Islamophobia In China
Mouctar Dia
Feature Story
10/4/2023
Professor Bangali
An inside look into how modern-day Chinese attack Muslims in China.
The Chinese government has been hell bent on re-educating Muslims in the northwestern parts of China because of their religion, culture, and demographic situation, however upon closer inspection the Chinese government is in fact prosecuting and erasing the Uyghur Muslims identity in that region. This has been the unfortunate life of so many practicing Muslims in China today. What many people don’t know is that the Chinese government has so much power, that they’re using their reach to hurt anyone who tries to let the world know what is happening to the Uyghur Muslims.
Background Information
Uyghur Muslims? They are an ethnic Turkish group that is living in the Northwestern part of China, they originated from Central East Asia, and are majority Muslims. In the early years of this region, it was conquered from time to time by the Chinese dynasties however the Chinese were not natives to this region, this region was later included into the republic of China around the 1940s. Since then, the Chinese government has been constantly denying their call for independence. And the region was renamed Xinjiang by the Chinese government which means “New Territory” around 11 million Uyghurs live in the region according to recent studies done by China 2020 census, out of 25 million inhabitants which is 45% percent of the total population of the region. The Uyghur Muslims genocide it officially started back in 2014 where Xi Jinping the general secretary of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) ordered the incarceration of more than a million of Uyghur Muslims without any due process where they got sent directly to internment camps, which mostly occurred in the Xinjiang region. Genocide by the UN definition says, “as a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.” Just to reiterate the Uyghur Muslims are not the only ones facing genocide in the region is a mix of Muslims with diverse cultural backgrounds, but the Uyghurs are the majority while ethnic Kazakhs, hui, Kyrgyz, follow behind.
Internment Camps
Internment Camps have been found in all over the Northwestern region of China which have been labeled by the Chinese government quote and quote “vocational schools” . Let’s examine these so-called vocational schools that imprison children, adults and the elderly just because of their religion. These internment camps houses around a million of Uyghur Muslims for no obvious reason than the fact that they are Muslims, and they practice their religion, and the atrocities that the Chinese Government is committing is upsetting, from forced labor, forced sterilization, forced contraception, forced abortion, rape, torture and a forced renunciation of Islam. And evidence of these brutal crimes has been leaked, recorded and satellite imagery has supplied sufficient evidence to hold the Chinese government accountable, these leaks came from a Chinese police station who were in charge of the imprisonment of some Uyghur Muslims, it shows the pictures of all those imprisoned.
After leaked satellite imagery was available the human right groups have in fact called these “vocational schools” as prison cells in disguise, employed by the Chinese government to physically, mentally and psychologically abuse and erase the Uyghur Muslims Identity.
This is one of the many satellite imageries that shows that the Chinese government lies about these camps being “vocational schools” because vocational schools don’t force you to do something against your religious beliefs example of such is being forced to drink alcohol, eat pork and to not fast during Ramadan, which are sins in Islam if voluntarily done. Furthermore, there are also videos of Uyghur Muslims being treated horribly by the government in these prison cells, and this is the hyperlink here. This video shows a glimpse of the people who are imprisoned and
who are currently experiencing these atrocities that are being committed by the Chinese government. This is horrible and the fact that the Chinese government doesn’t discriminate at all, they imprison all ages and genders is sickening as it says in the video the oldest person is 72 whilst the youngest is 15. And other alternatives of evidence are testimony, of which an Uzbek teacher who went through this horrible treatment testified, where it was fact checked by the Tribunal in UK who oversaw investigating the Genocide that was happening to the Uyghur Muslim. As previously mentioned Qelbirnur Sidik an ethnic Uzbek Teacher from the
Xinjiang capital of Urumqi she was ordered by the Chinese government to educate the Uyghur Muslims the Mandarin language and according to her theses’ so-called “students” was wearing shackles and being treated inhumanely and the people who oversaw watching them enjoyed humiliating them and make their life miserable. Sidik went further to tell the tribunal that the female inmates were in fact being gang-raped and she herself got sterilized. This is just the beginning of many more related stories like this that happened which were verified by human rights groups. This is the source Al Jazeera, A.
