Ass'n for Asian Studies Statement on Xinjiang, March 27, 2019 (Iwth Comment)

H-Asia Ass'n for Asian Studies statement on Xinjiang, March 27, 2019 (iwth comment)

Discussion published by Magnus Fiskesjö on Saturday, March 30, 2019

Following the Statement by Concerned Scholars on China’s Mass Detention of Turkic Minorities from November 26, 2018 [https://concernedscholars.home.blog], and a number of other appeals against China's mass atrocities in Xinjiang, the Association for Asian Studies has now, on March 27, 2019, issued its own statement, on the "Extra-Judicial Detention of Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang, PRC."

It is an important statement that all Asia scholars should see. Here it is in full:

http://www.asian-studies.org/asia-now/entryid/209/aas-statement-on-extra-judicial-detention-of-turkic- muslims-in-xinjiang-prc3/28/2019

The Association for Asian Studies expresses its strong concern over the detention of at least 800,000 and up to 2 million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in political “re-education centers” in Xinjiang, Northwest China.1 Turkic Muslims have been interned, imprisoned, or forcibly “disappeared” since April 2017.2 Such detention constitutes a major violation of human rights and, in the case of our academic colleagues, a clear disregard for academic freedom.

We are particularly dismayed at the disappearance of at least 386 Uyghur intellectuals and scholars, including 21 staff of Xinjiang University, 15 staff of Xinjiang Normal University, 13 staff of Kashgar University, 6 staff of Xinjiang Medical University, 6 staff of the Xinjiang Social Sciences Academy, 4 staff from Khotan Teachers’ College, and 101 students.3 Turkic Muslims have been denied the freedom to use their mother tongue, to pursue Qur’anic studies, or to study and research abroad.4 Those returning to China from periods of study or research have been recalled, detained, questioned, or caused to disappear into internment camps.5 Five deaths of students and scholars while in custody have been confirmed during this period.6

The Association for Asian Studies is a non-political, non-profit international professional association comprising some 7,000 members committed to the free and open dissemination of knowledge in and about Asia. We are a global community whose work thrives on active interaction between scholars and students from around the world. We decry these detentions in Xinjiang and strongly urge the Chinese government to ensure the safe return of our colleagues and students.

AAS President Prasenjit Duara on behalf of the AAS Board of Directors

1. Adrian Zenz (2019) “‘Thoroughly reforming them towards a healthy heart attitude’: China’s political re-education campaign in Xinjiang”, Central Asian Survey, 38.1, 102-128, DOI: 10.1080/02634937.2018.1507997

Citation: Magnus Fiskesjö. Ass'n for Asian Studies statement on Xinjiang, March 27, 2019 (iwth comment). H-Asia. 03-30-2019. https://networks.h-net.org/node/22055/discussions/3949154/assn-asian-studies-new-statement-xinjiang-march-27-2019 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Asia

2018, https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-xinjiang-exclusive/exclusive-in-rare-coordinated-move-w estern-envoys-seek-meeting-on-xinjiang-concerns- idUKKCN1NK0GW.

2. For more details see Special Issue on Securitization, insecurity and conflict in contemporary Xinjiang edited by Joanne Smith Finley, Central Asian Survey, 38.1 (2019), https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ccas20/38/1; Sean R. Roberts (2018), “The biopolitics of China’s ‘war on terror’ and the exclusion of the Uyghurs”, Critical Asian Studies, 50:2, 232-258, DOI: 10.1080/14672715.2018.1454111

3. Uyghur Human Rights Project report on the disappearance and detention of Uyghur intellectuals, 25 March 2019: https://docs.uhrp.org/pdf/Detained-and-Disappeared-Intellectuals-Under-Assault-in-the-Uyghur- Homeland.pdf.

4. Darren Byler, “The ‘patriotism’ of not speaking Uyghur”, SupChina, 2 Jan 2019, https://supchina.com/2019/01/02/the-patriotism-of-not-speaking-uyghur/.

5. Special Correspondent, “A summer vacation in China’s Muslim gulag: How one university student was almost buried by the ‘people's war on terror’”, Foreign Policy, 28 Feb 2018, https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/02/28/a-summer-vacation-in-chinas-muslim-gulag/.

6. See, for example, ‘Two Uyghur students die in China’s custody following voluntary return from Egypt’, Radio Free Asia, 21 Dec 2017, https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/students-12212017141002.html; Uyghur Human Rights Project, ‘Uyghur Human Rights Project condemns death in custody of scholar Muhammad Salih Hajim’, 29 Jan 2018, https://uhrp.org/press-release/uyghur-human-rights-project-condemns-death-custody-scholar-m uhammad-salih- hajim.html.

END QUOTE.

My own comment:

The AAS statement on Xinjiang is an excellent statement, but in my view it still does not go far enough. We should decry the mass detentions, including how the Chinese state targets the cultural elite of the Uighurs, Kazakhs and other groups with mass arrests of academics, artists, poets, and so on.

But the wholesale targeting of ethnic culture and language means that this is now much bigger than even the up to 2 million people locked away in the new concentration camps system. Millions more face a concerted forced-assimilation campaign of which the detentions is a part: They are forced to denounce and abandon their culture and adopt Chinese ways, break food taboos, go into forced marriages, to stop speaking their own language (as mentioned in the statement), and many children are taken and sent to Chinese-only 'orphanages' while parents are in camps. The list goes on.

Taken together, this means that the Chinese government campaign is now already a genocide, directed against the Muslim ethnicities of Xinjiang. Their campaign already clearly meets all five subdefinitions of the Geneva convention against genocide, as spelled out in its Article II, a-e: https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crimeofgenocide.aspx "In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

--Magnus Fiskesjö, [email protected]