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

The video below follows up on one I featured in a previous blog post. That video addressed the condition of Muslims in China, while this one focuses particularly on Kazakhs. In China there are two main groups of Muslims. the Hui Muslims and the Uyghurs. Both are Sunni Muslims, but the Hui have been integrated much more thoroughly than the Uyghurs.

But there are also the Kazakhs. For the life of me, I cannot imagine why the Communist party boss of Xinjiang is going after the Kazakhs. They are the most peace-loving people you could hope to meet. But there is one problem. Some of the Kazakhs in this video seem to be part Chinese, but most Kazakhs I have met do not look Chinese at all. They have a much more European appearance. Han Chinese people in Xinjiang tend to be a little paranoid of non-Chinese looking people. This fear is not entirely unjustified, because there has been violence. I know that some people outside of China, particularly Americans, will say that the local Muslims became violent because they were provoked. To my way of thinking, that's not relevant. Violence is never justified unless it is done directly in self-defense. So I do recognize that there are jihad Muslims in Xinjiang who have caused trouble. But this is a tiny minority of the Uyghur people, and I don't recall hearing anything about violence in Kazakh communities. But they are Muslim and they look foreign, and those two things together mean they are fair game. It's unfortunate. They are not foreigners. They are Chinese citizens. I have had Kazakh students. You couldn't ask for better. They are really nice kids. What's even more puzzling is that, as you will hear in the beginning of this program, the human rights leader involved with this issue (helping folks in Kazakhstan who have relatives in Xinjiang) is now under house arrest himself in Kazakhstan. That makes me think the Kazakh government is on China's side. And as late as the end of May this year, the Chinese Ambassador was emphatically denying that Kazakhs were being detained in Xinjiang. Incredible.

I think we need to keep watching this. But it is of note that no Muslim nation (except Turkey) has spoken out against the incarceration of Muslims in Xinjiang.

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Labels: Kazakhs, Muslims, Xinjiang

Much concern has been expressed about the detention of Muslims in Xinjiang. The video below is interesting, because it also addresses the treatment of other Muslim communities in China. As I have noted before, the exact number (or even a reliable approximate number) of people detained is not available. So be aware that when you see or hear numbers mentioned, these are guesses. I don't know it it is true that there are over a million people detained. But I would think that it is at least several hundred thousand. But again, nobody knows.

Of course, as I mentioned in a previous post, the number of people detained is secondary to the question of whether they have been detained against their will without due process. Deprivation of liberty without due process is a violation of human rights regardless of what you do to those people once you have them locked up.

Another issue that is of interest to me is the response of surrounding Muslim countries. To my knowledge, the only country that has publicly taken a stand against the mass detentions is Turkey. That's not surprising, because the Uyghurs in Xinjiang Province are a Turkic people. I am thinking we may hear more about the response of other nations in months to come, but for now, it is significant that most Muslim countries support China's actions, or at least do not feel compelled to challenge them. It is one of the things I am going to be watching. This video is interesting in that regard, because it begins to explore the effect of the detention on neighboring Kazakhstan. More about that in a later post.

One further note about the video: The narration is a bit spotty. For example, they interview a Uyghur guy talking about a camp in a place called, "Kuldzha," without giving you any idea where that is. The nearest I can tell, this is referring to what is now called Yining, in northwest Xinjiang Province.

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Labels: Human Rights, Individual Liberty, Justice, Kazakhs, Minorities, Uyghurs, Xinjiang

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Labels: Human Rights, Kazakhs, Magna Carta, Uyghurs, Xinjiang