(2021, June 4). ‘Uyghur Tribunal’ opens with testimony of alleged rape, torture. Uighur News | Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/4/uighur-tribunal-hearsevidence-of-alleged-china-abuses#:~:text=Female%20prisoners%20were%20allegedly
%20abused,also%20subjected%20to%20forced%20sterilisation
Surveillance Capitalism
The amount of surveillance that the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) have on the Xinjiang region is ridiculous. First what’s surveillance capitalism? Surveillance capitalism is “The monetization of data captured through monitoring people’s movement and behaviors online and in the physical world.” However, the CCP definition of surveillance capitalism is different, as they use this tool to the extreme on monitoring Uyghur Muslims to the point where if they were to write any criticism related to the Chinese government on twitter or any other social media platform it will be tracked and if they are caught it will be considered a crime. The main aim of surveillance capitalism is to change the behavior of people, and the best solution that the Chinese Communist Party came up with. Since the Uyghur Muslims have a diverse culture, their aim is to change their religion, language, customs, identity and eventually region. As it says in the Jstor feature story about the Chinese government use of surveillance capitalism to Decapitate the Uyghur Muslim population, “These technologies are also able to record and store information about the target people and this enables post-facto punishments of past transgressions, as, for instance, Chinese authorities punishes Uyghurs for past “crimes” like texting a friend a congratulatory message for a Muslim religious day.” This image showcases what these technologies are capable of from the basic information of people’s birthdays to advance information about how active these people are on social media.
The fact that the CCP can punish them for the mere fact that they texted Eid Mubarak to a friend or family member is deeply concerning, like what’s so offensive about sending a congratulatory message to someone. Thus, this could only be explained as them being Islamophobic.
Demographic Location
As previously discussed, the demographic situation of the Uyghurs is particularly important because it was once part of the silk road. And it is a doorway from east Asia to western Asia and eventually into Europe. As many of you know, during the silk road era, the Xinjiang area was especially important since it was the crossroad of the silk road and trade was booming, and the doorway to other areas that were inaccessible before. Which brings us to the new ambitious CCP (Chinese Communist Party) project, the Belt and Road initiative. It’s a reconstruction of the silk road but wider globally and better. And their goal is to construct roads into other countries where transport will be efficient for goods and people. The countries that are part of the belt and road initiative include Russia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia etc. And currently the number of countries that are on the Belt and Road initiative list (BRI for short) is 150.
As you could see this is an extremely ambitious project which they coined as “project of the century” and of the many reasons as to why this project was introduced is because of the sour relationship between the U.S. and China. As the U.S controls the oceans with their navy this means any issue with them could result in you being charged with high tariffs or sanctions, which is enough of a reason for the CCP to look for new ways to ship their products to their consumers in the most efficient way possible and to increase their influence in those areas since their aim is to be a superpower. And the only major obstacles in their way are the U.S. and the Uyghur Muslims region of Xinjiang. “Xinjiang is a critical region to the success of the BRI projects, as its location connects China with the countries in Central Asia and Middle East.[4] Four of the six major BRI land routes— including the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)—run through Xinjiang.” But ironically this region has a lot of controversies because of the Genocide that’s happening to the Uyghur Muslims and the fact that those countries that China is trying to construct infrastructure with
are in fact mostly Muslim majority countries which signals a problem for their ambitious plan for the Xinjiang region. Furthermore, the neighboring countries that China is planning to invest in for the belt and road initiative are countries who condemn these atrocities committed by the CCP.
Foreseeable Solutions
The first thing that should be implemented by the people is to raise an awareness of what’s going on in the Xinjiang region. Not only is there a genocide happening that people aren’t aware of but also, they are those who knows of what’s happening but still ignores it for the fears of the CCP blacklisting them or threating them or their family or business. This goes to show how low the Chinses government will go to fabricate the genocide that’s happening in the Xinjiang as just a “re-education for an illness” as it was mentioned in the Jstor article. This is genuinely concerning because these are people who want the title of being called a superpower and the fact that if you criticize them in any way it means that you will be either blacklisted or threatened or worse jailed. And the fact that countries are just starting to speak out about the genocide is also overly concerning since this had been happening for almost a decade now without major sanctions on the CCP, and the CCP (Chinese communist Party) also have a lot of ignorance, them thinking that prosecuting the Uyghurs Muslims will
helping them, is their biggest mistake since now neighboring Muslim countries are starting to sanction or speak out about the tragedy that’s happening there and their worst nightmare is that those countries are now part of the belt and road initiative which if they are not careful it will collapse before it even starts.
Citations APA Style
Al Jazeera, A. (2021, June 4). ‘Uyghur Tribunal’ opens with testimony of alleged rape, torture. Uighur News | Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/4/uighur-tribunalhears-evidence-of-alleged-china-abuses#:~:text=Female%20prisoners%20were
%20allegedly%20abused,also%20subjected%20to%20forced%20sterilisation.
Air University (AU). (2020, December 9). The Economics of Repression: The Belt and Road
Initiative, COVID-19, a. https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/JIPA/Display/Article/2441685/the-economics-ofrepression-the-belt-and-road-initiative-covid-19-and-the-repre/#:~:text=Xinjiang%20is
%20a%20critical%20region,CPEC)%E2%80%94run%20through%20Xinjiang.
Source: Islamophobia Studies Journal, fall 2020, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Fall 2020), pp. 175-198
Published by: Pluto Journals Stable URL:
Source: (Growcoot, 2022)
