Evil Empire

China's crimes against humanity you've never heard of
By Michael Caster

Soldiers and paramilitary police patrol during a pep rally for an anti-terrorism and maintaining stability rally in East Turkestan in March 2017.

I first visited East Turkestan in July 2009, returning to Beijing only days before demonstrations in the region's capital, Urumqi, turned deadly.
Police responded to the violence with a massive crackdown, and detentions or disappearances ranged into the thousands.

To control the spread of information, internet access to all of East Turkestan was cut off for around 10 months.
Since then, China's persecution of Uyghurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority who form a bare majority in East Turkestan, has intensified, accelerating in particular since 2016 with a change in Party leadership in the region.
While violent resistance has been episodic, and should be denounced, the Chinese authorities have suppressed even peaceful expression of Uyghur rights, most notably the 2014 life sentence handed down to Uyghur intellectual Ilham Tohti on the absurd charge of separatism.
Despite the increasingly dire human rights situation in East Turkestan, few around the world are aware of it, and even fewer have spoken out. 

We are now reaching a crisis point, when speaking out is not enough.
The persecution must be called by its true name, and measures taken accordingly.
Chinese officials in East Turkestan have previously said they protect the "legitimate rights and interests of all ethnicities and prohibit the discrimination and oppression against any ethnic groups." Beijing also denies arbitrarily arresting or detaining citizens based on ethnicity or religion, saying its actions in East Turkestan are related to counter terrorism and anti-extremism.

China's crimes against humanity
The concept of crimes against humanity originated in the 18th century, denouncing the atrocities of slavery and colonialism, and entered international law after World War II. 

Today, the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court provides the most thorough definition.
The statute lists 11 acts, which when widespread or systematic, may rise to the level of crimes against humanity. 

These include: the forcible transfer of populations; arbitrary imprisonment; torture, the persecution of ethnic, cultural or religious groups; enforced disappearances; and apartheid, the institutionalized systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over others.
Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during peace time, but the idea that victims live in peace is only a callous technicality.
The situation that is unfolding in East Turkestan, I would argue, fits the textbook definition of crimes against humanity.

Police patrol in a night food market near the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar in East Turkestan.

Beijing's final solution to the East Turkestan problem
Uyghurs in East Turkestan and elsewhere in China face systematic persecution.
With Islam a fundamental part of the Uyghur identity, so-called counter-terrorism campaigns which have cracked down hard on Muslim practices and increasingly criminalized Islam, are tantamount to the criminalization of being Uyghur.
This has reportedly included the banning dozens of Uyghur names, with violators at risk of not having their children's births registered; to forcing Uyghurs to denounce core tenets of their religion. Parents caught teaching their children about Islam risk detention or having their offspring taken away.
According to new research by New York-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders, in 2017 criminal arrests in East Turkestan accounted for a shocking 21% of all national arrests, even though the region's population is only 1.5% of China's total. 

In prison, according to state media, so-called "religious extremists" euphemistically undergo thought rectification.
As in apartheid South Africa, checkpoints and restrictions on movement are a fact of daily life for Uyghurs.
Armed police scan IDs, checking biometric and personal data. 

Religiosity, having relatives abroad, or simply being Uyghur increase the chances of being detained, as do the contents of a person's phone or computer.
Since 2015, as I have reported for the London-based Minority Rights Group, Uyghurs have had to obtain permission to visit relatives or seek medical treatment outside their hometowns, and passports started being recalled. 

Increasingly, the threat of detention and concerns over surveillance make contact between distant family members impossible.

Police patrol as Muslims leave the Id Kah Mosque after the morning prayer on Eid al-Fitr in 2017 in the old town of Kashgar in East Turkestan.

Nowhere are the signs of crimes against humanity more alarming than in the expanding system of concentration camps which are springing up across East Turkestan.
While the government officially denies the camps exist, in July state media reported authorities admitted to having transferred some 460,000 Uyghurs for "vocational training," as part of a bid to "to improve social stability and alleviate poverty."
Evidence suggests as many as one million Uyghurs and other Muslims are interned across East Turkestan in "re-education centers," around 10% of the population.
What little is known about what happens inside points to systematic physical and psychological torture, and indoctrination. 

One former detainee said she was not allowed to wear underwear and her head was shaved, while another described having tried to commit suicide by bashing his skull against a wall. 

Many simply disappear.
Meanwhile, so-called "becoming family" and "home stay" policies force Uyghur families to accept Communist Party officials into their homes to observe and report on their behavior. 

