Mick Hartley

We rarely hear about the Uighur persecution – cultural genocide – nowadays. China’s repression is so total that news barely ever leaks out – and it’s much easier for our brave reporters to go to Gaza, say, where they’re spoon-fed the latest “news” from Hamas, than to risk their lives evading the Chinese police in Xinjiang. And, to be fair, no one seems that interested. Certainly not other Muslims.

Anyway, here’s some news. From the AP:

It is a soulful folk song, filled with feeling and history: A love-stricken young man tells God about his hopes and dreams of happiness. Generations of Uyghurs, the Turkic ethnic minority in China’s Xinjiang region, have played it at parties and weddings.

But today, if they download it, play it or share it online, they risk ending up in prison.

“Besh pede,” a popular Uyghur folk ballad, is among dozens of Uyghur-language songs that have been deemed “problematic” by Xinjiang authorities, according to a recording of a meeting held by police and other local officials in the historic city of Kashgar last October. The recording was shared exclusively with The Associated Press by the Norway-based nonprofit Uyghur Hjelp.

During the meeting, authorities warned residents that those who listened to banned songs, stored them on devices or shared them on social media could face prison. Attendees were also instructed to avoid phrases like “As-salamu alaykum,” the greeting common among Muslims, and to replace the popular farewell phrase “Allahqa amanet,” which means “May God keep you safe,” with “May the Communist Party protect you.”

The policy has been corroborated by interviews with former Xinjiang residents, whose family members, friends and acquaintances have been detained for playing and sharing Uyghur music. AP has also obtained rare access to the court verdict of a Uyghur music producer sentenced last year to three years in prison for uploading to his cloud account songs deemed sensitive.

The renewed crackdown on cultural expression in Xinjiang, classified as an “autonomous region” but tightly controlled by the central government, suggests a continuation of the past decade’s repressive policies. They have culminated in the extrajudicial detention, between 2017 and 2019, of at least 1 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China such as Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Huis, rights activists and foreign governments say….

After facing international backlash and sanctions over the alleged arbitrary internment of ethnic minorities, Beijing in late 2019 claimed the detention camps were closed and life had returned to normal in the region. China now aims to refashion Xinjiang into a destination for tourism.

Although many of the more glaring signs of repression such as internment camps and frequent traffic checkpoints appear to have been decommissioned, the list of banned songs indicates repression in Xinjiang continues, albeit more subtly, said Rian Thum, a senior lecturer in East Asian history at the University of Manchester.

Other, less conspicuous forms of control include the expansion of boarding schools, where middle-schoolers are educated while separated from their families and learn almost exclusively in Mandarin Chinese, and random checks of phones for sensitive material are common.

Turkey has historic and ethnic links with Xinjiang, aka East Turkistan. There’s an interview with an Istanbul-based Uighur activist at MEMRI TV, where he says that Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are much better treated that Uighur prisoners in China. They can even study. In China the prisoners come out in body only.