China's Final Solution

China is inventing a whole new way to oppress a people
By Benny Avni

The growing, horrifying oppression of Muslims in a western Chinese colony marks a key moment in Beijing’s expansionist drive — and its global competition with America.
A key part of China’s manufacturing machine, East Turkestan colony is a gateway to Central Asia, and therefore crucial for Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, a plan to create a formidable China-dominated realm all the way to the Indian Ocean and the Mideast.
The province’s 11 million Uighurs look different than most Chinese, have a different culture, practice moderate Islam — and have been oppressed by Beijing for decades. 

But now, seen as a major stumbling block to Xi’s new ambitions, China’s Communist Party has escalated its control.
Things worsened when Xi became president in 2012. 

But the real turning point was in 2016, when the Communist Party secretary in Tibet, Chen Quanguo, was transferred to East Turkestan, importing to the colony tactics used in his successful quashing of Tibetan unrest.
In East Turkestan, Beijing is honing to perfection such tactics as facial recognition, personal-background data-mining and DNA collection. 

Scannable codes are posted on apartment buildings where suspected Uighur dissidents live. 

Such practices, reminiscent of 1940s low-tech identification of Jewish residences under German control, may expand beyond the Uighur province.
“Now they [have started] using these systems in the rest of China,” says Omer Kanat, director of the Washington, DC-based Uyghur Human Rights Project. 

Soon, he added, the tactics China uses in East Turkestan will be exported to friendly dictatorships outside the country as well.
Up to 1 million Uighurs were sent to concentration camps for “sins” like eating Halal food or growing beards longer than Beijing allows. 

Those interned in camps are forced to eat pork, study Xi’s writing and participate in intensive forced-labor projects. 

Some are executed; many don’t survive for other reasons.
Artists, scholars, musicians, intellectuals and anyone who ever had contact with the outside world are specifically targeted for “cultural indoctrination,” Kanat adds. 

“My neighbor, Abdel Rashid Seley, died in the camp.” 

Other reported Uighur deaths include an intellectual known for his translation of the Koran to Chinese and one of China’s most well-known scientists.
After taking over Macao and Hong Kong, Beijing promised to leave local practices intact, calling it “one government, two systems.” 

But by now China’s neighbors know that once Beijing assumes control, it’ll pursue complete ideological, political and cultural domination. 

If you happen to be Muslim, Christian, Falun Dafa or a Western-style democrat — well, too bad.
Xi increasingly uses China’s economic prowess to squeeze resistant neighbors and reward those willing to accept Beijing’s dominance. 

Once successful, China will control regions rich in minerals, rare earths, oil and other resources necessary for China’s economic growth.
Beijing will also export its model of controlled capitalism, using economic incentives and punishment as well as military tactics honed in the East and South China Seas.
But to pave his new Silk Road, Xi must first control China’s gateway to Central Asia. 

And if America wants to arrest his march, highlighting Uighur oppression would be a good start.
To that end, Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have already been speaking up. 

Some in Congress call to invoke the Magnitsky Act and impose sanctions on seven Chinese officials responsible for the Uighur plight, including party secretary Chen.
The administration’s wild card: Donald Trump, who veers between expressing his friendship with Xi and waging a trade war against China. 

A more comprehensive strategy is needed.
Xi’s China is emerging as America’s most formidable global enemy since the end of the so-called “end of history” era. 

Many countries in China’s immediate neighborhood, and increasingly beyond, face a choice: our liberal democracy or China’s harsh ways.
America should highlight the horrors suffered by China’s Uighurs to help those countries choose right. 

Oh yeah: We also bear an obligation to stand up for universally accepted human rights, and the Uighurs are also a model pro-American Muslim community.
Some of China’s allies will rejoice as they study Beijing’s new ways to control populations. 

Everyone else represents our current, and perhaps future, allies.

Colonialism with Chinese Characteristics

Uyghurs forced to welcome Communist Party into their homes
By Steven Jiang

Ethnic Uyghur members of the Communist Party of China carry a flag past a billboard of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping on June 30, 2017 in East Turkestan

Beijing, China -- More than a million Chinese Communist officials are being dispatched to live with local families in East Turkestan, a move seen as a sign of the government's increasingly tightened grip over the area's predominantly Uyghur Muslim population.
The so-called "home stays," announced by the government, target farmer households in southern Xinjiang, where the authorities have been waging an unrelenting campaign against what they call the forces of "terrorism, separatism and religious extremism."
Government statements and state media reports show that families are required to provide detailed information during the visits on their personal lives and political views. 