Imagine a family member has been taken away and now you are forced to host their abductor, quite possibly in the same room left empty by their disappearance.
Children whose parents have been detained are transferred to state custody, where, by some accounts, "they are locked up like farm animals" in so-called orphanages.

A proper response
Awareness of crimes against Uyghurs is only barely beginning to attract the level of attention demanded by their severity.
Journalists, diplomats and others who speak out about East Turkestan should at least acknowledge the appearance of ongoing crimes against humanity.
The international community must demand an independent and effective commission of inquiry into the crimes against humanity in East Turkestan.
This week, US lawmakers are holding hearings on the "arbitrary detention, torture, (and) egregious restrictions on religious practice and culture" in East Turkestan.
Under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, according to Human Rights Watch, Washington can "impose visa bans and targeted sanctions on individuals anywhere in the world responsible for committing human rights violations or acts of significant corruption."
Those who bear responsibility for the dire situation in East Turkestan must be held responsible.

Henry Kissinger Pushed Trump to Work With Russia to Box In China

The former secretary of state pushed one president to use China to isolate the Soviet Union. These days, he’s counseling almost the reverse—and officials are listening.
By ASAWIN SUEBSAENG, ANDREW DESIDERIO, SAM STEIN and BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN

Henry Kissinger suggested to President Donald Trump that the United States should work with Russia to contain a rising China.
The former secretary of state—who famously engineered the tactic of establishing diplomatic relations with China in order to isolate the Soviet Union—pitched almost the inverse of that idea to Trump during a series of private meetings during the presidential transition, five people familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast. 

The potential strategy would use closer relations with Russia, along with other countries in the region, to box in China’s growing power and influence.
Kissinger also pitched the idea to Jared Kushner, the top White House adviser whose portfolio includes foreign-policy matters, one of the sources briefed on the discussions said.
Inside the administration, the proposal has found receptive ears, with some of Trump’s top advisers—in addition to officials in the State Department, Pentagon, and the National Security Council—also floating a strategy of using closer relations with Moscow to contain Beijing, according to White House and Capitol Hill insiders. 

But the idea has been complicated by the president’s deference to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which has caused countless domestic political headaches.
Both the White House and the National Security Council declined to comment. 

Kissinger's office did not return a request for comment.
The mere fact that Kissinger was given an audience to make his pitch—he’s met with President Trump at least three times since the 2016 campaign—is a testament to his tremendous staying power in top political circles, despite a controversial foreign policy track record that includes numerous accusations of war crimes. 

It also is a reflection of how dramatically geopolitical relations have changed during the course of his lifetime.

Kissinger isn’t viewed as a China hawk. 

It is well known in certain circles that he has a direct line to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping. 

And the discussions he had with President Trump appear, at least superficially, to run counter to his public pronouncements since 2017 that China’s signature Belt and Road Initiative—Xi’s vision for a China-centric world based on infrastructure and trade deals, and the object of growing Western alarm—would have a positive effect on Asia.
Kissinger is no Russophobe, either. 

He has met with Putin 17 times over the years. 

And Kissinger has repeatedly advocated for a better working relationship between Washington and Moscow. 

Of last week’s summit in Helsinki between President Trump and Putin, Kissinger said, “It was a meeting that had to take place. I have advocated it for several years.” 

He has also expressed doubt about the purpose of Russian interference in the election, and promoted a better balance of power among the world’s largest influencers.
His overall views seem to have made their way into explanations for President Trump’s affinity for Putin. 

One former Trump administration official referred to President Trump’s posture toward Putin during the Helsinki summit earlier this month as “the reverse of the Nixon-China play.”
“Russia and China are cozying up to each other and it’s a lethal combination if they’re together,” said the former official, who was familiar with the strategizing behind the summit.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, various figures in the Trump orbit—not just Kissinger—discussed a strategy of shoring up relations not only with Russia, but also with Japan, the Philippines, India, Middle Eastern countries, and others as a wide-ranging international counterweight to what was pitched as the dominant Chinese threat.
Since becoming president, Trump, those sources said, has shown varying signs of interest. 

But his actual posture toward China has remained difficult to define. 

The president has flattered the country’s political leadership, partnered with it on key foreign policy matters, and adopted a highly confrontational positions on trade. 

Anything resembling a large, cohesive “counterweight” policy has yet to gain serious traction. 

And one of the main economic levers that would be used to achieve this type of outcome—the trade deal known as the Trans Pacific Partnership—was abandoned by Trump even as Kissinger himself nominally supported it.
Internally, the fights over a China policy have been lengthy. 

Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, has long railed against a rising threat from China, and he was present during the meeting between Trump and Kissinger that took place during the transition. 

Other Trump allies who share Bannon’s pragmatic disposition include trade adviser Peter Navarro, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Tom Cotton (R-AR), and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.
Unlike Kissinger—who stressed that relations with Russia were not an end goal itself but part of a decades long approach to revamping continental power structures—these advisers argued that the threat from China needed to be confronted in the near term. 

A congressional source familiar with the strategy said Bannon often focused on “civilizational threats that face the U.S. emanating from Arab world and China.” 

Indeed, Bannon has backed populist, nationalist parties throughout Europe based in large part on appealing to identity politics and international threats. 

Those same parties have often embraced and praised Putin.
Among Capitol Hill foreign policy circles, the source added, the view is that Kissinger’s motivations for pursuing the reverse of his own policy from the 1970s are “more intellectually honest and honorable” than Bannon’s. 

Though a separate source familiar with the transition talks said the two individuals had a fair amount of overlap in terms of their world views.
“[Kissinger] did not advocate a partnership with Russia,” said the source. 

“But he was absolutely adamant that 17 years of the global war on terror had taken up too much time and focus. And he is a huge believer that this is a great power struggle [with China].”
The issue for lawmakers, as is often the case with Trump, has been trying to discern whether his attempts to cozy up to Russia are driven by broader concerns about Beijing’s growing influence, or by an affinity for Putin himself.
That certainly has been the case in the wake of the Helsinki summit, during which Trump sided with Putin’s denials of Russian election meddling over the assessment of his own intelligence agencies.
The episode prompted sharp criticism from lawmakers, including some who said that any talk of strategically working with Putin to combat China is merely a face-saving measure to explain away the president’s conduct. 

But according to Capitol Hill sources, it also left several lawmakers wondering whether the administration was attempting to make a larger move on China.
“I’m hesitant to characterize what is being legitimately discussed because this administration is such an incoherent dumpster fire it’s impossible to ascertain what’s legitimate discussion, what’s not legitimate, what’s being discussed in one part but may have no traction elsewhere,” a source on Capitol Hill said.
Trump advisers have considered the Kissinger-type approach to east Asia since the 2016 campaign. But a source close to the White House noted that the “key word is ‘considering’ as they know that any move to implement it would, at least currently, be met with a massive backlash, and rightly so.”
The source added that several senior White House officials believe that “Russia would be a ‘useful counterweight’ to China.” 

But not everyone buys into that theory.
It’s not just that Russia has played a largely counter-productive role vis-a-vis the United States, and much of the rest of the liberal world order, over the last few years. 

It’s that their points of leverage over China are limited largely to weapons, oil, and cyber intrusions.
“I understand the idea of a collective approach to boxing China in and trying to integrate it into an order consistent with our interests,” said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. 

“I just don’t see Russia as currently oriented playing a role in that.”
Still, U.S. officials have become increasingly vocal in their warnings of the threat that China poses and the need for a comprehensive strategy to combat it. 

At the Aspen Security Forum last week, FBI Director Christopher Wray called China “the broadest, most challenging, most significant threat we face as a country,” and Michael Collins, deputy assistant director of the CIA’s East Asia mission, said that China is waging a “cold war” against the United States.
“It is clear the Trump administration views the rise of China—from issues of trade, its continued quest to dominate Asia and displace U.S. power to building a military that can challenge Washington’s most advanced weaponry—as its number one national security challenge,” said Harry Kazianis, director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest. 

“I am not shocked that they would consider Russia a potential partner in containing China’s rise.”
In theory, the partner-with-Russia-to-combat-China strategy—regardless of its motivations—is not entirely without merit, experts say, if only to break up the partnership developing between Putin and Xi themselves.
“China and Russia have a very similar worldview right now and they're supporting each other pretty strongly. I don’t see a lot of cracks,” said Lyle Goldstein, a Russia and China expert at the U.S. Naval War College.
Russia and China often pursue complementary agendas and support each other at the United Nations Security Council, said Abigail Grace, who until recently worked on the Asia portfolio at the National Security Council. 

“I don’t think that the level of China-Russia collaboration is necessarily within U.S. interests,” Grace said.
But while Moscow and Beijing have cordial relations and share many strategic objectives, there are areas of relative distrust between them, including over Central Asia. 

China has made major economic and diplomatic inroads in the region with its Belt and Road Initiative, which includes Central Asian nations a key part of its strategy. 

