UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT HILO ◆ HOHONU 2020 ◆ VOL. 18 Politically Driven or Not, This Nationalities by Region, State, City, County”). The current leadership of China has been working Is Ethnic Cleansing on policies of cultural assimilation for the goals Michael Coloma Taylor of achieving national unity, seeking to increase English 287/ Geography 103 the Han Chinese (“Number of Nationalities by Region, State, City, County”) population, which The United Nations (UN) Committee on make up 90% of the nation. Schools in China teach Human Rights received reports in November Chinese children that minorities are a detriment to 2018 that groups of Uighur Muslims were be- society and work against the goal of national unity ing detained in what allegedly seems like intern- (Jacobs). ment camps, reported by BBC (Chang). Uighurs President Xi Jinping attempts to revitalize are a group of eleven million people located in China’s communist party by spearheading poli- the western Chinese province of Xinjiang, which cies that have led to re-education and work camps borders Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, and of minority populations like the Uighurs and Afghanistan (FIGURE 1). The Uighur Muslims Kazakhs are held at. The Wall Street Journal re- are culturally, linguistically, and ethnically simi- ports in March of 2018 that China had substantial- lar to the people of Turkey. In recent decades be- ly spent more on “Domestic Security,” (FIGURE cause of the mass migration of Han Chinese and a 2) when compared to previous years spending - minority has been the target of hate crimes and put cational education camps (not counter-extremism under hefty surveillance. As a permanent member centers, which they are) where, in a special re- in the UN Security Council, China is obligated leased by CCTV, they teach Uighurs basic trad- to promote human rights and peace. However, ing skills and Mandarin (Cheng). The Chinese they deny allegations of ethnic suppression of the government’s attempts to mask these blatant in- Uighurs regardless of satellite images. They reveal ternment camps were preceded by laws in China abductions by the Chinese Government, as well to allow “anti extremist ideological education,” as a history of racially suppressive re-education and were sending Uighurs and other Muslim mi- programs (Cheng). Political analysts and reporters norities to these proclaimed “education camps” for alike are stating that this is another under-reported simply being Muslim. Under President Xi, hav- and overlooked humanitarian crisis. ing a prayer mat, praying in public, teachings of Uighur historians view the Uighurs as the the Quran, Uighur language education, and more, have all been banned and have been seen as signs Chinese stance is that they come from the col- as religious extremism to the Chinese govern- lapse of the Uighur Khaganate after famine and ment (Thum). Many are being arbitrarily detained civil war, thereby replacing the Han Chinese who on the grounds that they turned themselves in for inhabited the area (Thum). Turkish tribes slowly having separatist thoughts (Rountree). The lead- conquered weak Sino-Tibetan kingdoms at the ers of the Chinese government, and the Chinese turn of the 10th century. One hundred years later, leaders of Xinjiang, have tried in the past to inch the Uighurs spoke their own language, a Perso- towards cultural assimilation in “civilizing mis- Arabic written system but a spoken language in sions,” with attempts to instill Confucian ideolo- the Karluk branch of the Turkish Language Tree, gies in the years 1884 through 1911 and 1944 and primarily used by those in China, aptly named Uighur. The Xinjiang Autonomous Region Bureau of these policies stem from a few terrorist attacks of Statistics (“Number of Nationalities by Region, made by suspected Uighurs (Jacobs). “Unlike State, City, County”) says in China, predominate- their Qing and Nationalist predecessors, China’s ly in Xinjiang, there are 11,303,355 living in the Communist Party leaders in 2018 face few geo- nation. Less than half a million Uighurs are scat- - tered across Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, ists no longer threaten China’s borders, and China and Turkey, among other countries (“Number of is no longer in debt to Western powers,” reports 53 UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT HILO ◆ HOHONU 2020 ◆ VOL. 18 Justin M. Jacobs of the Washington Post. “The wanting a more stable and equal global economy. - As expected, the United States has no plans to in- cantly diminished,” he adds. China wants to hold tervene on this issue. “At best, the issue of Uighur its status as a global power with biased education. re-education camps will come up as leverage to The growing national opinion is that non-Chinese achieve Trump’s economic policy objectives with residents are a harm to China (Rountree). Muslim Beijing, analysts predict,” states Massoun Hayoun families, not just Uighurs, are being torn