They are also subject to "political education" from the live-in officials -- whose stays are mandated to be at least one week per month in some locations.
International advocacy group Human Rights Watch highlighted and condemned the government's "home stay" program in a report released Sunday, calling it a serious violation of privacy and cultural rights of the 11 million ethnic minorities in East Turkestan.
"What can be more intrusive than forcing your way into somebody's home, making them host you while conducting surveillance on them and saying you're bringing benefits to them?" Maya Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the report, told CNN on Monday.
"It's the ultimate form of surveillance -- it's a forced political indoctrination and assimilation program," she added. 

"It's both creepy and perverse."
The "home stay" program, evolved from a government attempt that began in 2014 to have officials regularly visit and monitor people in East Turkestan, has greatly expanded since, involving 110,000 officials just two years ago to more than a million now, according to government figures.
State media reports these officials, most of whom belong to China's predominantly Han ethnic group, teach minority families to speak Mandarin, sing the national anthem and organize weekly national flag-raising ceremonies -- activities similar to what activists say are mandated for thousands of Uyghur Muslims arbitrarily detained in political education camps across East Turkestan.
CNN contacted the East Turkestan provincial government for comment but has not yet received a response.
China collecting DNA, biometrics from millions in East Turkestan

'Forced intimacy'
Tensions have remained high in East Turkestan -- a resource-rich area long inhabited by the Turkic-speaking ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslims -- following a spate of violent attacks in recent years. The Chinese authorities have blamed the incidents on Muslim Uyghur separatists seeking to establish an independent state.
In numerous photos posted online, the authorities paint a picture of ethnic unity, showing smiling Han officials and minority families jointly preparing meals, doing household chores, playing sports and even sharing the same bed -- images that Human Rights Watch's Wang says put the "forced intimacy" element of the program on full display.
Thousands of Uyghur Muslims detained in Chinese 'political education' camps

Government statements have stressed the program's effectiveness in resolving people's daily and social problems such as trash collection to alcoholism.
But in a speech last December, a top East Turkestan official made clear the scheme's "strategic importance" in "maintaining social stability and achieving lasting security," as well as instilling the political theory of Xi Jinping in the minds of local residents.
A local government statement online also indicated that officials must inspect the homes they are staying for any religious elements or logos -- and instructed the officials to confiscate any such items found in the house.
Activists say the regional government, now led by a hardline Xi loyalist, has not only continued to arrest and imprison many Uyghurs, but also increasingly relied on both high-tech tools and mass mobilization programs to keep the population in check.
In addition to the "home stay" initiative and the political education camps, they cite examples ranging from ubiquitous surveillance cameras, to mandatory GPS tracker installation in cars and DNA collection for all residents aged 12 to 65.
Last year authorities also enacted a sweeping anti-extremism law, with long beards, veils in public and home-schooling all on the ban list, prompting new denunciations from international human rights groups.
Amnesty International has said Uyghurs face widespread discrimination in housing, education and employment as well as curtailed religious freedom in their homeland. 

Other critics have linked the rise of violence in East Turkestan to Beijing's repressive reign there -- a claim the government vehemently denies.

Ethnic tensions
Over the past decades, the arrival in East Turkestan of waves of Han Chinese has also fueled ethnic tensions, despite the government's best effort to portray an image of ethnic harmony.
"We guarantee the legitimate rights and interests of all ethnicities and prohibit the discrimination and oppression against any ethnic groups," Zhang Yijiong, a senior Communist Party official in charge of ethnic minority affairs, told reporters last October.
"The cultures, histories, languages and traditions of all ethnicities are protected and respected by national laws."
Critics of Beijing's Uyghur policy see a starkly different scenario in East Turkestan, as the authorities intensify their crackdown and surveillance while forced political indoctrination spreads.
"The real intention of the Chinese government is to eliminate the Uyghurs as a distinct ethnic group," Rebiya Kadeer, a longtime exiled Uyghur leader who recently stepped down as president of the advocacy group World Uyghur Congress, told CNN in an interview in Washington last year.
"All this repression (in East Turkestan) only makes the Uyghurs hold on to their identity more firmly," she added. 

"China has awakened the Uyghur people."