But Russia views that region as within its traditional sphere of influence. 

While it hasn’t stood in the way of Xi’s overtures to countries like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, it has declined to join the initiative despite China’s invitation.
Beyond Central Asia, it’s also clear that with its enormous economy and rapidly expanding military ambitions, China is on a trajectory to greatly surpass Russia’s global heft—a trajectory that could compel Russia to seek partnerships (informal or otherwise) elsewhere.
“Looking out over long term, there is a belief in the administration that Moscow will see Beijing as its greatest geopolitical foe—just like Washington does now—and that could set up a rapprochement with America,” said a source close to the White House. 

“But it is very far out into the future.”
But there’s a very good reason the “reverse Nixon” strategy hasn’t been implemented yet. 

It’s just not geopolitically realistic.
“China is the greater long term strategic challenge,” said John Rood, the Under secretary of Defense for Policy, at the Aspen Security Forum. 

“But in many ways, Russia is the larger near term threat because of the overwhelming lethality of its nuclear arsenal and also because of some the behavior that the Russian government has exhibited.”
Russia is at times a flamboyant foe of the European Union and the United States, seeking to sow disruption and division within and among Western allies. 

It also has been highly disruptive of U.S. politics making it an illogical partner for an ambitious attempt to help preserve the current international system.
“At the moment, with Russia having tried to attack our democratic institutions as well as still acting like a rogue state in Ukraine and Syria, the chances of a U.S.-Russia alliance to take on China are slim to none,” said Kazianis.
“But know this: time and circumstance can change minds and win hearts. I would not be shocked if in seven to 10 years this does indeed take place.”

The spurned sycophant

After a single day, Facebook is kicked out of China again

By Shannon Liao

Just one day after Facebook gained permission to open a subsidiary in China, the government pulled the business filing and began to censor mentions of the news. 

An anonymous source tells The New York Times that Facebook no longer has permission to launch the startup incubator it had planned.
Facebook planned to open up a $30 million subsidiary called Facebook Technology (Hangzhou) and run a startup incubator that would have made small investments and gave advice to local businesses.
The sudden rejection stems from a disagreement between Chinese authorities, the source told the Times. 

Local officials in Zhejiang, an eastern province that houses Alibaba’s headquarters, gave Facebook the initial permission, but the Cyberspace Administration of China, Beijing’s internet regulator, had not.
According to screenshots of the business filing on the remaining social media posts that haven’t been censored, the subsidiary had been listed as wholly owned by Facebook Hong Kong Limited. Facebook does have a sales office in Hong Kong, which isn’t subject to the rules and censorship of the mainland. 

In a statement yesterday, the company told The Verge, “We are interested in setting up an innovation hub in Zhejiang to support Chinese developers, innovators and start-ups.”
This would have been the first time that Facebook successfully expanded into China after Beijing blocked the platform in 2009 following its use by East Turkestan independence activists in the Ürümqi riots. 

Facebook previously tried to open an office in Beijing in 2015 and got as far as obtaining a permit, but ultimately, it was unsuccessful, a pattern that seems to be echoed here. 

Last year, Facebook quietly launched an app in China called Colorful Balloons that let users share photos with friends. 

Oculus, Facebook’s VR company, also has an office in Shanghai.
Last week in an interview with Recode, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg expressed significant doubt that his company could successfully reach China. 

When asked where Facebook was on China, he responded, “I mean, we’re blocked.” 

He then elaborated on the grim situation: “I mean, we’re a long time away from doing anything. At some point, I think that we need to figure it out, but we need to figure out a solution that is in line with our principles and what we wanna do, and in line with the laws there, or else it’s not gonna happen. Right now, there isn’t an intersection.”

Sina Delenda Est

President Trump and Europe are teaming up against China on trade
By Rick Newman

President Trump called it “a very big day for free and fair trade.” 

That’s Trumpian hyperbole, but the president’s new efforts to smooth out trade disputes with Europe include one major new development.
After meeting with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, President Trump hosted a short press conference to highlight what transpired: There’s a new goal to eliminate tariffs on many goods traded between the two regions and to “resolve” President Trump’s new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. 

Europe pledged to buy more American energy and agricultural products. 

And the two giant economies will try to improve cooperation on technical standards, which could ultimately boost trade.
The last point President Trump mentioned may be the most significant, however. 

Trump said the United States and Europe will work together to “address unfair trading practices,” including “forced technology transfer,” “theft of intellectual property” and “overcapacity.” 