apart by - the radical policy changes in China, and those who played his inability to act on human rights, un- like his predecessors. Many analysts mocked the are arrested (Ramzy). Government-funded facial Trump Administration, stating the President would recognition spyware and GPS car trackers are only bring up the Uighur camps if it somehow ben- - siders radicals, like Serikzhan Bilash, a natural- Trump’s foreign policies tend to be very unclear, ized Kazakh citizen who was born and raised in and UH Hilo Professor of Political Science Su-Mi Xinjiang. Bailash is a prime example of how cen- Lee comments that we are currently in a presiden- sorship also manifests outside of China. Bailash cy that strongly focuses on domestic policy. After was charged by the Kazakh government for “sow- an interview with Professor Lee, she explained the - discrepancy as to why China gets away with this tends to other nations showcases the power that although being a signer of the International Bill for President Xi Jinping has. Jacobs states there are Human rights, which outlines three separate cove- few borders China’s Communist Party has. Former nants: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights British Prime Minister, Theresa May, was com- (UDHR), the International Covenant on Civil and mended by Chinese state run media for “side-step- Political Rights (ICCPR); and the International ping” human rights (Tisdall) after May promised Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural in a prior interview that she would inquire with the Rights (ICESCR) (Lee). China signed all of these Chinese government about the “rumored issues”. items; however, they violate all three with the use Europe has been seeking a golden era of trade and of the aforementioned “vocational education cen- investment while China– this practice of sides- ters”. The reason why countries sign these types of tepping issues that don’t affect a nation’s economy treaties and covenants but don’t follow them is due isn’t just exclusive to Britain. Many countries of to a phenomenon called window dressing, or the the Muslim World are turning a blind eye to what mirage of political reform (Lee). Although China is going on in China out of fear of an economic signed the two of the three, they did not sign the ordeal or sanctions. This includes countries that ICCPR, a covenant that includes the rights of mi- have adopted an Islamic state (such as Afghanistan norities, non-discrimination, protection of politi- and Yemen), countries that declare their state reli- cal rights, and much more, which coincides with gion as Islam (such as Iraq and Malaysia), many cases referencing the Uighur Crisis. nations who have a predominant population of Uighurs are not optimistic about receiving any Muslim people (such as Indonesia or Syria), and help throughout this ordeal. One Uighur woman their government (such as Chad and Sierra Leone). Leaders tend to do what is best short-term for their Congress in November, stating through translation, “I would rather die than go through this torture, I the long-term; there is only loss for these coun- begged them to kill me,” (Meixler). She continues tries upon immediate reaction (Lee). As China is by saying, “They told me my mother and son had the European Union’s (EU) second-biggest trad- died, [and] my father was serving life in prison and ing partner, the Associated Press explains that that my family was torn apart because of me.” No although completely dodging plans of human one is taking action on this. An estimated 800,000 rights, the EU is more willing to address how ma- to 2,000,000 Uighurs are being detained in these nipulative foreign powers affect policy as well as 54 UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT HILO ◆ HOHONU 2020 ◆ VOL. 18 calls them, according to the US State Department. FIGURE 2: Much of the Uighur population has sought refuge in the US and neighboring countries. This has become one of the world’s most ig- nored violations of human rights. Regardless of social class, regardless of job, regardless of heart and merit, if someone is Muslim, they are sent to a camp. Even if they are studying abroad, they are after their family (Watson). Arfat Aeriken, an in- ternational student stranded in the US, was forced to drop out of college because of his parents’ dis- appearance to the “vocational education camps” (Watson). Professionals here in America are losing https://Uighuramerican.org/article/xinjiang-chinas-muslim-camp- their families to these camps as well. Uighurs who spending-revealed.html are professors and doctors, whose families are suf- Notes: fering because the Chinese government sees them Superscript [1]: Statistics Reported by Xinjiang at the bottom of the social food pyramid in China. Autonomous Region Government: Children are taught that Uighurs are lazy, back- Statistics generated/reported in this paper ref- wards and are undeserving of higher paying jobs erencing this were translated via Google Translate (Buitrago).