Pakistan silent on plight of Uighur Muslims in China

Neighbouring superpower is interning hundreds of thousands of Muslims in camps, according to UN

Beijing

WHEN Imran Khan was earlier this month asked why he did not criticise China’s alleged mass detentions from its Uighur Muslim minority, Pakistan’s prime minister was uncharacteristically coy.

The former cricketer said he did not know much about the situation in China’s neighbouring Xinjiang province, where Beijing is allegedly holding hundreds of thousands in brainwashing reeducation camps.

Moreover, if there were truth in the allegations, he would not criticise his Chinese allies publicly, but raise the subject in private “because that’s how [the Chinese] are”, he said.

His restraint contrasted with his own previous condemnation of the Islamic world’s “shameful” silence over attacks on another Muslim minority, the Rohingya of Myanmar.

Yet for the Uighur community inside Pakistan that has seen friends and family across the border suffer in Beijing’s crackdown, Mr Khan’s silence is not surprising. “China is giving us billions of dollars. If we are in debt to China, what can we do?” said Abdul Rahim, at his silk shop in Rawalpindi.

The 52-year-old trader said neighbouring China had launched a war to stamp out Uighur culture and many of his friends and associates had disappeared. But Pakistan would not speak out for fear of angering an ally. “We cannot go against China,” he said.

The United Nations estimates as many as one million Uighurs, a Turkicspeaking Muslim minority, have been forced into internment camps to undergo political indoctrination and abuse. While the crackdown has at- tracted growing condemnation in the West and US steps towards possible sanctions, the response from China’s allies in the Muslim world has been faint.

The Eastern superpower is using its diplomatic and financial clout to shut off criticism, said Sophie Richardson, China director of Human Rights Watch.

China denies mass detention saying instead individuals were sent to voca- tional training centres to learn useful skills and save them from extremism.

“China invests a lot of money in many of these countries and they are loath to compromise that,” she said.

Pakistan is at the heart of China’s plans to build a modern day silk road network of ports, roads and railways across Asia and is particularly keen not to offend the Chinese who have promised a £46bn investment package.

Another pillar of China’s plans, Turkey, has also appeared keen not to publicise the subject as large sums of Chinese investment have poured into its struggling economy.

Abdurehim Parach, a 44-year-old Uighur poet, fled China in 2015, and spent months travelling, before eventually smuggling himself into Turkey.

He is unable to communicate with his five adult children in Xinjiang and fears they have been sent for re-education or even killed.

Last month, he and eight other Uighurs marched from Istanbul to Ankara to highlight the Uighur plight but were stopped by police short of their goal.

China is stepping up its campaign to silence criticism ahead of United Nations’ scrutiny of its human rights record scheduled for March.

“Few ideas have been so successful as China’s notion that you can’t criticise it without it making the universe collapse around you,” said Ms Richardson.

‘China invests a lot of money in many of these countries and they are loath to compromise that’