"Uighurs forced to eat pork" - Horror Stories Told By Chinese Defector Seem To Evolve
Al Jazeerah, the propaganda outlet of Qatar, has published a remarkable anti-China propaganda piece which echos claims made by dubious CIA affiliated outlets:
Uighurs forced to eat pork as China expands Xinjiang pig farms
Former detainees claim that the forcible feeding of pork is most rampant in re-education camps and detention centres.
It has been more than two years since Sayragul Sautbay was released from a re-education camp in China’s westernmost region of Xinjiang. Yet the mother of two still suffers from nightmares and flashbacks from the “humiliation and violence” she endured while she was detained.Sautbay, a medical doctor and educator who now lives in Sweden, recently published a book in which she detailed her ordeal, including witnessing beatings, alleged sexual abuse and forced sterilisation.
In a recent interview with Al Jazeera, she shed more light on other indignities to which the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities were subjected, including the consumption of pork, a meat that is strictly prohibited in Islam.
“Every Friday, we were forced to eat pork meat,” Sautbay said. “They have intentionally chosen a day that is holy for the Muslims. And if you reject it, you would get a harsh punishment.”
When I read the above I remembered that I had previously read about Sayragul Sautbay (or Sauytbay). But the story back than had sounded much different. The woman had moved from China under disputed circumstances but had never been a detainee. She had illegally entered Kazakhstan where she was put in front of a court but only got a mild sentence. Sautbay was then granted asylum in Sweden from where she propagandizes for an CIA affiliated Uighur exile group.
Over the years Sautbay has given several interviews. The details of her story continued to change in anti-Chinese directions.
- In early interviews Sautbay claimed to have been an instructor working in a re-education camp. In later interviews she claims to have been a detainee.
- In more recent interviews she claims that she had seen torture and violence in the camps. In earlier interviews she had refuted such claims.
- In one story she claims to have observed mass rape. In older interviews she insisted that she had observed no violence at all.
- While she now claims that detainees in the camp were forced to eat pork she had earlier claimed that no meat was served in the camps.
In July 2018 the U.S. government outlet RFE/RL reported from Sautbay's trial in Kazakhstan:
The trial of an ethnic-Kazakh Chinese citizen accused of illegally entering Kazakhstan has taken on implications far beyond whether she will be reunited with her family near Almaty or deported back to China.That's because 41-year-old Sayragul Sauytbay has testified about the existence of a network of "reeducation camps" in western China where she says thousands of ethnic Kazakhs are incarcerated for "political indoctrination."
Unlike others who've fled abroad, saying they'd been forced to endure dehumanizing indoctrination at such camps, Sauytbay was not a camp detainee. She was a camp employee.
Before crossing into Kazakhstan on April 5, Sauytbay had been the head administrator of a kindergarten -- a position that, together with her membership of the Communist Party, technically made her a Chinese state official.
She says Chinese authorities had forced her to train "political ideology" instructors for reeducation camps in western China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
So according to that report Al Jazeerah's 'former detainee' had actually claimed to have been an trainer for "political ideology" instructors for reeducation camps, not a trainer for the detainees.
That, she says, gave her access to secret documents about China's state program to "reeducate" Muslims from indigenous minority communities across western China -- mainly Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, ethnic Kyrgyz, and Hui.She says she also witnessed the inner workings of the program while employed at a camp for ethnic Kazakhs in the region's Mongol-Kuro District.
A few days after the RFE/RL story the Globe and Mail published an interview with Sayragul Sauytbay. While the basic story she tells is basically the same some significant details differ:
It was a place of silence, forced learning and fear. It was called a “transformation centre” hidden in the mountains of far western China, bereft of any obvious sign indicating its purpose. But it looked and felt like a jail.For months, Sayragul Sauytbay worked inside, teaching Mandarin and propaganda to Muslim detainees swept up in a broad Chinese campaign to eradicate what Beijing calls extremism.
Then, facing internment herself, she fled to neighbouring Kazakhstan – where she was arrested after China sought her deportation. But her lawyers argued that she could face torture if returned, and on Wednesday, a Kazakh court declined to send her back, giving her a six-month suspended sentence.
Sautbay tells how she, a party member, was ordered to teach in a camp:
A primary school teacher who became a kindergarten administrator, Ms. Sauytbay was ordered last November to work in a new place. “They said I must go. I think if I refused them, I would have ended up being locked in that re-education centre as well,” she said.She had been chosen to teach inside the internment camp because she could speak both Kazakh and fluent Mandarin. Often, she was driven to work at night, to a distant place in the mountains of Zhaosu County, on the far western border between China and Kazakhstan. The facility was surrounded by high walls and barbed wire. It looked “very, very scary. Just one glimpse would frighten you,” she said.
Her "access to secret documents" seems to have been more limited than claimed in the RFE/RL piece:
Inside were roughly 2,500 people, all of them Muslim, most of them ethnic Kazakhs. None were Han Chinese, the dominant group in China. “They were all ethnic minorities,” she said, ranging in age from their upper teens to their 70s.She received no explanation for why they were there, nor the purpose of the instruction she was ordered to deliver.
“They told us nothing,” she said. “Even as a teacher, the knowledge we had about that place was very limited. They had many of their own highly confidential secrets.”
Work in the camp had no fixed schedule, each day a mix of teaching and “special tasks.” The latter might be training students to sing the Chinese national anthem, or Communist standbys such as “Without the Communist Party, There Would Be No New China.”
Mostly, though, she was told to teach Mandarin.
Back then her description of the conditions in the camp differs a lot from the "made to eat pork" claims in the recent Al Jazeerah piece:
She did not personally see violence, although she did see hunger. Detainees had only three kinds of food: rice soup, vegetable soup and nan bread. “There was no meat. There was never enough to eat. People were malnourished,” Ms. Sauytbay said.
Sautbay's husband version of the story, published in 2018 as part of a longer Washington Post piece, likewise makes no mention of violence or pork eating:
Sauytbay, who had a government job in education, had her passport seized by local officials, her husband [Uali Islam] said.
...
In 2016, officials asked for the passports of Sauytbay’s husband and children, and they decided it was time to leave for Kazakhstan. Sauytbay would follow.“She said, ‘I’m a woman and member of the Communist Party — they won’t do anything to me. Maybe things will settle down and I can join you,’ ” Islam recalled.
In early 2017, she told him, she was informed that she was being transferred to what was described to her as an “education center.” That spring, she arrived to see that it was actually an internment camp housing thousands of Kazakhs.
Sauytbay told her husband the “education” was “all about the party.” Guards locked everyone in a room, blasted propaganda from speakers and made them sing Communist Party songs.
Eventually, Sauytbay fled to Kazakhstan. “She said,” he recalled, “ ‘I came here; I saw my children — now I can die.’ ”
After she had gained asylum in Sweden Sautbay joint up with a U.S. financed Uighur organization. Her story then changed dramatically. The party member and language teacher had became a detainee. There was suddenly extensive violence in the camp and people who earlier never got meat were suddenly made to eat pork. In 2019 she told such horror stories for a Haaretz feature:
Torture – metal nails, fingernails pulled out, electric shocks – takes place in the “black room.” Punishment is a constant. The prisoners are forced to take pills and get injections. It’s for disease prevention, the staff tell them, but in reality they are the human subjects of medical experiments. Many of the inmates suffer from cognitive decline. Some of the men become sterile. Women are routinely raped.Such is life in China’s reeducation camps, as reported in rare testimony provided by Sayragul Sauytbay (pronounced: Say-ra-gul Saut-bay, as in “bye”), a teacher who escaped from China and was granted asylum in Sweden. Few prisoners have succeeded in getting out of the camps and telling their story. Sauytbay’s testimony is even more extraordinary, because during her incarceration she was compelled to be a teacher in the camp. China wants to market its camps to the world as places of educational programs and vocational retraining, but Sauytbay is one of the few people who can offer credible, firsthand testimony about what really goes on in the camps.