Neither man mentioned China, but that’s exactly who they were talking about.

President Donald Trump and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker speak in the Rose Garden of the White House, Wednesday, July 25, 2018, in Washington. 

All advanced nations have the same complaints about China: It forces foreign firms to turn over key technology as a condition of doing business in the country. 

It copies or steals trade secrets belonging to foreign firms. 

And it subsidizes giant companies that produce steel, aluminum and other commodities, allowing them to undercut foreign rivals on price, gobble up market share and drive foreign competition out of business.
President Trump has tried to address those problems, mostly be slapping tariffs on Chinese imports and insisting that China reduce its trade surplus with the United States. 

Trade experts say that won’t work. 

But joining with allies and pressuring China together could work, they say. 

And the place to start is at the World Trade Organization, the mysterious, globalist, technocratic trade arbiter President Trump has repeatedly bashed, to the delight of his supporters.

Reforming the WTO
President Trump has moved toward the mainstream, at least for a while. 

President Trump said Europe and the United States will work with “like-minded partners” within the WTO to address China’s trade abuses. 

That’s a good idea. 

The United States and dozens of other nations formed the WTO in 1995, when China was still a fledgling, developing economy that qualified for more protections than advanced economies. 

China entered the WTO in 2001, opening the door to becoming the export colossus it is now.
China is now the world’s second-largest economy, and there’s no other nation that intervenes in the economy on the scale China does. 

The trade honchos who formed the WTO in the 1990s never quite foresaw that, and the WTO lacks many of the tools to deal with China’s unique economic model.
Reforming the WTO to bring China to heel would be the kind of drawn-out, detail-oriented forward crawl that President Trump seems to despise. 

So his interest could wane and he might not follow through. 

But of all the moves China should fear, a revamped WTO that sharply limits China’s ability to pump government money into giant, home-grown firms is probably more threatening than President Trump’s tariffs.
Other trade announcements President Trump made were less impressive. 

President Trump said the two regions would work toward zero tariffs on “non-auto industrial goods.” Fine, but autos are the biggest sticking point between President Trump and Europe, not fruit or leather or bourbon. 

And there was no mention of any action on autos. 

That means President Trump’s threat to put a 20% tariff on all imported autos remains, which would roil the industry if it were to happen.
Both sides also emphasized that they were beginning “talks” to lower trade barriers between the United States and Europe, without any actual commitments. 

And President Trump and Juncker both indicated either party could terminate the agreement, which means it’s more of an agreement to try to agree than anything tangible. 

Still, President Trump’s bluster was subdued and he didn’t insult anyone. 

Maybe it was a big day after all.

Islamic Leaders Have Nothing to Say About China’s Internment Camps for Muslims

Hundreds of thousands of Uighur have been detained without trial in East Turkestan
BY NITHIN COCA
A demonstrator wearing a mask painted with the colors of the flag of East Turkestan and a hand bearing the colors of the Chinese flag attends a protest in front of the Chinese consulate in Istanbul, on July 5, 2018.

Internment camps with up to a million prisoners. 

Empty neighborhoods. 

Students, musicians, athletes, and peaceful academics jailed. 

A massive high-tech surveillance state that monitors and judges every movement. 

The future of more than 10 million Uighurs, the members of China’s Turkic-speaking Muslim minority, is looking increasingly grim.
As the Chinese authorities continue a brutal crackdown in East Turkestan, the northwest region of China that’s home to the Uighur, Islam has been one of the main targets. 

Major mosques in the major cities of Kashgar and Urumqi now stand empty. 

Prisoners in the camps are told to renounce God and embrace the Chinese Communist Party. 

Prayers, religious education, and the Ramadan fast are increasingly restricted or banned. 

Even in the rest of China, Arabic text is being stripped from public buildings, and Islamophobia is encouraged by party authorities.
But amid this state-backed campaign against their religious brethren, Muslim leaders and communities around the world stand silent. 

While the fate of the Palestinians stirs rage and resistance throughout the Islamic world, and millions stood up to condemn the persecution of the Rohingya, there’s been hardly a sound on behalf of the Uighur. 

No Muslim nation’s head of state has made a public statement in support of the Uighurs this decade. 

Politicians and many religious leaders who claim to speak for the faith are silent in the face of China’s political and economic power.
“One of our primary barriers has been a definite lack of attention from Muslim-majority states,” said Peter Irwin, a project manager at the World Uyghur Congress. 

This isn’t out of ignorance. 

