Xinjiang is an autonomous territory in the northwestern regions of China packed with mountains and deserts. It houses the majority of the Uyghur Muslim minority of China that may have been systematically oppressed over recent years. If the Uyghurs have been alienated by the Chinese government we need to answer two questions: Why and How.
Why?
Xinjiang’s Uyghur community has been Anti-Han for more than two decades; The Hans is the most populous and “commanding” group in China. The first outrage against the Uyghurs was when they were made scapegoats for the death of 200 people in 2009 as the Uyghur community fought for a separate state from China; a state of their own.
Since then, China has had them under a stringent scanner, the world’s leading surveillance all around Xinjiang. From Face recognition to spy apps to track everybody’s movements, China has total control. With these extreme measures, China has been accused of trying to annihilate the Uyghur Muslim population. In a civilized, progressive world, is it possible?
How?
China has been accused by several countries of genocide, and practice eradicating the entire Uyghur population, by taking barbaric measures of sterilizing women to halt the growth of the minority.
Moreover, reportedly mosques and religious tombs have been desecrated.To delve deeper into the numbers, more than 1 million Uyghurs may have been detained by March 2021 itself. Reports state that there are more than 380 detainee camps where Uyghurs are kept captive at present.
These camps are gruesome, These “re-education camps” have been known to have been placed to resist Islamist militancy in the Uyghur region, however, these camps are tagged to be extremist and punitive. These camps are torture chambers where men are beaten, women raped repeatedly, children are coaxed to forget their own religion and ethnicity and embrace the tenets propagated and condoned by the government of China.
The world just sits at the periphery, mute spectators, as the atrocities continue to grow at a colossal scale day by day. Leaves us grappling with the question, is China’s government abusing its power in the country and blatantly disregarding the concern expressed by the world?