So a year after explicitly claiming to have been an CCP teacher, not a detainee, Sautbay has now morphed in one. Where she earlier saw no violence she now reports of plenty.
The circumstances of the Haaretz interview make it obvious that she is shopped around as part of a propaganda campaign:
I met with Sauytbay three times, once in a meeting arranged by a Swedish Uyghur association and twice, after she agreed to tell her story to Haaretz, in personal interviews that took place in Stockholm and lasted several hours, all together. Sauytbay spoke only Kazakh, and so we communicated via a translator, but it was apparent that she spoke in a credible way.
The Swedish Uyghur association is part of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, a CIA affiliated organization that has in recent years gained prominence as part of the U.S. driven anti-China campaign.
That such an organization organized the interview and that a translator was minding the correctness of the story is enough to let one doubt the credibility of the tale. But then come details that are so far off from her previous claims that one is sure that these are all outright lies:
“In November 2017, I was ordered to report to an address in the city’s suburbs, to leave a message at a phone number I had been given and to wait for the police.” After Sauytbay arrived at the designated place and left the message, four armed men in uniform arrived, again covered her head and bundled her into a vehicle. After an hour’s journey, she arrived in an unfamiliar place that she soon learned was a “reeducation” camp, which would become her prison in the months that followed. She was told she had been brought there in order to teach Chinese and was immediately made to sign a document that set forth her duties and the camp’s rules.
In the earlier stories CCP member Sautbay was "often driven to work at night", not abducted and forced to stay in the camp for months.
Mindful of her new sponsors Sautbay then contradicts her "no meat" and "no violence" claims from the earlier Globe and Mail interview:
“There were three meals a day. All the meals included watery rice soup or vegetable soup and a small slice of Chinese bread. Meat was served on Fridays, but it was pork.
...
The camp’s commanders set aside a room for torture, Sauytbay relates, which the inmates dubbed the “black room” because it was forbidden to talk about it explicitly. “There were all kinds of tortures there. Some prisoners were hung on the wall and beaten with electrified truncheons. There were prisoners who were made to sit on a chair of nails. I saw people return from that room covered in blood. Some came back without fingernails.”
On wonders who wrote the script for this laughable "mass rape" scene for her:
Tears stream down Sauytbay’s face when she tells the grimmest story from her time in the camp. “One day, the police told us they were going to check to see whether our reeducation was succeeding, whether we were developing properly. They took 200 inmates outside, men and women, and told one of the women to confess her sins. She stood before us and declared that she had been a bad person, but now that she had learned Chinese she had become a better person. When she was done speaking, the policemen ordered her to disrobe and simply raped her one after the other, in front of everyone. While they were raping her they checked to see how we were reacting. People who turned their head or closed their eyes, and those who looked angry or shocked, were taken away and we never saw them again. It was awful. I will never forget the feeling of helplessness, of not being able to help her. After that happened, it was hard for me to sleep at night.”
She was also pressed to offer bridges for sale ...
In March 2020 Secretary of State Mike Pompous and First Lady Melanie Trump 'honored' Sayragul Sautbay with the State Department's International Women of Courage (IWOC) Award:
Sauytbay become one of the first victims in the world to speak publicly about the CCP’s repressive campaign against Muslims, igniting a movement against these abuses. Her testimony was among the first evidence that reached the broader international community of the CCP’s repressive policy, including both the camps and the coercive methods used against Muslim minorities.
At the end of the propaganda onslaught the Haaretz piece closes with an official Chinese comment on Sautbay's stories:
Asked to respond to Sayragul Sauytbay’s description of her experience, the Chinese Embassy in Sweden wrote to Haaretz that her account is “total lies and malicious smear attacks against China.” Sauytbay, it claimed, “never worked in any vocational education and training center in Xinjiang, and has never been detained before leaving China” – which she did illegally, it added. Furthermore, “Sayragul Sauytbay is suspected of credit fraud in China with unpaid debts [of] about 400,000 RMB” (approximately $46,000).In Xinjiang in recent years, wrote the embassy, “China has been under serious threats of ethnic separatism, religious extremism and violent terrorism. The vocational education and training centers have been established in accordance with the law to eradicate extremism, which is not ‘prison camp.’” As a result of the centers, according to the Chinese, “there has been no terrorist incident in Xinjiang for more than three years. The vocational education and training work in Xinjiang has won the support of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang and positive comments from many countries across the world.”
Given the multitude of inconsistencies in Sautbay's ever changing stories and the obvious propaganda purpose they have I am inclined to believe the Chinese government's version.
Posted by b on December 5, 2020 at 17:13 UTC | Permalink
next page »Sweden...
They could have given Julian Assange asylum, but instead they give people like this asylum...
Posted by: Trond | Dec 5 2020 17:49 utc | 2
She must be at the origin of the saying "may you live in interesting times (and places).
Posted by: Stonebird | Dec 5 2020 18:11 utc | 3
Several years ago, I foresaw this manufactured issue becoming a spearhead for US imperialism to attack the Chinese government. Hence I decided to travel to Xinjiang in 2018 to see things for myself. I commented previously about my experience on this MOA comment thread (comments 36 & 48).
Posted by: Maracatu | Dec 5 2020 18:14 utc | 5
Trond | Dec 5 2020 17:49 utc | 2
Depends which sort of asylum you are talking about. She is obviously well suited for one.
Question ; Do the CIA scriptwriters have proof readers - or do they rely on Microsoft for corrections?
If Pork is "forbidden" for Muslims then so is Alcohol. Clearly the Chinese give "inmates" a couple of pints on a saturday night so that they may experience the full horrors of western civilization.
Posted by: Stonebird | Dec 5 2020 18:26 utc | 6
CORRECTION. Al-Jazeera is an American, neocon
controlled media. Go back to conflict between
Saudi Arabia and Qatar back during Egyptian
uprising in 2012, when Qatar supported Morsi and Brotherhood party. But when Morsi lost., and Saudis
financed Military — Qatar ruler was forced to abdicate in favor of his son, and Al-Jazeera was placed under special
editorial management. LOADED with neocons
The takeover was immediately felt - the whole Beirut
Bureau DESIGNED as editors did not allow then
to report from Syria what was actually happening .
But Qatar policies under the son reverted to being proIeanian and under Trump’s pressure Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed
Bin Nayef, cut ties to Qatar. But nasty editors of
Al-Jazeera remain and who knows what ownership
picture is. Bur with Turkey bases in Qatar, it was
protected. Saudis are finally coming around. King hax
initiated talks with both Qatar and Turkey.
It seems to me that the events in Azerbaijan have
changed political map. With Turkey now positioned to
strengthen its influence in Azerbaijan, the gas transit
from Iran and Qatar can be directed to Azerbaijan
with Turkey being the distribution hub already for Russian and
Azerbaijan gas. It may be that route from Iran-Qatar
gas will come via a newly secured corridor linking
Azerbaijan to its exclave on Turkish border.
This way it is avoided building. more pipelines between
Iran and Turkey, and avoid another hysterical
reaction.