“It is very well documented,” said Omer Kanat, the director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project. “The Muslim-majority countries governments know what’s happening in East Turkestan,” he said.
Many Muslim governments have strengthened their relationship with China or even gone out of their way to support China’s persecution. 

Last summer, Egypt deported several ethnic Uighurs back to China, where they faced near-certain jail time and death, to little protest. 

This followed similar moves by Malaysia and Pakistan in 2011.
This is in stark contrast to how these countries react to news of prejudice against Muslims by the West or, especially, Israel. 

Events in Gaza have sparked protests across the Islamic world, not only in the Middle East but also in more distant Bangladesh and Indonesia. 

If Egypt or Malaysia had deported Palestinians to Israeli prisons, the uproar would likely have been ferocious. 

But the brutal, and expressly anti-religious, persecution of Uighurs prompts no response, even as the campaign spreads to the Uighur diaspora worldwide.
Part of the answer is that money talks. 

China has become a key trade partner of every Muslim-majority nation. 

Many are members of the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank or are participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. 

In South Asia, this means infrastructure investment. 

In Southeast Asia, China is a key market for commodities such as palm oil and coal. 

The Middle East benefits due to China’s position as the world’s top importer of oil and its rapidly increasing use of natural gas.
“Many states in the Middle East are becoming more economically dependent on China,” said Simone van Nieuwenhuizen, a Chinese-Middle East relations expert at the University of Technology Sydney. “China’s geoeconomic strategy has resulted in political influence.”
“I don’t think there is a direct fear of retribution or fear of pressure,” said Dawn Murphy, a China-Middle East relations expert at Princeton University. 

“I do think that the elite of these various countries are weighing their interests, and they are making a decision that continuing to have positive relations with China is more important than bringing up these human rights issues.”
East Turkestan’s immediate neighbors, such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Kazakhstan, face a particularly difficult situation. 

The ongoing persecution has caught up some of their own citizens, or their families. 

But with both close economic and geopolitical ties to China, these countries are highly reluctant to speak up. 

Pakistan sees China as a vital balancer against India, and their relationship, sometimes referred to as the “iron brotherhood,” goes back decades.
But there are subtler reasons the Uighur are ignored. 

They are on the edge of the Muslim world, in contrast to the Palestinian cause, which is directly connected to the fate of one of Islam’s holiest cities, Jerusalem. 

China has little place in the cultural imagination of Islam, in contrast with Muslims’ fraught relationship with the idea of a Jewish state. 

Even as China’s presence in the Middle East grows, it lacks the looming presence of the United States or Israel.
China’s success at cutting off access to East Turkestan is another reason. 

A regular dose of videos depicting Palestinian suffering hits YouTube every day. 

Interviews with tearful Rohingya stream on Al Jazeera and other global media outlets. 

Palestinian representatives and advocates speak and write in the media. 

But few images are emerging from East Turkestan due to restrictions on press access and the massive state censorship apparatus. 

That means the world sees little more than blurry satellite footage of the internment camps. 

Even Uighurs who have escaped are often only able to talk anonymously, not least because Chinese intelligence regularly threatens persecution of their families back home if they speak up.
It’s also much harder to stir up feelings about a new cause rather than an old, established one. 

For leaders who care more about their own popularity than human rights, it’s an easy call. 

“People tend to pay more attention to this kind of issue,” said Ahmad Farouk Musa, the director of the Malaysian nongovernmental organization Islamic Renaissance Front. 

“You gain popularity if you show you are anti-Zionism and if you are fighting for the Palestinians, as compared to the Rohingya or Uighurs.”
There are two places, however, where there may be hope for leadership. 

One is Southeast Asia, where Indonesia and Malaysia are two of the Islamic world’s few democracies. 

Both have relatively a free press, have an active civil society, and, importantly, are geographically close to China, giving the giant country more of a presence in the local public consciousness. 

Anti-Chinese feeling is strong in both nations, especially Indonesia.
Malaysia bears watching due to its recent historic election. 

China was a key campaign issue, due to its connection to the massive, multibillion-dollar 1MDB scandal. 

The new government is taking a strong position on China, with the new finance minister, Lim Guan Eng, pledging to review all of China’s trade deals with the country and suspending several existing projects.
“The Chinese had been very influential in giving loans to former Prime Minister Najib Razak to stay in power, so they felt compelled to accept whatever the Chinese wanted them to do,” Musa said. 

