Lip service to Uighurs' plight
As China continues rising as an economic giant, this poses a challenge to US world supremacy. Many observers think that a "new cold war" between the two superpowers has already started. But some critics discredit that argument and brand it as a "myth," while others believe that "Everyone misunderstands the reasons for the US-China Cold War."
Currently, the Chinese and American administrations are exchanging tough warnings over regional disputes. In his first week as the US president, Joe Biden indicated that America would maintain its military presence in East Asia, warning China against expansionism in the region. In one response, China warned Taiwan, which the US supports, that if it declared independence, that would mean war.
Relations between China and India are also increasingly strained, with disputes over their Himalayan border flaring up. Various American media, politicians, academics, military generals, and journalists are pushing an antiChina agenda using propaganda tactics, suggesting that China is America's biggest military threat and a threat to American ideas of freedom. Several strategists and analysts have cautioned that the world is sleepwalking toward a war between the US and China.
Whatever happens, there will be a huge price for this confrontation. And yet again, it's the Uighur Muslims who will be the scapegoats. The Uighurs and international disputes Sean Roberts captured the sufferings of the Uighurs in his must-read book The War on Uyghurs: China's Internal Campaign Against a Muslim Minority.
Roberts argued, "Soon after the 11 September 2001 terror attacks, in order to seek China's support in launching a global war on terrorism, the US and its allies - the UK, European Union etc - designated the ETIM as a foreign terrorist organization for its alleged association with al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, and imposed sanctions on it."
But in reality, there is good evidence that the East Turkestan Islamic Movement was used as a scapegoat like other jihadist groups to demonize Islam and cushion the imperialist agenda.
Roberts interviewed a member of ETIM in Istanbul during the summer of 2015 and found that, "ETIM was renamed as Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) shortly after the war on terror began in Afghanistan in 2002, for the purpose of mobilizing support and to recruit new blood from Central Asia's Turkic ethnic communities."
Xinjiang has long been a disputed territory, having been declared an independent state in the 1930s and again in the late 1940s.