumqi, a Uighur businessman in his early 40s explained, “Some people were given medicine to change their thinking, medicine for their minds, and it made them ill.  Only then were they released.”…

  But what the state seeks to cure is not simply religious extremism, nor even religion.  It is Uighur--or Muslim--identity more broadly, which it holds directly responsible for what it sees as continued political resistance.  The 2017 “Regulations on De-extremification” purport to combat “penetration” by religious extremists.  The aim of “reeducation” in the internment camps is, however, much bigger:  to eradicate the Uighur language and Islamic practice, which are represented by the Chinese state as security threats, and castrate Uighur identity for good.

  The internment camps and the threat of being disappeared into them are not about “thought liberation.”  They are about intimidation--keeping Uighurs in a state of fear.  They are an enactment of Han Chinese control and dominance, an aggressive intrusion on the powerless and a violent destabilisation of personhood.  In the final analysis they are intended to break the will of the Uighur nation….

  And all but two of the contacts I had maintained for over two decades were too petrified to see me.  As a Uighur teacher in her 30s from Kashgar put it, “We used to chat a lot, we Uighurs.  But now we don’t talk any more.  We are so afraid of saying the wrong thing.”

  I felt compelled to read George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four when I returned home.  The parallels between that masterpiece and a Xinjiang now in the grip of “de-extremification” and “thought liberation” are astonishing.  In the book’s final part, the protagonist’s government torturer reveals that the state does not “merely destroy our enemies, we change them. . . [So] long as [the heretic] resists us we never destroy him.  We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. . . You will be hollow.  We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”      -Joanne Smith Finley, Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies in the School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University, U.K.     http://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/now-we-dont-talk-anymore

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9-13-18    Farkhad, who calls his wife Jenim (My soul), wrote back: “My soul, what can I do?”   “Don’t do anything, don’t come to China, don’t look for me,” she said.  Their last conversation was in June 2017, when Mariam messaged from a hospital.  She had fainted twice in the new detention centre.  Farkhad, now the sole carer of the couple’s three children, is desperate for news of her.

  Mariam, an ethnic Uighur from China, is one of an estimated 1 million Muslim minorities – Uighurs, Kazakhs, Hui, Uzbeks and others – detained in a network of internment camps in the north-western Chinese territory of Xinjiang.  The camps are part of China’s “strike hard” campaign that is alleged to use extrajudicial detentions, surveillance, political indoctrination or “re-education”, torture and abuse to root out extremist elements, according to a growing body of evidence that includes witness accounts, media reports, government documents and satellite images. …“The Chinese communist party wants to create ‘One people, one country, where there are no Uighurs, Kazakhs or Uzbeks … just Chinese,” said Ilshat Iminov, an activist in Almaty….

  A detainee recalls being locked in classrooms and monitored by guards during study sessions.  Elderly detainees in his camp were told they had to learn more than 3,000 Chinese characters before they could leave.  In the two months he was there,he did not see anyone released.  Most inmates hoped to be freed in a year or two. As a Kazakh citizen he was eventually allowed to leave.  “There is no way of getting out.  You go into the camps, but there is no way out,” he said.  Now in Kazakhstan he still fears for his family in Xinjiang and retribution for speaking out.  “If I go to China, they will kill me,” he says….

  In a recent Human Rights Watch report former detainees at the internment camps recounted being shackled to beds or chairs, subjected to sleep deprivation, as well as beaten and hung from ceilings and walls.  Residents in Xinjiang described excessive security checks, mass surveillance, and the constant threat of being arrested or sent to a camp….“What China is doing is the complete isolation of Xinjiang from ties abroad,” said Kakharman Kozhamberdi, an advisor for the World Uyghur Congress in Kazakhstan.     https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/13/uighur-xinjiang-family-missing-china-kazakhstan

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