Eric's Beijing Diary

The video below is the third part of what appears to be a three-part treatment by The Pulse on the problem in Xinjiang, China's far western province, where at least hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and Kazakhs have been detained in re-education camps. The first segment talked about the way Muslims are being treated in China. The second segment pointed out that many Kazakhs are also being detained. This problem does not only affect Uyghurs. This final segment (below) focuses on the fact that many of those who are detained are not in need of vocational training, but are detained because of their relationship with those outside of China. In one case, a man was detained because his daughter, who was living in Kazahkstan applied for citizenship there. In another case, a woman was detained supposedly because she had WhatsApp on her phone. It is a big problem for citizens of China to have a non-Chinese commmunications app on their phones. The first part of this video is about a completely non-related Hong Kong issue, so I have configured this video to start at Part 2. So the segment takes up half of a twenty-minute program.

Every country has internal matters dealing with its people that outsiders don't necessarily need to be involved in. But as I have said before, cruelty to innocent people is always everybody's business.

Those of you who lived through the Vietnam period perhaps remember Bob Dylan's song "Blowin' in the Wind." It is often associated with the Vietnam War, but Bob Dylan actually wrote it in 1962, before the Americans really got involved (in 1964). So it is really an anthem for how we view any injustice. These lines from that that song come to mind when I consider the current problem in Xinjiang:

How many times can a man turn his head, pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

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Labels: Justice, Kazakhs, Uyghurs, Xinjiang