Posted by: Bianca | Dec 5 2020 18:33 utc | 7
Pretty typical expat story. Moves to the west and makes her living by "bearing witness" to the horrors she's endured. We saw that with Iranian and Iraqi exiles, We've seen and and still do with Syria and before that with Yugoslavia. Once in awhile they tell the truth, but most of the time they just tell tales and obtain benefits. On a lighter note, I've always thought if you want to punish Muslims in prison than by all means tell them they must eat Pork or starve!!
Posted by: erik | Dec 5 2020 18:33 utc | 8
Another evidence Sauytbay is inventing her version of the story is when she first begins to mention and describe - with a richness in detail - the alleged tortures, right after she moved to Sweden.
The most likely scenario here is that in the first interviews she didn't mention any torture for the simple fact she never saw it (i.e. it didn't exist). When she was briefed by the CIA, she begun to describe a plethora of torture methods - probably the same methods used in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Ripping off nails is a preferred CIA method - made famous in the USA after the movie Syriana (which won George Clooney an Oscar) -, hence her insistence in this particular method in her interviews. It's also easy to see (if the prisoner is nail-less), which gives an extra plausible deniability power to her version.
The tortures part, therefore, are most likely a CIA interpolation. As a country girl from the middle of nowhere, Sauytbay probably was too innocent, too naive to imagine - let alone describe - torture. It was only after the CIA briefed her that she suddenly became a torture methods encyclopaedia.
CIA propaganda scriptwriters clearly practice their art with comic book readers in mind. Their scenarios inevitably evolve into comic book panels.
Posted by: mijj | Dec 5 2020 18:40 utc | 10
And again, the Chinese govt. states it wants to eliminate extremism. And why not? Extremism of all sorts is a thing that humans are susceptible to and, under its influence, are prone to antisocial acting out. Islam ultimately in its present forms is extremism personified. At its core it is primitive tribalism and as Winston Churchill said of it: "No greater retrograde force exists". Maybe there could come a time when it becomes watered down to a sort of cultural identity and loses its dangerous messianic fervor, but that time has yet to come. It's a shame really that our First Amendment was written at a time when its only real intent was prevent a specific variant of Christianity from attaining state sponsorship as was the case in colonial era England. Our founders really weren't thinking about a dangerous alien ideology like Islam. If not for that we could criminalize organized Islam in this country and avoid a whole world of hurt. The Chinese are doing the right thing.
Posted by: erik | Dec 5 2020 18:48 utc | 11
It's obvious that Uyghur and other defectors like Sayragul Sautbay from Xinjiang, once they fall into the clutches of the cult-like World Uyghur Congress and its affiliates under the US State Department umbrella, are trained to sing from the same evolving choir sheet. That Sautbay's story keeps changing all the time and the press never notices is an indictment of the stenographers who claim to be journalists.
I wonder what Sautbay eas threatened with if she did not stick to the script.
I've heard stories that defectors from North Korea who go to South Korea are always shoved into the tender mercies of SK intel who threaten the defectors with deportation back to NK and the prospect of jail time and execution there if they don't do as ordered by the SK intel agents and denounce the NK government in lurid tales and lies. Something similar could be going on with Sautbay. She had to end up in Sweden, that hotbed of political correctness (and site of the world's longest eugenics experiment from the 1930s to 1975, sterilising thousa
nds of people, most of them women, for supposed mental deficiencies) and Rape Capital of the Universe based on the dubious way in which Swedish police compile rape statistics.
Posted by: Jen | Dec 5 2020 18:53 utc | 12
Posted by: Stonebird | Dec 5 2020 18:26 utc | 6
The west loves to give crazy people asylum...
Like France did with russian Petr Pavlensky...
Petr Pavlensky: why I nailed my scrotum to Red Square
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/feb/05/petr-pavlensky-nailed-scrotum-red-square
It did not take long for them to put him in an asylum and asking Russia to please take him back.
Posted by: Trond | Dec 5 2020 18:56 utc | 13
Personally, I'm all for getting a bit more Pork on everyone's Fork... one imagines the world might have a lot less angry people if everyone got their fair share of regular Pork..
Posted by: Et Tu | Dec 5 2020 18:58 utc | 14
"On wonders who wrote the script for this laughable "mass rape" scene for her:"
Can anyone tell me how to verify/falsify/analyse "false" rape stories? What exactly makes the story "laughable".
Thanks.
Posted by: Ignorant Octopus | Dec 5 2020 19:04 utc | 15
In Afghanistan people were told that the Soviets wanted to replace their prophet with Lenin
La illaha ilallah
Lenin Rasool illlah
And this was enough to drive the simpletons crazy
Posted by: Cracker Jack | Dec 5 2020 19:07 utc | 16
Bianca | Dec 5 2020 18:33 utc | 7
Not sure you are quite right about gas transits TO Azerbaijan as they want to export it in the direction of =>Turkey=>EU, rather than the other way round.
However, the new "southern" corridor will be more difficult to organize than assumed. There is a road and there was a railway, but the Iranians have built the Khudaferin hydroelectric power station and dam. This has flooded about 15 km of road, and means that any future road/rail would have to go through tunnels. The railway has been dismantled while the Armenians still had it. (but still exists on the Turkish/Azeri sides).
It will take some time and probably heavy investment to get it operational again.
Posted by: Stonebird | Dec 5 2020 19:12 utc | 17
Posted by: vk | Dec 5 2020 18:12 utc | 4
"It's the Solzhenitsyn story all over again."
Could you elaborate vk?
Posted by: David G Horsman | Dec 5 2020 19:14 utc | 18
Trond @ 13:
The French and the Germans can always exchange Pavlensky and Navalny if the exiles become too embarrassing for their hosts. Maybe the French cosmetics company Yves Rocher might be interested in putting up some money with its lawyers and organising a trip to Paris for Navalny ... I'm sure he'd jump at the opportunity.
Posted by: Jen | Dec 5 2020 19:16 utc | 19
Trond | Dec 5 2020 18:56 utc | 13
Reminds me of an exhibition in Dusseldorf, (IKI) when "body art" was the rage. There was a cinema (no seats) which showed a film of some guy who was apparently trying to cut himself in half with a steel wire, by suspending himself across a hot radiator.
Lots of heavy breathing from the audience, but I was rather a naive person/innocent at the time and rather squeamish, so I exited rapidly. Also reminds me of Abramovitch and "spirit cooking" which I presume (without proof) to be more of the same sort of thing.
I notice that Pavlensky didn't do that in the winter, otherwise he may not have found enough to nail down.
Posted by: Stonebird | Dec 5 2020 19:28 utc | 20
@ Posted by: David G Horsman | Dec 5 2020 19:14 utc | 18
It's the same case, isn't it? Sauytbay is literally the Solzhenitsyn of the Second Cold War. The moment I saw she was publishing a book about it it immediately popped into my mind: she's the new Solzhenitsyn!
Solzhenitsyn is the famous Soviet refugee who lived on a pension in America by publishing fantastic and absurd stories about the Gulags. When the Soviet archives were opened in the early 1990s, we immediately found out he was writing nonsense. Nevertheless, his version of the USSR stuck in the American imaginary, in a way practically every boomer and gen X in the West nowadays still believe in the stereotypes described by him in his books. Basically all the jokes and stereotypes we still have in the West nowadays can be traced back to him.
