The Uighur tragedy

[kiaa]

China forcing birth control on Uighurs to suppress population, report says

So, apparently, the Chinese government has given up on even forcibly "Sinicizing" the Uighurs into being good Han-Chinese, loyal communists. Now it's gone on to ethnic cleansing. For years, this has officially been done to "combat extremism", which is apparently equal to being Muslim and having a culture and language different from being Han-Chinese.

How likely are significant economic sanctions over this by the US and the EU countries, and could Tibet be next for this radical step toward "lebensraum" for ethnic Han Chinese? My bet is "Not very", and "For sure".

I hate this form of nationalism. Xianjing was conquered by China in fairly modern times, and the Uighurs have lived there for centuries. They're a national, rather than merely an ethnic, minority in the region. That the ChiCom government thinks everyone not being Han Chinese, everyone not believing in the same government-approved view of religion, everyone not marching lock in step with Winnie the Pooh, is a "threat" to stability and peace in China, is not just tragic in human terms, but it is tragic most because it is a wrong belief. That leads to unnecessary suffering.

And then, there's this question. Why do Muslim states stay silent over China’s abuse of the Uighurs? Nations that claim to be defenders of the faith offer no protest to the concentration camps - why is that? Uh, sorry, that must've sounded like a rhetorical question.

Comments

[tcpip]

> Why do Muslim states stay silent over China’s abuse of the Uighurs?<

"Here is a bag of money for political purposeseconomic development"

[dewline]

Horrifically accurate in a number of cases, I fear.

[tcpip]

It's pretty much how most foreign policy runs, unfortunately.

[dancesofthelight]

To put it bluntly, pan-Islamic solidarity has a much easier time aiming at Israel, which they know will have certain kinds of restraint to Arab states, than to the PRC, which knows restraint as little as the USA does and is only relatively restrained by lesser access to sea power.

I can't see Donald Trump giving two shakes of a rat's ass over this, and Russia would hardly be interested in stirring the waters that domestic repression of Muslim minorities is bad. After all, that brings in the Chechyna issue that made Putin's bones and puts him squarely into an impalement of his own making and he's really not interested in that, I'd wager.

[dancesofthelight]

I think the Cultural Revolution certainly could qualify as one given that the definition of genocide can and does include deliberate demolition of a cultural and social history of a civilization. Whether or not that particular definition and can of worms being opened is a course of wisdom given how easily it could be turned against things that are actual protests, not woodenly aping things that failed badly in Russia and worse in China is a wholly different question.