“I hope that the new government has shifted their policy and will become more sensitive towards this issue and about human rights.”
The first test of this will happen soon, as the Chinese government is demanding the deportation of 11 Uighur asylum-seekers from Malaysia. 

The new government, led by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, may not be as willing to bend to China’s demands as the previous one.
The other place to watch is Turkey, which has a strong cultural connection to the Turkic-speaking Uighurs and is home to the largest Uighur exile community. 

In 2009, when riots broke out in Urumqi, only Turkey’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, spoke out. Turkey has also seen the only widespread protests against China’s treatment of Uighurs, most recently in 2015.
“Turkey is the only major country whose leadership as well as the public is widely aware of the Uighur persecution in East Turkestan,” said Alip Erkin, a Uighur activist currently living aboard.
But Turkey’s growing authoritarianism has caused it to look toward China as a possible ally against the West. 

Since Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu visited China last year and said his country would eliminate “anti-China media reports,” there has been less attention given to the Uighur cause, including on the streets. 

Still, many Uighurs hold out hope.
“Many Uighurs think Turkey can be the ultimate defender of the Uighur cause when the time is right,” Erkin said.
While the signs of hope are there for the Uighur cause, they are small and localized. 

China’s profile is growing, and more Muslim-majority nations are becoming dependent on its economic power—earlier this month, $23 billion in loans was promised to Arab states. 

The chances of a unified Muslim response to the Uighur human rights crisis are getting slimmer and slimmer.

American Loyalty

Giving In to China, U.S. Airlines Drop Taiwan 

By Sui-Lee Wee

The check-in counters for American Airlines at Beijing Capital International Airport. 

BEIJING — You can book a ticket to Taipei from New York on a major American airline. 

Just don’t ask them which country you are going to.
Bowing to pressure from China, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines began to remove references to Taiwan, of which Taipei is the capital city, as a separate country from their websites Wednesday.
American, which was the first to make the switch, listed Taipei Taoyuan International Airport, the city’s main airport, as a destination for travelers looking to book a flight on its website, with no reference to Taiwan. 

Delta listed only Taipei and the code for the city’s airports.
The American carriers were among the last holdouts against a Chinese effort to force all airlines to drop any references to Taiwan as a separate country. 

Beijing regards the self-ruled democratic island as a breakaway province.
While many major international carriers now designate Taiwan as a part of China, the American carriers stopped short of that step.
But changes to the websites were inconsistent on Wednesday: A user booking a ticket on Delta, for example, could search for Taiwan as a destination, but the name would not appear in the results. 

The Chinese version of United’s website used the airport code TPE, for Taipei Taoyuan International, while the English version included TW, which is the country code for Taiwan.
Companies doing business in China often find themselves struggling to balance the demands of an increasingly nationalistic government against calls from rights groups and politicians that they should not give in to Beijing. 

The White House, for example, had described the Chinese website order as “Orwellian nonsense.”
“We have another example of nonsovereign entities contorting themselves to satisfy Chinese pressure,” said Rupert Hammond-Chambers, the president of the US-Taiwan Business Council, a nonprofit organization that works to develop trade and business ties between the United States and Taiwan.
“That bodes ill for the future, frankly, in respect of the hoops that everyone is jumping through to try to satisfy China’s goals and objectives here,” he added.
An official at Taiwan’s presidential office said that Taiwan was exploring possible litigation over the issue.
“Taiwan has been closely interconnected with the world, and defending our shared democratic values on the front line,” Taiwan’s presidential spokesman, Alex Huang, said. 

“That is a fact which cannot be easily erased by simply removing the name of Taiwan from the internet. The people of Taiwan will not bow to pressure.”
In April, the Civil Aviation Administration of China sent a letter to 44 foreign airlines demanding they change their websites if Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macau were classified as countries. 

Both Hong Kong and Macau are semiautonomous Chinese territories with their own laws.
In recent months, many international airlines including British Airways and Lufthansa have given in to China’s request. 

Lufthansa, for example, refers to Taipei as a destination in “Taiwan, China.”
Yuan Zheng, director of United States foreign relations at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank in Beijing, said the Chinese authorities could have fined airlines that failed to comply, restricted their entry into the Chinese market or removed the carriers’ apps and booking systems in China.
But even if Beijing chose not to take action, ignoring China’s request could have cost the American carriers business from Chinese customers, Yuan said.
China is projected to overtake the United States to become the world’s largest aviation market, and American companies have been trying to gain a foothold in the growing market with investments and code-sharing arrangements. 