However, I don't think Sauytbay will have the same success as her Russian predecessor. Western Europeans are tired of being picked off by Islamic fanatics who gained asylum as a reward from fighting Assad in Syria and Gaddafi in Libya. I've already been noticing some sympathy - at least from the Western Europeans - on China's treatment of the Uighurs. It's a harder sell for the CIA, in comparison with secular or Jewish Soviet "refugees".
The CIA, by the way, seems to obsessed with literature - everything their agents and assets produce in propaganda must be eventually turned into a book. No wonder, as rumors say the CIA was essentially founded by frustrated/wannabe writers who graduated from Yale.
Get ready for more media propaganda starring America and the Free World’s newest beloved “victim” group: the Uighur pro-democracy jihadists!
It’s the latest episode in America’s sequel to its all-time box office hit, the Cold War—now rebranded as “Great Power Competition”!
Apparently, the War on Terrorism franchise is losing audience share….so it’s time to trot out a tried and true Hollywood formula, the remake/sequel.
Indeed, these Uighur jihadist all-stars are not so new.
Many of America’s beloved pro-democracy jihadists in Syria ... are its beloved Uighur militants from China's Xinjiang province--particularly in Idlib, Syria, where Uighur radicals numbered in the thousands.
The Biggest Lie About China's Xinjiang "Internment Camps"
https://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-biggest-lie-about-chinas-xinjiang.html
Analysts: Uighur Jihadis in Syria Could Pose Threat
https://www.voanews.com/extremism-watch/analysts-uighur-jihadis-syria-could-pose-threat
China’s Uyghur Problem — The Unmentioned Part
http://www.williamengdahl.com/englishNEO5Oct2018.php
What's more, it has been an open secret that the West’s democratic allies in the Middle East like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and yes Qatar have been sponsoring jihadist terrorism/freedom fighters around the world.
People as varied as Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and an ex-Qatari prime minister have all either explicitly or tacitly admitted as much:
We finally know what Hillary Clinton knew all along – US allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar are funding ISIS
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/hillary-clinton-wikileaks-email-isis-saudi-arabia-qatar-us-allies-funding-barack-obama-knew-all-along-a7362071.html
Gulf crisis: Trump escalates row by accusing Qatar of sponsoring terror
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/09/trump-qatar-sponsor-terrorism-middle-east
Biden’s admission: US allies armed ISIS
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/06/pers-o06.html
US and Gulf allies supported Islamist extremists in Syria, Qatar’s ex-prime minister admits, bolstering growing evidence
https://thegrayzone.com/2017/06/16/us-gulf-islamist-extremists-in-syria-qatar/
This also brings up an issue that the Free Press like Al-Jazeera studiously avoids: If America, the West, and its democratic partners like the monarchy of Qatar are sponsoring Islamicist jihadis around the world, then their decades-long (fake) War on Terror must be a Nazi-style Big Lie of world historic proportions.
This includes the fortuitous American Reichstag Fire event better known as September 11th….
Posted by: ak74 | Dec 5 2020 20:17 utc | 22
Posted by: vk | Dec 5 2020 19:33 utc | 21
Solzhenitsyn is the famous Soviet refugee who lived on a pension in America by publishing fantastic and absurd stories about the Gulags.
I read "One day of Ivan Denisovich" maybe it is a work of fiction, but I do not remember anything fantastic nor absurd in it. Poor guy had really tough time in that penal colony. And it was totally believable that he had no idea why he ended up there. People were and still are getting detained for who knows what pretty much everywhere.
Now the question is why his novels are used as an evidence of evilness of Soviet regime, but, say Camus "Stranger" is not used as an evidence of evilness of French colonialism? Well Americans dig French colonialists more than Soviet communists obviously. Didn't they rush to help them in Indochina against Reds?
Posted by: hopehely | Dec 5 2020 21:02 utc | 23
I read about the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement. Here is the UN report on them. The Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement
I think that group is a real threat in Western China, as well as Kazakhstan and other Central Asian nations. I have a feeling they are related to this issue.
Posted by: lex talionis | Dec 5 2020 21:05 utc | 24
Unless you're a brainwashed moron, being given pork to eat isn't bad per se, it just depends how the meat (and which part of the animal) has been cooked and served.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Dec 5 2020 21:05 utc | 25
At least two people are certainly living up to their moniker!
Glad ignorance and cluelessness are not contagious!
Posted by: visak | Dec 5 2020 21:11 utc | 26
@Ignorant Octopus #15,
Here's one way to look at this:
China possibly has some 25 million Muslim citizens (going by Pew's estimates of 23 million in 2010 increasing to 30 million by 2030, a projected increase as a share of China's population from 1.8% to 2.1%.)
Muslim countries have always been an integral part of the ancient Silk Road, and they are quite clearly just as integral a part of China's Belt and Road Initiative that China is investing and betting so much on. Think Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, African countries, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc. The BRI also goes through northwest China with its large Muslim presence.
This Singaporean site has some interesting maps and graphics:
https://kontinentalist.com/stories/the-power-of-pragmatism-chinas-belt-and-road-to-the-islamic-world
So just how does it make any sense at all for China to risk enraging and alienating all of these Muslim populations - that its massive BRI plans completely depend on - by supposedly forcing Muslims to eat pork, by allegedly conducting forced sterilization campaigns, or by allegedly organizing gang rapes of Muslim women in front of 200 other Muslim people?
The story is laughable in the sense that it is simply not credible in this context. It can only be credible to those that are ignorant of this context.
And cui bono, who benefits? Who would promote these stories designed to cause unrest within China and disrupt China's relationships with its Muslim neighbours? Countries that are not a part of the Eurasian land mass and would therefore like the Belt and Road Initiative to fail - namely the US ...
Posted by: Canadian Cents | Dec 5 2020 21:32 utc | 28
In Islam worshiping idols and drinking alcohol is strictly forbidden, eating pork is not. You may eat it if there is no other food available. Kind of similar of us finding eating dogs rats and slugs disgusting but if there is nothing else we would eat them.
Posted by: hopehely | Dec 5 2020 21:34 utc | 29
Jewish support of Muslims....
Some basis for the almost total support in Congress for the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020, which was signed by the president and went into effect June 17, 2020, has been a new alliance between Jews and Muslims. This, of course, to ease the pain of Israel's taking over more and more of Palestine until Israel has it all.
A big part of this new alliance has been a new Muslim-Jewish group, the Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council (MJAC), housed at the American Jewish Committee (AJC) headquarters in New York. The MJAC began with a groundbreaking memorandum of understanding signed in April 2019 by American Jewish Committee CEO David Harris and Dr. Mohammad al-Issa, who traveled from Mecca to AJC headquarters in New York. Visiting Auschwitz was the first joint action implementing the MOU.
The American Jewish Committee has been vocal in its support for China's Uyghurs, and probably has been helpful with the new Israel-UAE alliance, thus ensuring full congressional support. Whatever Israel wants, Israel gets.
Posted by: Don Bacon | Dec 5 2020 21:38 utc | 30
Whatever the discussion, its more complicated than that.
Some years ago, the Chinese regime began a policy of greater nationalism. I am not quite sure why the former level of tolerance disappeared but it did. Hui Muslims in Central China have been under pressure to conform.
Whether that was before the problem with the Uyghurs or not, I'm not sure.
It is clear that many Uyghurs went for jihad with ISIS, in effect a declaration of independent nationality.
The Chinese were frightened, and therefore clamped down on the Uyghurs, leading to the events described in the article.
