Countless practices by China have been carried out against the Uyghur people including persecution, imprisonment, psychological and physical torture.
All these racial, sectarian, and religious practices have happened and are still happening by a systematic plan against the Uyghur Muslims in East Turkestan province. Through this approach, communist China aims to control the individual, social and religious life. (article continues below)
Lindsay Maizland
Where is East Turkestan located?
East Turkestan is located in the middle of Asia,the meaning of Stan is"land," Turkestan means"the land of Turk"
East Turkestan has borders with six countries(Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan) and two autonomous regions (Kashmir, Tibet). It has an area of 1,800,000 million sq. km. It is one fifth of China in size and is the largest province of China.
The history of Uyghurs and the reasons of their conflict with China
Uyghurs are Turkish folks who lived in East Turkestan before the birth of Christ. They worked in agriculture and they have their language. It's called the Uyghur language, which uses Arabic alphabets. In Uyghur language, Uyghur means 'community' or 'union'.
They stayed in this situation until Islam had arrived to them in 714-715 AD. East Turkestan is located on the "Silk Road", and has a huge size and borders with many countries.
Due to the geographical importance, possibility of finding natural resources (i.e Gas, Oil) and fast spread of Islam in region, China considered East Turkestan a threat for its trade and communism in the region.
Silk Road
China discovered silk in 3000B.C, they were able to make thread and cloth from the material, and export them all over the world. That is why this road is called the Silk Road which passes from East Turkestan. China started the war on Uyghurs for the control of the Silk Road. At times they won and other times, they lost. China considered it as a big threat to its existence due to the large area of East Turkestan and China feared the fast expansion of Islam in the area in opposed to communism. Also East Turkestan is an important region in China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Wars remained between the Chinese and Uyghurs for a long time. East Turkestan was self ruled until 1949 when China recovered occupation of East Turkestan until today. China was invoked by the Soviet Union many times to crush Uyghur revolutions.
China's persecution of Uyghurs:
After China re-occupied East Turkestan in 1949, it adopted a new policy to ensure the survival of its occupation. They canceled the Uyghurs' identity, communist China changed the name of East Turkestan into "Xinjiang," which means “the new border” in Chinese.
China executed more than 120 thousand old and young men and deported hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs to China and brought Chinese from the Han race to replace them and China gave them the lands and authority on Uyghurs.
China established huge concentration camps and put more than a million Uyghur Muslims in there . They also put their children in orphan care homes, China banned the long beard for men and veils for women and the celebration of any Islamic festivals.
China destroyed hundreds of mosques which were built hundreds of years ago, closed schools and banned memorization of the Holy Quran.
Muslims were forced to drink wine and eat pork and celebrate in Chinese official festivals. In addition, China has put the largest surveillance system in the world to spy on Muslims in East Turkestan, where it has deployed more than two hundred million spy cameras in streets, houses, markets and everywhere else.They forced Uyghur Muslims to install tracking apps and made sure that no one remove the app from their phones. If any of the Uyghurs violate this, Chinese authority put them in concentration camps.
These practices forced thousands of Uyghurs to escape from East Turkestan to outside China to live a good life and work, but several countries returned many of them to China for economic reasons like Egypt, Thailand, Malaysia.
East Turkestan has the presence of most security personnel and police forces in the world. The United Nations and many states denounced in Chinese repression of Uyghurs but without any serious movement and this suffering still continues to this day.