Delta owns a stake in China Eastern Airlines and American owns shares of China Southern Airlines, while United has a partnership with Air China.
A spokeswoman for American Airlines, Shannon Gilson, said that the airline “is implementing changes to address China’s request.”
Representatives for Delta and United did not immediately reply to requests for comment on the situation.
At a regular Chinese Foreign Ministry briefing on Wednesday, a ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, said, “We have noticed that so far some positive developments have been made around this matter, and the foreign airlines have made corrections.”
“We welcome their investments in China,” he added.
Under Xi Jinping, China has been increasing pressure on Taiwan. 

The island’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, has called on the international community to “constrain” China. On Tuesday, the East Asian Olympic Committee revoked its decision to host the 2019 East Asian Youth Games in Taichung, a city in Taiwan, bowing to Chinese pressure, according to news reports.
A growing number of American companies have in recent months tried to appease Beijing. 

In January, the authorities in Shanghai temporarily shut down the website of the hotel chain Marriott International for labeling Taiwan and Tibet, a region of China, as separate countries. 

In May, the clothing retailer Gap also issued an apology to China after a map of a T-shirt sold in North America did not depict Taiwan as part of China.

Chinese colonialism: one in five arrests take place in East Turkestan

East Turkestan, home to about 12 million Muslims, has been the focus of an intense Chinese crackdown

By Lily Kuo in Beijing

Controls over religious and cultural expression in East Turkestan have increased since 2016. 

One in five arrests in China last year took place in East Turkestan, the nominally autonomous western territory that critics say has been turned into a police state rife with human rights violations.
Analysing publicly available government data, the advocacy group Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), found 21% of all arrests in China in 2017 were in East Turkestan, which accounts for about 1.5% of China’s population. 

Indictments in East Turkestan, accounted for 13% of all charges handed down in the country last year.
“For both arrests and indictments, the sudden increases in 2017 from 2016 are staggering,” the organisation said in its report, released jointly with a Chinese group, the Equal Rights Initiative, on Wednesday. 

“Given that China’s conviction rate is 99.9%, nearly every individual indicted is likely to be convicted.”

China is holding at least 920,000 Uighurs in re-education camps.

The report comes ahead of a UN review, beginning 10 August, of China’s implementation of the convention on racial discrimination. 

This week, the US state department is holding the country’s first summit on religious freedom and a US congressional commission is holding a hearing on the situation in East Turkestan.
“This data, coming from the Chinese government itself, must force the international community to act”, said Frances Eve, a researcher with CHRD.
East Turkestan, home to about 12 million Muslims, mostly ethnic Uighurs as well as Kazakhs, has been the site of a government “strike hard” campaign, aimed at rooting out religious extremism and potential separatist movements. 

The region, almost half the size of India, has seen outbreaks of ethnic violence in the 1990s and again in 2009.
Human rights groups say the crackdown has gone too far. 

Controls over religious and cultural expression have increased under hardline communist party secretary, Chen Quanguo, drafted to East Turkestan in 2016. 

Those under the age of 17 are forbidden to enter mosques or make unauthorised pilgrimages to Mecca. 

Islamic names, beards, face veils, and long skirts have reportedly been outlawed.
Advocates and researchers say at least hundreds of thousands of minorities, mainly ethnic Uighurs, have been detained in “re-education” camps where they can be held indefinitely. 

In April, a group of US lawmakers called the camps, “the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.”
Anything from reading foreign websites to speaking to relatives abroad can land residents of East Turkestan in detention. 

One ethnic Uighur in the state told CHRD his uncle had asked a friend to help him download songs onto his mobile phone. 

When he lent the phone to someone to play music, he was reported to the police and given a seven year prison sentence for broadcasting banned content.
Another said a neighbour of his had been detained for attending classes on the Koran a decade ago. One ethnic Uighur told CHRD his brother had been sentenced to prison after a former classmate of his had been detained. 

The classmate detailed a video the two had watched as boys that inspired them to pledge to get strong and cause an “ethnic incident.”
“My brother received a seven-year sentence for that misguided adolescent boasting which happened a decade before”, the family member said. 

“It was just 10-year-old chatter by teenagers, and they never did anything.”
According to CHRD’s report, the arrests in East Turkestan between 2013 and 2017 marked a 306% increase from the previous five years. 

The arrests cover all types of criminal cases, but CHRD said the dramatic increase is likely due to the strike hard campaign.
“The world cannot sit by while Uighurs and minorities in East Turkestan are forced into camps and criminally prosecuted for no reason other than their ethnicity and Islamic faith,” said Eve.