No-one would say what the Chinese are doing is right; its a panic reaction to the prospect of Jihadis coming home. A feeling found also in Europe, and also in Russia, where Putin has always worked to keep jihadis at a distance.
Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 5 2020 22:29 utc | 32
They forced us to eat frozen fish sticks at St. Aloysius back in the day....so what?
Posted by: JoeG | Dec 5 2020 22:40 utc | 33
JoeG - Does your religion prohibit eating fish sticks?
So, you like fish sticks? What are you a gay fish?
Posted by: visak | Dec 5 2020 22:47 utc | 34
I wonder if her CIA handlers have given her the code-name "Curveball"?
Posted by: Yeah, Right | Dec 5 2020 22:54 utc | 35
b - good memory which allowed you to connect the dots! thanks....
i agree with @ 2 trond... if you are willing to work for the cia - you will get refugee status.. if you are trying to reveal the cia's illegal activities - you get the assange treatment... it is that simple...
i wonder how long Sayragul Sautbay has been on the payroll??? you can see how it works for some of the parties involved, and how the msm feeds on this shit, but really? are we supposed to fall for this?? cia and 5 eyes have to do better then this...
Posted by: james | Dec 5 2020 22:55 utc | 36
Visak @ 33:
Have pity on JoeG, he is a recovering St Aloysian still having nightmares about being force-fed cold, rigid and wrinkly frozen fish sticks by his teachers and boarding college masters.
😁
Posted by: Jen | Dec 5 2020 22:56 utc | 37
China's POV....
"Between 1990 and 2016, thousands of terrorist attacks shook the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwestern China, killing large numbers of innocent people and hundreds of police officers. Horrific stabbings and bombings rocked the land once known as a commercial hub on China's ancient Silk Road.
The damage to local communities was incalculable while stability in the region quickly deteriorated. Authorities have been trying hard to restore peace to this land.
In this exclusive CGTN exposé, we show you never-before-seen footage documenting the frightening tragedies in Xinjiang and the resilience of its people.". . . youtube video is here "Fighting Terrorism in Xinjiang," terrorism supported by you-know-who.
Posted by: Don Bacon | Dec 5 2020 22:58 utc | 39
She only spoke Kazakh? I thought she was a teacher of Mandarin. Why couldn't Ha'aretz find somebody to translate from Mandarin?
Posted by: lysias | Dec 5 2020 23:01 utc | 40
@15 Ignorant Octopus: "What exactly makes the story "laughable". "
Oh, off the top of my head.... the idea that the Chinese authorities would - according to this women - expend considerable time and effort at "re-educating" this women and then toss all that aside by raping her in front of the assembled multitudes.
Not exactly a great way of encouraging your captives to be receptive to that "re-education", is it?
And, let's face it, why go to the initial trouble when you can just go straight to the fun part of the rapin', pillagin' and disappearin'
Posted by: Yeah, Right | Dec 5 2020 23:03 utc | 41
Posted by: Don Bacon | Dec 5 2020 22:58 utc | 38
The question is: does China have the right to keep the obviously colonial territory of Xinjiang? The Soviet Union, in dissolving, liberated its colonial territories in Central Asia. Should not China do the same?
Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 5 2020 23:09 utc | 42
For that matter, the Turkic languages are pretty similar. I imagine a speaker of Turkish or some other Turkic language could do a decent job of translating from Kazakh.
I was once taught Turkish by an Uzbek from Afghanistan.
Posted by: lysias | Dec 5 2020 23:09 utc | 43
I see a lot of words and not much info.
I see few comments that reflect knowledge of the issue.
I hope the Uigers are not being abused.
I respect Chinas sovereignty and need to keep order.
I have the impression that China is somewhat oppressive and intolerant and while there may be nice things about life in China I would not want to live under that regime.
I also have little first hand information on which to base a judgement good or bad. However.
Posted by: jared | Dec 5 2020 23:11 utc | 44
@ Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 5 2020 23:09 utc | 41
Xinjiang is not a colonial territory. The Uighurs are not even the original people of that region (which was not even originally Islamic, for that matter).
Posted by: jared | Dec 5 2020 23:11 utc | 43
So colonial imperialism is OK if its Chinese.
Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 5 2020 23:15 utc | 46
@ Posted by: jared | Dec 5 2020 23:11 utc | 43
Except for the fact that we don't need to speculate. China accepted a team of diplomats to a tour to the reeducation camps, and they found nothing irregular:
China Takes Diplomats to Tour 'Re-Education Camps' as Pressure Builds Over Mass Detention of Uighurs
"Xinjiang is not a colonial territory. The Uighurs are not even the original people of that region (which was not even originally Islamic, for that matter)."
Posted by: vk | Dec 5 2020 23:14 utc | 44
Total crap. The Uyghurs (not Muslim) had a kingdom there in the 8th-9th century. That's long enough ago to make them native. The English, for example, are more recent.
Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 5 2020 23:21 utc | 48
@ Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 5 2020 23:15 utc | 45
Err... quote me the part where China conquered Xinjiang? I must've skipped that class.
Xinjiang was part of the Chinese Empire long before the Uighurs even existed. Before the region was even Islamicized. The region was an almost uninhabited zone, punctuated by some oasis-towns/kingdoms, when China "conquered" it (more like absorbed it to its system).
You understand that ancient empires are completely different from capitalist (colonial) empires, do you?
Ignorant Octopus @ 15:
Notice that the mass rape story only emerges in Sayragul Sautbay's "account" after she moves to Sweden, a country which itself has had problems in defining what is and is not rape, and where the way in which rape statistics are collected and recorded by police differ from how police record rape stats in most other parts of the First World.
Posted by: Jen | Dec 5 2020 23:28 utc | 50
@ Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 5 2020 23:21 utc | 47
The Uyghur Khaganate was much bigger than today's Xinjiang. If we were to take their ancient claim seriously, the entire Mongolia, plus significant chunks of Russia, should also return to them.
China exerted some kind of control of present-day Xinjiang since at least the Han Dynasty (ca. 200 BCE - 200 CE).
Xinjiang's situation is more analogous to the South China Sea: regions that were populated by minuscule societies without any ethnic or "national" identity, serving as gateways/buffer zones between one or more big civilizations (in Xinjiang's case, between Persia and China).
Posted by: vk | Dec 5 2020 23:23 utc | 48
Like it or not, the Uyghur movement is an independence movement from the Chinese empire. Quite why you think Chinese colonial possession of an alien territory is ok because it happened before recent times, escapes me.
Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 5 2020 23:40 utc | 52
Please, please try to refer to the Communist Party of China by its proper name and abbreviation CPC. There is no "Chinese Communist Party" Just as there is no CUD, or CUS in Germany. It is quite insulting when the West refuses to use the proper name of a ruling party of a major Country.
I hope you will make an effort in future to use the correct abbreviation CPC.
Thanks
Posted by: Babyl-on | Dec 5 2020 23:42 utc | 53
I understand the Australian/US citizen Rupert Murdoch is a part owner of Al Jazeera. That should say it all.
Notice how the trolls come out with incessant hysterical anti muslim attacks here. Simply by substituting another religious group with the same comments is enough to be arrested in some captive nations.
Posted by: Paul | Dec 5 2020 23:47 utc | 54
"The Uyghur Khaganate was much bigger than today's Xinjiang. If we were to take their ancient claim seriously, the entire Mongolia, plus significant chunks of Russia, should also return to them."
Posted by: vk | Dec 5 2020 23:33 utc | 50
That is ridiculous. People conquer, people lose. The homeland was Xinjiang, as it is today.
Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 5 2020 23:49 utc | 55
@ laguerre.. is this the same sort of thing?
"Hawaiʻi is one of two states that were widely recognized independent nations prior to joining the United States. The Kingdom of Hawaiʻi was sovereign from 1810 until 1893 when the monarchy was overthrown by resident American and European capitalists and landholders."
Posted by: james | Dec 5 2020 23:53 utc | 56
@ Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 5 2020 23:49 utc | 54
Nobody knows the exact origin of the Uighurs. What we know for certain is that their homeland certainly wasn't in present-day Xinjiang.
As I've said, Xinjiang was a desert punctuated with oasis-cities. The Turks probably came from Mongolia.
Let's be real: the only reason the Uighurs claim Xinjiang for their nation is because the USA wants them to claim Xinjiang as their nation. Same story with the Kurds (whose territory/homeland and most of its population fall largely in present-day Turkey, not in Syria).
Posted by: james | Dec 5 2020 23:53 utc | 55
No-one would doubt that Hawaii is a colonial territory, only it became a state, by its own wishes. As is common with small islands, they do better by retaining their connection. Much like the French Guadeloupe and Martinique.
Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 6 2020 0:00 utc | 58
Xinjiang's importance as a major node for the Belt and Road Initiative is pretty obvious, what is not stated as often is that China gets 20% of their oil from the region, and has enough reserves there to last 5-7 years in the event they are ever cut off from middle-eastern oil. Many rare earths and minerals derive from the region. It is also the region were much of China's nuclear deterrence is located.
As is often stated here, the Ango-Zionist favored method of conquest/colonialism/neocolonialism is finding an ethnic/ideological/religious stress point in the targeted society and than propagandizing/arming/organizing/financing the artificial "resistance".
Given how important the region is to China, and that there is a possible social schism there to be taken advantage of, it is no small wonder the West is stirring up trouble there. Due to the importance and location of the region, there is also zero chance that the West will be able to stir up any real trouble, but that won't stop the west from crying their human rights crocodile tears.
The region has been Chinese for 2,500 years, the Uyghur's arrived much later in the game.
Posted by: jason | Dec 6 2020 0:14 utc | 59
"Nobody knows the exact origin of the Uighurs. What we know for certain is that their homeland certainly wasn't in present-day Xinjiang."
Posted by: vk | Dec 6 2020 0:00 utc | 56
1200 years sounds enough for me. There are few peoples who've been implanted so long. The English, questionable. The US, no. The Australians, no. But you don't question their right to their territory.
Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 6 2020 0:16 utc | 60
@ Laguerre | Dec 6 2020 0:00 utc | 57... does this sound like ''it's wishes'' to you?
"In 1887, Kalākaua was forced to sign the 1887 Constitution of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. Drafted by white businessmen and lawyers, the document stripped the king of much of his authority. It established a property qualification for voting that effectively disenfranchised most Hawaiians and immigrant laborers and favored the wealthier, white elite. Resident whites were allowed to vote but resident Asians were not. As the 1887 Constitution was signed under threat of violence, it is known as the Bayonet Constitution. King Kalākaua, reduced to a figurehead, reigned until his death in 1891. His sister, Queen Liliʻuokalani, succeeded him; she was the last monarch of Hawaiʻi."
Posted by: james | Dec 6 2020 0:21 utc | 61
@ Posted by: jason | Dec 6 2020 0:14 utc | 58
Xinjiang and Tibet are the PLA's number one national security assessed risk zones. They are China's weak points. Any prospect of the USA destroying and conquering China goes through taking those two regions - not Taiwan and Hong Kong, as many rimlanders believe.
There's zero chance Xinjiang and Tibet will ever become independent. That's akin to asking Spain to give up Cataluña, Belgium losing Valonia, Israel losing the Golan Heights, the USA losing Texas or even the UK losing Scotland and Northern Ireland. It simply won't happen, as the fact would mean the virtual destruction of the original nation itself.
It's ironic, as in that sense Tibet and Xinjiang are more part of China than it ever was.
"The region has been Chinese for 2,500 years, the Uyghur's arrived much later in the game."
Posted by: jason | Dec 6 2020 0:14 utc | 58
Only not true. Chinese imperialism over several thousand years is still colonialism.
Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 6 2020 0:24 utc | 63
"As is common with small islands, they do better by retaining their connection."
That is also common of geographically isolated regions, which is why the Uighur's are much better off as part of China, and in fact, the majority of them prefer to stay with China. The artificially created "independence" movement harms them and is against the wishes of the majority of the population.
"That is ridiculous. People conquer, people lose."
Yep, as is the case with western China.
Posted by: jason | Dec 6 2020 0:27 utc | 65
The fate of Xianjiang is inextricably tied to other similar situations in Hong Kong and Taiwan, all of which will be refused independence by China, as is its right to do.
The situation is sorta similar in that sense to Ukraine, where the US has had a fit about Crimea claiming (and getting) independence, prior to its return to Russia, after a US-led coup in Kyev.
But the US position is consistent: Encourage the breakup of enemies, while retaining the staus quo in friends.
Posted by: Don Bacon | Dec 6 2020 0:31 utc | 66
"There's zero chance Xinjiang and Tibet will ever become independent."
That's true. It doesn't mean though that the Chinese position is justified in retaining colonial alien territories. Your comparisons have no value, though. Do have to go through them all?
Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 6 2020 0:32 utc | 67
@ vk | Dec 5 2020 23:19 utc | 46
I find "re-education camp" rather strange.
Obviously you guys are pretty bright and well informed. Its discouraging that you base your opinions not on facts rather on you preferred conclusion.
Posted by: Jared | Dec 6 2020 0:33 utc | 68
@ Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 6 2020 0:32 utc | 66
You're the one comparing Ancient imperialism with Modern imperialism (two completely different systems).
Posted by: jason | Dec 6 2020 0:27 utc | 64
I can't quite see the similarity between small islands and vast continental territories.
Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 6 2020 0:36 utc | 70
You're the one comparing Ancient imperialism with Modern imperialism (two completely different systems).
Posted by: vk | Dec 6 2020 0:35 utc | 68
So what? empire is empire.
Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 6 2020 0:37 utc | 71
Are US Deep state with its CIA so bad that many let their views get totally screwed up just to be on their opposite side? Maybe.
So: believe everything negative your hear about the poor Palestinians but believe nothing negative you hear about those actor Uiyghurs.
Also: China lets Xinjiang be totally free to visit for any tourist/ journalist any time while Gaza the West bank have been made totally unaccessable by Israel.
Or: Israeli settlements on the West Bank bad, Chinese re-populations of Tibet and Xinjiang - no problem.
Mind that Tibet was forcefully taken after Israel came in existence in 1948, so time is not on your side.
Posted by: Antonym | Dec 6 2020 0:37 utc | 72
colony: a country or area under the full or partial political control of another country, typically a distant one, and occupied by settlers from that country.
Posted by: Don Bacon | Dec 6 2020 0:42 utc | 73
Pretty usual crapaganda from the leading shitters on the planet who run what are more correctly called refuge camps instead of Indian Reservations. Should we revisit the rapes, mass killings, forced migrations, starvations, poisoning of blankets with smallpox, complete disruption of the normal diet, using alcohol as a poison, the man hunts that paid bounties for every scalp, and the kidnapping of children and their forced relocation--and the list can go on with even more examples. The Outlaw US Empire has absolutely no right to criticize any nation for its behavior until it cleans up its own act and admits to its massive number of crimes. Fucking Period!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It"s funny. In general i find the Chinese efforts to retain their territory justifiable, e.g. Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. But not when they launch themselves on alien territories, which were once possessions, such as Xinjiang or Tibet.
Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 6 2020 0:53 utc | 75
colony: a country or area under the full or partial political control of another country, typically a distant one, and occupied by settlers from that country.
Posted by: Don Bacon | Dec 6 2020 0:42 utc | 72
i.e. Xinjiang.
Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 6 2020 0:55 utc | 76
@ Posted by: Antonym | Dec 6 2020 0:37 utc | 71
The huge difference here is that China is not killing or terrorizing any Uighurs, while Israel is essentially genociding - with a touch of cruelty - the Palestinians.
As we speak, the Uighurs are receiving hot meals of a nutritional value they probably never ate and an education of a level they could never dream of (including learning Chinese as a second language - ask your Western executive/CEO the value of speaking fluent Chinese). Their lives will get better. Their children's lives will get even better than that. They'll soon realize - with their own eyes, hands and mouths - that being part of China is better than being chieftains of a failed state sponsored with weapons sales and cocaine by the USA.
You think material prosperity is equal to selling your soul. But the threat of giving up the Pound Sterling was the main reason the Scots voted against their independence; not having money even to print the new Drachma was the reason Syriza capitulated to the EU; becoming a shithole being the reason Valonia never really goes all-in for independence from Flandres. Independence is just a cry for material wealth on a large scale - no Luxembourgian thinks about how the hell did their country came into existence.
China's Struggle Against Terrorism
As with the Rohinghya in Myanmar and Bangladesh, we are to overlook the periodic massacres that the Uyghurs carry out, because that is part of their culture, and we must respect their culture, after all.
The Chinese see it differently.
Here is China's response to the West's made-up propaganda about supposed brutality against Uyghurs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjgSOYRZqIo
Posted by: AntiSpin | Dec 6 2020 1:03 utc | 78
Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 6 2020 0:53 utc | 74
But not when they launch themselves on alien territories, which were once possessions, such as Xinjiang or Tibet.
For an alien territory, Xinjiang has surprisingly Chinese sounding name. How the locals call it, Uyguria?
Posted by: hopehely | Dec 6 2020 1:07 utc | 79
"The huge difference here is that China is not killing or terrorizing any Uighurs, while Israel is essentially genociding "
I have nothing to say about Israel here, another subject, but genocidal treatment of the Uyghurs is very evident.
Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 6 2020 1:09 utc | 80
Before I repeat the following by Canadian Cents let me say "Don Bacon, this thread is for you!"
Here's one way to look at this:China possibly has some 25 million Muslim citizens (going by Pew's estimates of 23 million in 2010 increasing to 30 million by 2030, a projected increase as a share of China's population from 1.8% to 2.1%.)
Muslim countries have always been an integral part of the ancient Silk Road, and they are quite clearly just as integral a part of China's Belt and Road Initiative that China is investing and betting so much on. Think Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, African countries, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc. The BRI also goes through northwest China with its large Muslim presence.
This Singaporean site has some interesting maps and graphics:
https://kontinentalist.com/stories/the-power-of-pragmatism-chinas-belt-and-road-to-the-islamic-worldSo just how does it make any sense at all for China to risk enraging and alienating all of these Muslim populations - that its massive BRI plans completely depend on - by supposedly forcing Muslims to eat pork, by allegedly conducting forced sterilization campaigns, or by allegedly organizing gang rapes of Muslim women in front of 200 other Muslim people?
The story is laughable in the sense that it is simply not credible in this context. It can only be credible to those that are ignorant of this context.
And cui bono, who benefits? Who would promote these stories designed to cause unrest within China and disrupt China's relationships with its Muslim neighbours? Countries that are not a part of the Eurasian land mass and would therefore like the Belt and Road Initiative to fail - namely the US ...
Posted by: Canadian Cents | Dec 5 2020 21:32 utc | 27
Posted by: tucenz | Dec 6 2020 1:09 utc | 81
"As with the Rohinghya in Myanmar and Bangladesh, we are to overlook the periodic massacres that the Uyghurs carry out, because that is part of their culture, and we must respect their culture, after all."
Posted by: AntiSpin | Dec 6 2020 1:03 utc | 77
So what massacres are the Uyghurs supposed to have carried out.
Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 6 2020 1:14 utc | 82
Laguerre.. There has been a continuous Han Chinese presence in Xinjiang since the Tang Dynasty. The Uyghurs have not had a majority there for at least the last 2 centuries. The Tangs fought a major war there that stopped the Arab migration/conquest into Eastern Asia. That line was establish more than a thousand years ago -- Han Chinese to the east, Islam to the west. The Hans currently make up about 40% of the population of Xinjiang and the Uyghurs less than that. Any rational assessment would not consider that territory a Chinese colonial settlement, at least not in the last 1000 years.
Posted by: ToivoS | Dec 6 2020 1:15 utc | 83
I see there are some posters here who are unaware that many if not most Uyghur communities in Xinjiang province, especially in the NW parts of that province, were actually settled there from other parts of the Qing empire by the Emperor Qianlong in and after 1759, after the state established in that region by the Dzungars (a Mongol people, Buddhist in belief) was destroyed by the Emperor's forces and the Dzungars themselves massacred and forced to scatter. Most Dzungars fled deep into the Russian empire and resurfaced around the Volga river delta area on the Caspian Sea as Kalmyks. One of their number became an ancestor of Vladimir Lenin.
There were Uyghurs in Emperor Qianlong's army which routed the Dzungars and many of them were rewarded with land in Dzungar territory as reward for their services in the genocide. The Qing empire also settled Han people in that territory. So Han people have been living in that part of Xinjiang province as long as Uyghurs have.
This information can be Googled and Wikipedia has entries on this massacre.
Posted by: Jen | Dec 6 2020 1:17 utc | 84
@ Laguerre | Dec 6 2020 1:14 utc | 81
"So what massacres are the Uyghurs supposed to have carried out."
Watch the video that I provided you --
Posted by: AntiSpin | Dec 6 2020 1:20 utc | 85
When I was in the Uyghur camps, a new form of execution was becoming popular : human skeet shooting, where they would launch a prisoner into the air with a trebuchet, and officers would try to shoot the body. Then they’d pick up the mangled body, and prisoners would have to have sex with it, and they’d film it, and anyone who didn’t give a good performance, they would stuff into the uterus of an elephant, give a male elephant a bunch of viagra and make him have sex with the female elephant. Then if the person survived, they had to stay in there, while there was a baby elephant growing in there, until its birth. If the baby elephant didn’t survive to term, the person would get the trebuchet treatment.
These are just a few of the horrible things I’ve seen in Uyghur camps. There are HUNDREDS more.
The Chinese cruelty is only surpassed by their creativity.
Posted by: Featherless | Dec 6 2020 1:24 utc | 86
I guess we'll have to wait for Triden to punch the clock on Monday before we get to hear the US State Department rationalization of the inconsistencies of their incubator-baby-class jingoism spigot's made for TV screenplay about the evils of the ChiComs.
I just have one question: If the people being brought to these Chinese concentration camps are never seen again (necessary to cover for them being physically mutilated by torture) then why would the Chinese state invest time and effort into teaching them Putonghua and patriotic songs? Why even bother feeding them rice, much less pork? These people in the mythical prison camps must necessarily end up in mass graves somewhere because there is no sudden surge in the fingernail-less population of Xinjiang. If they are just to be exterminated, then why bother doing anything with them at all? Why bother with walls and barbed wire if you're just going to kill them anyway? Just kill them up front and save on facility costs.
