CASE

Xinjiang: The “Chinese dream” has become the nightmare of the Uyghurs

A young woman from the Uyghur Muslim minority takes part in a demonstration against the ratification of an extradition treaty between China and Turkey, near the Chinese consulate in Istanbul, March 8, 2021. © Ozan Kose / AFP

Text by: Heike Schmidt Follow

9 mins

Xi Jinping's "Chinese dream" goes through Xinjiang.

Three times larger than France and rich in natural resources, the autonomous region is a crucial crossroads on the “New Silk Roads” dear to the Chinese president.

To realize its promising project of economic growth, Beijing does not hesitate to systematically and ruthlessly persecute the ethnic minority of Uyghurs on their ancestral lands.  

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“ 

” is the Chinese name for this region on the edge of Central Asia, which means “

 ” in Mandarin.

The approximately 11 million Uyghurs who live there call it " 

", after the name of the small republic they had tried to found twice, in 1933 for the space of a year, then in 1944. This second attempt to establish an independent republic will only last five years.

In 1949, the communist troops of Mao Zedong took control of it by arms.

Six years later, in 1955, East Turkestan became the “ 

”.

It is the end of the dream of independence and the beginning of a long ordeal for the Uyghurs, punctuated by colonization and repression.

The Turkish-speaking and Muslim minority, one of the 56 ethnic minorities recognized in China, will undergo a forced march of marginalization.  

To sinicize the region, Beijing sends settlers belonging to the majority Chinese ethnic group of the Han, who today form more than 42% of the local population, seven times more than in the 1950s. of the Uyghurs is declining.

They currently represent only 45% of the population, almost half as much as in 1953. With the other ethnic groups, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Mongols, Tajiks and Uzbeks, 25 million inhabitants live today in Xinjiang Autonomous Region.  

Riots in 2009 trigger security tightening

Faced with the policies of the communist regime which aim to assimilate them, the Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities try to resist against Chinese domination, in vain.

Things escalated further in 2009, when violence broke out in Urumqi, the region's capital.

Thousands of Uyghurs and Han engage in bloody street battles that leave nearly 200 dead.

These inter-ethnic riots will mark the beginning of a violent turn of the screw, followed by a wave of attacks which shatter "

 ", so much put forward for decades by Beijing's propaganda.  

Two attacks, perpetrated according to a jihadist modus operandi, struck the spirits: in October 2013, a car drove into a crowd on Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing, killing five people.

A year later, a stabbing attack at Kunming train station killed 31 people.

Xi Jinping, who came to power in 2012, then promised to “

 ” and declared war on the three evils which, according to him, undermined the autonomous region, “ 

 ”.  

This turn of the screw will tighten still a notch in 2016, when the very powerful general secretary of the communist party and Chinese president names at the head of the autonomous area Chen Quanguo.

Xi gives him carte blanche to “ 

 ”.

The Chinese leader is counting on his faithful lieutenant to put an end to instability in this strategic region, which has become a centerpiece of the "New Silk Roads" launched in 2013. Until then secretary of the Communist Party in Tibet, Chen will apply to Xinjiang what it has already tested on the roof of the world: after the Tibetans, it is the turn of the Uyghurs to undergo a ferocious policy aimed at annihilating their identity, their history and their culture with the aim 

 ".

Officials in Xinjiang are being ordered to " 

 ," according to a secret Communist Party memo leaked to The

.  

High-tech tools, such as facial recognition or even QR codes affixed to the houses in which Uyghurs live, are then used for massive surveillance.

Even at home, they do not escape the watchful eyes of the authorities: as part of the campaign called " 

 ",

Han majority officials invite themselves into Uyghur homes to encourage them to eat pork and drink alcohol.  

Internment camps to "deradicalize" the Uyghurs  

It is under the orders of the new strongman of Xinjiang, Chen Quanguo, that China builds hundreds of re-education camps from 2017. At first, the authorities deny the existence of these camps secured by barbed wire and guard towers.

But in October 2018, they ended up admitting that “ 

” were taking  in members of the Uyghur minority as part of a “  de-

 ” policy.

The German anthropologist Adrien Zenz, who studies thousands of internal Communist Party documents, estimates that the concentration camp network built by China has between 1,300 and 1,400 camps in which more than a million people are or have been interned. Uighurs but also Kazakhs, subjected to forced indoctrination without knowing why, or for how long.   

Chilling accounts such as that of

, a Kazakh citizen of Uyghur origin who spent 15 months in a cramped cell in a camp with 40 other women in Urumqi, testify to the humiliations and brainwashing suffered on a daily basis: " 

, she explains in an interview with RFI.

 »

A drastic drop in births after forced sterilizations

In June 2020, researcher Adrien Zenz, in a study for the American think tank

(in English), reveals that repressive policy does not stop at extrajudicial internment.

At the same time, Beijing is carrying out a state strategy of “ 

” against the Uyghurs.

Supporting official statistics, the anthropologist provides proof that the birth rate has dropped drastically since 2017. Following campaigns of contraception, sterilization and forced abortions, Xinjiang recorded 24% fewer births in 2019. In two prefectures where the Uyghurs are largely in the majority, this rate even reached 84% between 2015 and 2018, an unprecedented drop which has been further accentuated since.

Adrien Zenz sees in it a “ 

 " in order to " 

 " the local population. 

The same year, another study shows that half a million inhabitants of Xinjiang from ethnic minorities are forced to work in the cotton fields, of which China is the world's largest producer.

A year later, the NGO Amnesty International reveals that a vast network of orphanages welcomes more than 800,000 children, separated from their parents to follow education programs exclusively in Mandarin.

This desire to eradicate the culture and identity of the Uyghur minority is also manifested in the systematic destruction of religious sites.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) research center estimates that nearly

since 2017. 

Washington denounces "genocide" in Xinjiang

The accumulation of revelations and testimonies on the totalitarian policy implemented by China ends up alerting public opinion.

Mike Pompeo, then head of American diplomacy, denounces “

 ”.

In the summer of 2020, American elected officials vote in favor of sanctions that target communist leaders in Xinjiang.

Companies that have profited from forced labor are blacklisted.

In the midst of an economic war with China, Washington declares that the second world power is committing “ 

”.

Since then, the current head of American diplomacy Anthony Blinken as well as President Joe Biden have maintained these accusations, firmly rejected by Beijing.   

Despite China's anger, several Western parliaments are following in the footsteps of the Americans.

Canada, the Pays-Pays, Lithuania, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic and Belgium voted resolutions to this effect.

On January 20, 2022, a few days before the opening of the Olympic Games, French deputies - under pressure from a strong citizens' movement - also almost unanimously adopted a text in

which " 

 ", and " 

them  ".  

Even if these are non-binding texts and the case has little chance of being tried before the International Criminal Court (ICC) of which China is not a member, the damage to the already deteriorated image of the country of Xi Jinping are enormous.

Especially since international pressure is likely to increase in the months to come.

The European Union, which has already sanctioned several Chinese personalities, is currently preparing a text prohibiting the import of products resulting from forced labor, which could also concern Chinese products resulting from the slavery of the Uyghurs.   

Things are also moving on the side of the United Nations.

Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who has been asking Beijing for years for " 

" to Xinjiang, is finally due to go there in the coming months.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, signatories of an open letter with nearly 200 other human rights organizations, want to go further: they demand that the UN publish its report on human rights violations. Man in Xinjiang, long-promised, "

."

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