The War on the Uighurs: China’s campaign against Xinjiang’s Muslims
By Sean R Roberts
Published by Manchester University Press, 2020, £20
Reviewed by Clare Doyle
The struggle against oppression by the Muslim Uighurs of Xinjiang, China’s westernmost province, is nothing new. Their homeland has been fought over for centuries and the particular suppression of national rights by Han Chinese regimes long predates the present regime in Beijing. Nor have governments outside China been unaware of the vicious persecution of Uighurs and other minorities in China or the denial of basic trade union and democratic rights across the vast, rapidly industrialising country for that matter. But for some time these inconvenient truths were swept under the carpet during negotiations over trade deals that benefitted the money-makers on both sides of the table.
Now, in a climate of increasing enmity between China and its competitor rivals, once again the questions of oppression and democratic rights in China are being highlighted. The plight of the eleven million Uighurs in Xinjiang, along with that of the three million plus ‘imprisoned’ Tibetans, have been raised more than once at international gatherings of United Nations bodies taking up human rights issues. But nothing much will come from this. The big power rivals use the UN and other such bodies as platforms to attempt to give a ‘democratic’ cover to their actions or to hypocritically attack each other. It does not mean that the accusations are always false, but that often it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Read more →