This whole concentration camp narrative that the CIA is pumping out to the "Mighty Wurlitzer" makes no sense at all on any level.
Posted by: William Gruff | Dec 6 2020 1:34 utc | 87
Posted by: karlof1 | Dec 6 2020 0:43 utc | 73
Best comment. Made me laugh "leading shitters on the planet"
Posted by: Debz | Dec 6 2020 1:42 utc | 88
In all the time that China has "practiced genocide on the Uyghur population", that population has grown at a rate roughly commensurate with the population of all of China. This is a fact that can be verified.
China is much more efficient than that. If genocide were the practice, the population would have shrunk.
If anyone wants now to demand of me a link for this, then one must be disappointed. I have it somewhere, but I'll be damned if I'll bother for such stupid nonsense.
Posted by: Grieved | Dec 6 2020 1:43 utc | 89
Laguerre @31
"No-one would say what the Chinese are doing is right; its a panic reaction to the prospect of Jihadis coming home"
Indeed, but this is of course assuming that the accounts of malfeasance and genocide are correct, which is the point of b's post here.
Every "evidence" we think we have of the Chinese government genociding Uyghurs come from the usual suspects: NYTimes, WAPO, BBC, AP, AFP and of course NGOs such as Amnesty (which published many false reports in the past justifying conquest wars for the U.S.A.).
Among the citations we have "experts", "Chinese dissidents", "intelligence" and the Orwellian "authorized sources".
Posted by: Lemming | Dec 6 2020 1:48 utc | 90
Laguerre @79: "but genocidal treatment of the Uyghurs is very evident."
"Evident" means evidence exists. Please provide this evidence or apologize for being a lying and racist sack of shit.
Posted by: William Gruff | Dec 6 2020 1:52 utc | 91
"Xinjiang" means "New Frontier" or "New Boundary Region" in Mandarin. But it has only had that name since the Qing (Manchu) Dynasty in the 18th century. Earlier Chinese dynasties have ruled the area, but they gave it different names.
Posted by: lysias | Dec 6 2020 1:53 utc | 92
Some will find this historical document an eye opener:
"The China White Paper was originally issued by the United States Department of State in August 1949 under the title United States Relations with China, With Special Reference to the Period 1944-1949. The present edition is identical to the original except for the unnumbered front matter, ending with the Introduction by Lyman P. Van Slyke; the correction of some sixty typographical errors and minor discrepancies of orthography; and the addition of an Index. The Index was prepared for the present edition by Willard A. Heaps."
It was used extensively by Anna Louise Strong's in her forward to The Chinese Conquer China, published in 1949 many barflies will find fascinating. A great many thanks to The Archive since the book is rare and very expensive. Strong lived a very long life, 1885-1970, and died in China. Two other books are mandatory, China's Millions from 1926, and One-Fifth of Mankind from 1938. She also visited North Korea in 1949 and wrote Inside North Korea: an Eye-witness Report that was published prior to the war. That's just a small sample of her bibliography. The last work of hers I'll mention is When Serfs Stood Up in Tibet. As far as I can tell, the mentioned books are freely available at The Archive. She ought to be a role model.
Re: Solzhenitsyn
When putting "One Day in the Life..." up against Elie Weisel's "Night," is it easy to separate the wheat from the chaff, the fantastical from the grounded.
Weisel's is from a childhood perspective, too. It is as if the author is straining even more to evoke empathy. "Night" becomes magic realism and a clear attempt at being a relevant "document." My child mind was impressed. My adult mind smells a rat.
So if the two can be compared in analogous terms, I would say "Night" and "One Day in the Life" is akin to the teenage-vampire series "Twilight" with Camus' "The Stranger."
"One Day in the Life" has stone-cold power, humor, and believability. We know these places in Siberia existed and the question that naturally arised from this is: for those pulling guard-duty in the party, how would they behave and act thousands of miles away from their homes, watching over the degerates who brought them there? No doubt the freezing forests and tundra would have made those guards as pitiless as the faces of North Korean soldiers.
So for whatever it is worth, Solzhenitsyn is a writer of great power and this is recognized by a great man of history: Putin.
The poster vk is obviously attempting a smear because the cold realities of his material dialecticism are inconvenient when trying to convince, even though, of course, Solzhenitsyn and Putin have fair things to say about Stalin.
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Dec 6 2020 1:55 utc | 94
Meanwhile the Western selective outrage machine ignores the starving Muslims in Yemen. Being forced to eat pork is offensive, dying of starvation is more so.
Posted by: Jon Dao | Dec 6 2020 2:03 utc | 95
Lets get some simple facts in place:
- Tibet was part of China for at least hundreds of years (thousands for many scholars). With the collapse of the Qin dynasty at the beginning of the twentieth century the Brits went in and stirred up trouble, Tibet was still never given de jure independence by the international community. After the communist revolution, it ws taken back without changing the highly exploitative feudal system. In the 1950s the CIA helped stir stuff up and the Chinese took direct control, including freeing the vast majority of the population from their utterly shitty lives under religious feudalism. Both the PRC (China) and the ROC (Taiwan) consider Tibet to be an integral part of China.
- Hong Kong was forcibly taken from China by the British during the opium wars. It has now been returned as an integral part of China.
- Taiwan has been part of China since the Ming dynasty. It is a rebel island where the KMT went after being defeated. It would be as if part of the US declared independence from the Union, you know like in the US Civil War.
- Xianxiang has been ruled by the Han dynasty, then myriad tribes, then the first Turkic Kaghanate, then the Chinese Tang dynasty, then the Uyghur Khaganate, then it was competed over by the Uyghurs, Turkics and Iranians, then ruled by the Mongols, then the Turkics, then the Qing dynasty in the eighteenth century and finally the PRC. The West is simply picking whomever they can find to mess with the Chinese, including the usual black propaganda - remember the "baby thrown out of incubators" bullshit to help get the first Gulf War going? Or Qaddafi supposedly going to massacre his own people (accepted as false by the UN investigation)? Or "weapons of mass destruction"? What about the godawful medieval torture chamber that is Saudi Arabia, now thats most definitely an evil empire that needs to be dealt with.
Posted by: Roger | Dec 6 2020 2:03 utc | 96
"It's the Solzhenitsyn story all over again"
Posted by: vk | Dec 5 2020 18:12 utc | 4
That's right. He was never in the Gulag - he made all of it up. Just like Dostoevsky's memoir "The House of the Dead". He made that up too!
Posted by: bozo | Dec 6 2020 2:03 utc | 97
@Featherless
You forgot the /sarc at the end. There are unfortunately quite a few people who may take you seriously.
Posted by: Roger | Dec 6 2020 2:06 utc | 98
@22 hopeholy
Funny, I just read your post and noticed you mentioned "The Stranger" as well.
Ol' Camus is in the air tonight.
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Dec 6 2020 2:07 utc | 99
I don't understand, the Trump administration is pushing the idea that China is evil, but why isn't the media not pushing back on this policy as they do for his other policies?
Posted by: Quiet Rebel | Dec 6 2020 2:19 utc | 100
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It's all true. The Uighurs are forced to make boutique shoes for potbelly pigs for the wealthy Han Chinese in Beijing.
Posted by: Christian Chuba | Dec 5 2020 17:25 utc | 1