The West loses dignity turning a blind eye to Beijing’s Orwellian human rights abuse.
by Wayne Pajunen
Washington has acknowledged: “The pages of George Orwell’s 1984 are coming to life” in Xinjiang with Orwell’s foretelling of Beijing’s plot: The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.
It is evident with regard to Xinjiang’s Muslim Uyghurs the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) old-school Big Brother approach has incorporated Hollywood’s futuristic Minority Report precognitive-style investigation to execute cultural genocide.
This is how it works. To qualify for ethnic cleansing, Beijing distinguishes cultural deviants from the Han norm with artificial intelligence to issue “pre-crime” indictments, as in the movie. Then Big Brother “educates” to avert perceived future crimes by forcibly interning over 1 million Uyghurs into euphemistic Vocational Education and Training Centers (VETC).
State sanctioned pre-crimes are innocuous teaching of Uyghur history, Islamic worship, abstaining from pork and alcohol, wearing a beard, giving Uyghur names to children, etc. Essentially, any Muslim associated practice is treated as a mental illness and justification for internment.
China’s VETCs are described by those released as “concentration camps” of razor wired walls providing, cultural and language indoctrination, forced sterilizations of women, sexual abuses and permanent disappearances of entire families among other atrocities.
These realities lay bare Beijing’s claims: “VETCs… launched in accordance with the law, aim to help those who are eroded by terrorism and extremism to return to the right track.”
With CCP denials of these 1984 like thought crime camps to be nefarious, the recently published Xinjiang Papers prove otherwise. Adding insult to injury, the Xinjiang Kashgar airport has created a priority pathway labelled “special passengers/human organs transport lane.” Evoking copious reports of organs harvested from innocent Falun Gong practitioners.
The Atlantic reposted a real eye-opener, with this translated official Communist Party audio recording sent via WeChat to Uyghur’s phones: to prevent “serious harm to the public… they (Uyghurs) must be admitted to a re-education hospital in time to treat and cleanse the virus from their brain and restore their normal mind.” Those “infected by religious extremism (in the officially atheist state) and not seeking treatment is like being infected by a disease or like taking toxic drugs.”
While adults are incarcerated to be “cleansed,” children are confiscated from their families and permanently housed under government “care” to be brainwashed. The impounded children’s indoctrination begins every morning when forced to recite affirmative answers to these questions: Do you love China?, Do you want China to be strong? and incredulously Are you Chinese?
To learn the intimate nature of the Uyghur’s plight this writer met with the Yalghuz family, voluntarily exiled from Kashgar, East Turkmenistan (Xinjiang) now living in Toronto, Canada.
A pseudonym – to protect their family back home – Yalghuz means “lonely” in their native Uhygur tongue, choosing it to express their feelings of isolation since they fled China in 2016. Since escaping tyranny, they’ve been afraid for their parents, sisters, brothers and friends left behind.
Instillation of surveillant smart phone apps in Xinjiang are mandatory, making it unthinkable to contact family or friends from abroad for fear of seizure. Mr. and Mrs. Yalghuz can only “worry every day and night” of their loved one’s fate.
Conversely, for China’s Uyghurs to contact relatives overseas is a direct open invitation for internment or worse.
Invited to the Yalghuz’s home for a traditional supper they shared what led them to flee; telling intimate stories of being discriminated against in their homeland.
Mrs. Yalghuz recounted of how her manager often forced her to work 24-hour shifts without breaks and denied bathroom visits on worse days. Her experience revealed her manager had only graduated from elementary school and did not know how to use a computer or even type. Mrs. Yalghuz, a university graduate, was therefore tasked to do her superior’s paperwork on weekends, while the uneducated well-paid manager holidayed. She surmised the only apparent qualification to be her boss at the large state company was that he was ethnic Han.
The New York Times relayed US sympathy for their plight: “Lawmakers are now frustrated at the inaction. (In April), 43 senators and representatives sent a bipartisan letter demanding tough measures to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.”
For this article Canadian Parliamentary Senator Thanh Hai Ngo added: “China’s ongoing systematic and intentional detention of Uyghurs Muslims in 1,200 different communist re-education camps is a clear cultural genocide, and a massive crime against humanity that must be denounced urgently by Canada and the international community.”
Also recognizing China’s despotism U.S. House speaker Nancy Pelosi stated: “The greatest tribute that we can make to the fallen freedom fighters of Tiananmen is to work relentlessly to advance their democratic aspirations. This would include Uyghurs, Tibetans, the people of Hong Kong and all who have been oppressed and repressed by the Chinese regime.”
Assimilation on the Mainland is looking like just the beginning. On the frontline of Beijing’s plans to impose “their new civilization to become a new global order” is democratic Taiwan.
Using its veto, as one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council China, has repeatedly denied Taiwan membership to the United Nations and earned the label “enemy of democracy” with extensive meddling in their elections. Taiwan’s President Tsai opined on Facebook: “Freedom, like air, is seldom noticed except when [we are] deprived of it.”
Simply, as victims of China’s oppression suffocate, free nations pass toothless legislation, utter platitudes of support and merely receive refugees like the Yalghuz family our cherished democratic values are succumbing.
With Uyghurs compelled to suffer repudiation of their way of life and their children’s ongoing assimilation to Han ethnicity, cultural genocide is now being realized. As if in a page straight from George Orwell’s 1984; “Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
As we turn a blind eye, our values and human rights principles are looking as blank as a dumbfounded stare towards China’s torment of the Uyghur people.
Source: Bitter Winter
