Recently, news has broken out about China’s ongoing human rights abuses, aimed against so-called ‘Chinese Muslims’. Unbeknownst to the Western media, however, the Uyghur people are much more than just ‘Chinese Muslims’, and the persecution levied against them has more to do with their racial background than their religious beliefs. That the Uyghur people are an indigenous Turkic community is too overlooked in conversations about their genocide.
By stripping away the distinct ethnic background of Uyghurs, focusing instead on the religious persecution they’re facing, Western liberals are falling prey to the propaganda that the Chinese government is feeding them: that these ‘Chinese Muslims’ are simply facing the repercussions of being religious in a secular communist country. This misunderstanding feeds into the delusion that the oppression the Uyghurs are facing is not unique or noteworthy.
In fact, the argument that Uyghurs are being placed into camps solely because of their religious beliefs fails to account for the fact that other ethnic minorities are facing the same treatment. As of 2018, several Turkic communities have been placed into state-sponsored ‘re-education camps’, without consideration to the fact that not all individuals identify as Muslim. Therefore, the issue at hand must not be understood as only religious persecution, but also cultural genocide.
Before the genocide against them began in 2017, Uyghur culture was vibrant and well-known. One famous folk singer, Abdurrehim Heyit, was known internationally. He was renowned for his artistic style, setting old folk poems to music. But his famous rendering of the Uyghur poem ‘The Encounter’, rife with sexual innuendo and wordplay, now appears haunting, years after Heyit’s own disappearance. In Heyit’s song, an unnamed narrator asks a woman a series of questions, to which she gives mysterious replies. When asked about her homeland, the woman answers she is from Turpan, a city located in Xinjiang. Chillingly, this is the location now most commonly associated with Uyghur camps. The poem begins with a description of the woman’s beauty- but ends with a description of the shackles on her wrist and the chains on her neck. It is difficult not to interpret this poem as a metaphor for a beautiful culture - represented by the woman in Heyit’s song- being suppressed and slowly destroyed.
Heyit is currently detained within a Chinese ‘re-education camp’. As rumours spread about his alleged murder, the Chinese government released a video in which Heyit confirmed that he was alive and well- yet Heyit is just one of many Uyghur artists to be detained without explanation. By targeting musicians and artists, in particular, it appears the Chinese government is intent on suppressing Uyghur art and cultural heritage.
The tragedy of the Uyghur crisis has been exploited by Western newspapers to gain eye-catching headlines. They have become the object of misdirected conversation. Rarely is the community given a platform to speak; instead, they are talked about- and often by those who know nothing about their ethnic identity. It is time, now, to have a different kind of conversation about the Uyghur genocide. Let me begin the first point of discussion- where have all those artists gone and why?
To understand more broadly the issues at hand, there are several articles online to acquaint oneself with everything that’s going on. Though it’s still unknown why the Chinese government has so disproportionately targeted Uyghur communities, the fight to demand justice can only begin once we’ve educated ourselves on who the Uyghurs are.
Silence and ignorance can no longer be tolerated; now is the time for demanding accountability from those in power.
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