Otago Daily Times

China’s ‘reeducatio­n’ policy futile

- Gwynne Dyer is an independen­t London journalist.

TWO weeks ago, Prof Gay McDougall, cochair of the UN Committee on the Eliminatio­n of Racial Discrimina­tion, alleged that up to a million people belonging to the Uighur and other Muslim minority groups in China’s northweste­rn province of Xinjiang have been detained in concentrat­ion camps to be ‘‘reeducated’’ about religion.

Hu Lianhe, who shapes the Communist Party Central Committee’s policies on minorities, sternly denied it: ‘‘The argument that one million Uighurs are detained in reeducatio­n centres is completely untrue.’’

He rather spoiled the effect of his denial, however, by telling the meeting that while China was not running a ‘‘deIslamisa­tion’’ programme in Xinjiang, ‘‘those deceived by religious extremists . . . shall be assisted by resettleme­nt and reeducatio­n’’.

Resettled where? In detention camps, perhaps? And if not a million, then how many? Half a million? Two million? The staterun Global Times then defended the detention camps that do not exist by claiming that Xinjiang had narrowly escaped a descent into mass violence and chaos.

‘‘It is because of the Party’s leadership, a powerful China, and the courage of local officials that Xinjiang has been pulled back from the verge of massive turmoil. It has avoided the fate of becoming ‘China’s Syria’ or ‘China’s Libya’.’’ That is not a denial of the policy; it’s a justificat­ion of it.

You can’t have it both ways: China is detaining and ‘‘reprogramm­ing’’ Muslims in Xinjiang (we don’t say ‘‘brainwashi­ng’’ any more) on a very large scale. It is doing so because it fears that the sporadic terrorist attacks that have hit cities in Xingjiang and even China proper may escalate as Islamic State, defeated in Syria and Iraq, seeks to build support in other regions of the Muslim world.

Religion is not the root cause of Uighur unhappines­s with Chinese rule; it is the deliberate effort to submerge their identity by settling millions of Han Chinese (the ethnic group who make up more than 90% of China’s population) in the province that was once known as Chinese Turkestan.

Only onefifth of Xinjiang’s population was Han Chinese in 1950; today almost half is. Han immigratio­n was spontaneou­s in the early days, but in recent decades the Communist regime has encouraged and even subsidised it, in a deliberate attempt to create a loyal majority in the province. Muslim Xinjiang, like its neighbour to the south, Buddhist Tibet, is suspect because its religion gives it an alternativ­e, ‘‘foreign’’ loyalty.

As in Tibet, this attempt to make the population more ‘‘Chinese’’ only stimulated resentment and resistance among the former majority population, and the first antiChines­e violence in Xinjiang began in the late 1990s. Almost 200 people, mostly Han

Chinese, were killed in ethnic riots in Urumqi, the capital, in 2009, and since then there have been numerous knife, bomb and vehicle attacks in Xinjiang and in China proper.

The official Chinese response has been repression. A vast surveillan­ce apparatus, from facial recognitio­n software to mass DNA collection, blankets the province. Xinjiang’s 20 million people are only 2% of China’s population, but the province accounts for 20% of the country’s arrests. And now, mass detention and ‘‘reeducatio­n’’ camps.

The genius responsibl­e for these policies is Chen Quanguo, who previously used some of the same methods to suppress ethnic nationalis­m in Tibet. The detention camps appeared and human rights abuses intensifie­d after he was made Communist Party Secretary in Xinjiang in 2016, and he is now a member of the politburo in Beijing as a reward for his efforts.

It’s all so predictabl­e and futile. Ignore the real causes of the anger. (The Uighurs are much poorer than the Han newcomers and fear that they will lose their identity.) Treat the symptoms instead. (Blame the terrorism on religious fanatics who have been influenced by evil foreigners.) Take a leaf out of George W. Bush’s book and go attack the evil foreigners.

Qi Qianjin, China’s ambassador to Syria, recently told the progovernm­ent

Syrian daily AlWatan that China is ‘‘following the situation in Syria, in particular after the [Assad regime’s] victory in southern Syria. Its military is willing to participat­e in some way alongside the Syrian army that is fighting the terrorists in

Idlib and in any other part of Syria.’’

And then they could invade Afghanista­n. Everybody else has.

 ?? PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES ?? Muslims pray at the Id Kah Mosque in the Chinese province of Xinjiang. Reports suggest some Muslims in the region have been detained in concentrat­ion camps.
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES Muslims pray at the Id Kah Mosque in the Chinese province of Xinjiang. Reports suggest some Muslims in the region have been detained in concentrat­ion camps.
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