Mick Hartley

We haven’t been hearing much recently about Chinese repression of the Uighurs in Xinjiang – cultural genocide bordering on actual genocide. Not surprising really, as Beijing goes to great lengths to keep it quiet and prevent any unwelcome publicity. Here’s Steerpike in the Spectator:

Of all Labour’s U-turns, none is perhaps more egregious than their stance on China. In opposition, they were happy to claim credit as a champion of the Uyghur Muslims, pushing in parliament for Beijing’s treatment of Xinjiang to be recognised as a genocide. But in office, a succession of ministers have traipsed out to the Far East, conveniently turning a blind eye to China’s treatment of minorities in the hope of gaining a few extra million here and there in trade deals.

But now new evidence has emerged which suggests that, far from ending their persecution in Xinjiang, the Chinese authorities simply have got better at hiding it. Zhang Yabo, a former police officer, has fled the region and is now giving testimony on what he saw in the torture prisons. In a rare insight into China’s repressive apparatus, Zhang reveals that under Ma Xingrui, Xinjiang’s Communist Party Secretary from 2021 to 2025, the previous approach of highly visible mass internment was dropped in favour of highly concealed coercion. Easier to get away it in private…

Zhang has told German anthropologist Adrian Zenz that around 25 per cent of the adult population in Hotan – the village where he was stationed – was interned in 2023 in re-education camps, excluding those separately transferred to formal prisons. Zenz writes that to ‘conceal the campaign from the outside world, the authorities issued strict orders to all local security forces to destroy every single file related to the re-education camps.’ This wave specifically targeted young Uyghurs swept up after widespread protests against pandemic lockdowns. Grim stuff. Zenz argues:

“To perpetuate the profound dread established during the mass internet era, Ma’s administration deployed pre-emptive, rotating short-term detentions to ensure enduring subjugation. By keeping the lockups brief but systematic, the state maintains pervasive fear while projecting an illusion of normalcy… programs actually operate as a vast mechanism for state-imposed forced labour and demographic engineering. Under Ma, labour transfers experienced massive quantitive growth, evolving from acute mobilisation into a normalised and inescapable state-mandated employment.”

Such coercive labour programmes have yielded grim dividends. Exports to the United States, European Union, Canada and the UK soared by 465 per cent between 2021 to 2025: a testament to how Beijing weaves demographic engineering into global supply chains. Sir Iain Duncan Smith, a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, told Mr S:

“For years we have been led to believe that the vicious persecution of Uyghurs has stopped. This powerful and rare account exposes this as a pernicious lie: far from having stopped, it is arguably more pervasive, but the CCP has become more sophisticated in concealing it. We must not allow the huge risk this man has taken to be in vain. We must not allow ourselves to profit from this inhuman trade.”

Over to you, Yvette Cooper. Given Labour’s much-vaunted China ‘reset’, don’t expect much.

A notable silence on the Uighurs has been that of the Islamic world, which remains entirely unconcerned about the genocidal repression of fellow Muslims. Turkey, with ethnic links, hosts some separatist East Turkestan movements and made some noise in the early days, but is now largely silent. All the animus is directed at the non-existent “Gaza genocide”, while a real genocide goes unremarked.

A concerned commenter wonders about sending a letter to the Muslim Council of Britian, asking if they have any concerns about the plight of the Uighurs, and if they’re planning a demonstration outside the Chinese embassy……