By Rashid Shad Since 2017, Uyghur Muslims got a lot of space in Western Media, before this very few even know their existence. In 2018, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination claimed that more than one million people were being held in a network of detention centres across Xinjiang. After this, we saw a massive campaign on International media about Uyghur Muslims. However, China has kept denying all these reports.
After analyzing Western media esp the US, we found that its only targeting and demonizing China. The famous scholar of the US, Dr Noam Chomsky right said, the media work on the doctrine system and in which the message of the elite is out in the mainstream. This doctrine system is controlled by the US establishment.
Following are a few examples of Western media reporting about Uyghur Muslims:
“Over the past five years, China swept an estimated million Uyghurs and other minority groups into internment camps which it termed training centres. Some of the centres have since been closed but there are still thought to be hundreds of thousands still incarcerated. In several hundred cases families had no idea about the fate of relatives who had been detained”. (The Guardian, 15 September 2022).
The directive was among 403 pages of internal documents that have been shared with The New York Times in one of the most significant leaks of government papers from inside China’s ruling Communist Party in decades. They provide an unprecedented inside view of the continuing clampdown in Xinjiang, in which the authorities have corralled as many as a million ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs and others into internment camps and prisons over the past three years. (New York Times 16 November 2019).
The ruling Communist Party is accused of detaining over one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the far-western region of Xinjiang as part of a years-long crackdown the United States and lawmakers in other Western countries have labelled a “genocide”. (France 24, 25 May 2022).
Human rights groups believe China has detained more than one million Uyghurs against their will over the past few years in a large network of what the state calls “re-education camps”, and sentenced hundreds of thousands to prison terms. A series of police files obtained by the BBC in 2022 has revealed details of China’s use of these camps and described the routine use of armed officers and the existence of a shoot-to-kill policy for those trying to escape. (BBC, 24 May 2022).
China had previously described the Xinjiang camps as vocational training centres aimed at countering extremism and separatism in Xinjiang and had lobbied Bachelet to refrain from publishing the report. The UN commissioner said last week that she had received a letter from China and several other countries, including North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba, asking that the report not be published. (Al-Jazeera, 01 September 2022).
A U.S. declaration that China has committed genocide and crimes against humanity against its mainly Muslim minority in western Xinjiang province appears to have had little impact on the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which this week honoured Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at a high-level forum. (VOA, 22 March 2022).
The above few examples are taken from leading media groups of the West, all of these groups have the same tone against China’s targeting and demonizing. If we see the Chinese version, we found a different story about the Uyghurs Muslim community. China claims all of these media reports are fabricated and planned by the US.
If we go through the Chinese viewpoint we find a different story. Chinese claimed there are no concentration camps all such sites are for training and education for the betterment of these people. China is a growing economy but this region was generally categorized as low developed area new data shows Xinjiang region has grown rapidly with comprehensive strength substantially increasing.
The construction of infrastructure has recorded smooth growth while the environment for investment and development is improving over time.
China’s government argues that Xinjiang is thriving and flourishing by responding to the false claims made by a Western mindset and have been maintaining the momentum of smooth development. Some scholars argue that by keeping in mind the development of the region, the interference of the US in Xinjiang affairs is clear fascism as the government has mobilized all of its resources to provide prosperous lives to local citizens equally and transparently for all ethnicities.
The Chinese government claimed that the region has eliminated absolute poverty, with some 3.06 million people lifted out of poverty in the past five years. To counter Western propaganda, the Chinese central government has many times arranged visits by journalists, scholars, academicians and others to experience the on-the-ground practical situation of the ethnicities. It is claimed that the people who have visited the region have always admired the pace of development in the region under the policies driven by the Communist Party of China.
According to Chinese media, 158 million people visited Xinjiang in 2020 despite the pandemic, which shows the region is very much open for you to experience the culture and social values and norms of the society.
By Rashid Shad
