In response to the extraordinary revelations about China\u2019s programme of \u201cre-education\u201d camps for Uighur Muslims over recent weeks, member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation have stayed silent.
\u201cSorry, but I do not wish you a good Ramadan,\u201d wrote the head of the Uighur Institute of Europe in Paris, in a cri de coeur railing against Muslim countries\u2019 indifference to the plight of Uighurs in China\u2019s far-western Xinjiang region, published by French weekly L\u2019Obs in May.
In November, Dilnur Reyhan furthered this message in an open letter to Emmanuel Macron ahead of the French president\u2019s trip to Beijing, co-written by the essayist and MEP Rapha\u00ebl Glucksmann published in the left-wing French paper Lib\u00e9ration. \u201cGreat crimes feed on silence,\u201d she asserted: \u201cThe Uighurs have fallen into a kind of black hole \u2013 a legal black hole in China.\u201d
A form of \u201cblack hole politics\u201d is operating in the world, the open letter continued: the Uighurs are \u201cbarely mentioned in our countries\u2019 exchanges with Chinese leaders\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Remarkable achievements in human rights\u2019 \u2018A great cause of shame for humanity\u2019 \u2018Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism\u2019 In response to the extraordinary revelations about China\u2019s programme of \u201cre-education\u201d camps for Uighur Muslims over recent weeks, member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation have stayed silent. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":10556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c102-muslim-minorities"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
<\/strong> After the publication of troves of official documents leaked to The New York Times and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, outlining a systematic policy of mass internment in Xinjiang, Muslim countries have shied away from supporting the Uighurs.
There is a dividing line at the UN between defenders and critics of the Chinese state\u2019s actions in Xinjiang. At the end of October, 23 countries including France, the UK and the US denounced the repression of the Uighurs at the UN Committee on Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Affairs. Nevertheless, Beijing won the support of 54 countries, who praised the Communist Party\u2019s management of Xinjiang.
A similar thing happened in July: 22 states called on China to put a stop to arbitrary detention in the province. Then 37 countries rushed to Beijing\u2019s defence, praising its \u201cremarkable achievements in the field of human rights\u201d. Amongst them were 14 members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) \u2013 including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, the UAE, Qatar and Algeria.
In 2017, the OIC responded very differently to the Myanmar military\u2019s crackdown on the country\u2019s Rohingyas. Many Muslim countries \u2013 including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey \u2013 rallied to the defence of the Muslim minority group in Myanmar. Indeed, the OIC took an active role in condemning the treatment of the Rohingyas at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong> By contrast, the last OIC statement on the Uighurs dates back to a simple communiqu\u00e9 in 2015, in which the 57-member group of Muslim countries said it was \u201cconcerned\u201d about whether they would be able to celebrate Ramadan.
\u201cThere is less solidarity than there is for the Palestinian or Rohingya causes,\u201d noted Sophie Richardson, director for China at Human Rights Watch. \u201cChina has managed to win these countries\u2019 support because they need Chinese investment.\u201d
Saudi Arabia demonstrated this in February, expressing its \u201crespect\u201d for Chinese leader Xi Jinping before signing major commercial contracts. Egypt, which wants Beijing to finance its infrastructure, went so far as to allow Chinese police to come and interrogate Uighur exiles on its soil in 2017. Even Pakistan \u2013 which has spoken out for the Rohingyas with particular alacrity \u2013 has been silent on the Uighurs while the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative proceeds in the country.
For a long while, Turkey was the exception to this silence on China\u2019s actions in Xinjiang. Most notably, Ankara decried the detention of Uighurs in \u201cconcentration camps\u201d as a \u201cgreat cause of shame for humanity\u201d. But since then, Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u2019s government has enacted a U-turn: focused on trade talks with Beijing, the Turkish president refrained from signing the 22 states\u2019 letter condemning the repression in Xinjiang.
\u201cThere is a lot of sympathy for the Uighurs in Turkey, but the reality is that Erdogan needs China as an ally for economic reasons and to counteract the West\u2019s diplomatic pressure on issues like Syria,\u201d said R\u00e9mi Castets, a political scientist specialising in China at the Bordeaux-Montaigne University. It\u2019s a matter of \u201crealpolitik\u201d, he continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong> At the same time, the Chinese state has worked hard to give the Uighurs a bad press. In 2014, Beijing launched its \u201cStrike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism\u201d, justifying its tight grip on Xinjiang by presenting it as a necessary measure in the fight against Islamist extremism.
It seems that many Muslim countries are receptive to this way of framing the issue: at the UN committee meeting in July, the letter signed by OIC members praised Beijing\u2019s \u201ccounter-terrorism and deradicalisation measures\u201d in Xinjiang. \u201cNow safety and security has returned to Xinjiang and the fundamental human rights of people of all ethnic groups there are safeguarded,\u201d it continued.
The arrest of Uighurs in Taliban networks during the war in Afghanistan, their incarceration at Guantanamo, and the apparent presence of Uighur contingents in al Qaeda-affiliated groups in Syria have all fueled this discourse presenting China\u2019s actions as a crackdown on terrorism.
But human rights campaigners dismiss this as a pretext for the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s campaign to subjugate the Uighurs. \u201cUsing terrorism to justify oppression is a classic technique of authoritarian regimes,\u201d said B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte Jeannerod, director of Human Rights Watch France. \u201cThe presence of Uighurs in extremist groups does not justify the arbitrary and systematic oppression of more than one million Uighurs, classed as suspects simply because of their ethnicity and religion.\u201d
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