Is it Really Genocide?
All day, every day, we see reports of genocide or many other words used to convey a feeling of terror or dread, designed to instil hatred toward people guilty of such atrocities.
But let’s look at what these word really means:
Genocide: the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a nation or ethnicity.
The most commonly cited example of Genocide is the killing of 6 million Jews during WW2. Less well known, is that as many as 13m, including 3m Russian Prisoners of War, died during the same period. There have been others, many others, more recently. Indonesia killed between 500,000 and 3m of its own people during troubles there in 1965/66 and again killed up to 44% of the population of East Timor 10 years later. Cambodia comes to mind when the Pol Pot regime killed between 1.3 and 3 million of their own countrymen during the 70’s. In Rwanda, made famous by a movie, the Tutsis were almost completely wiped out. An attempt was made in the former Yugoslavia to kill Bosnian Muslims. Even in Myanmar there are claims in the International courts right now of genocide against the Rohingyas. Many of whom have escaped to Bangladesh, itself the victim of a Genocide when it was known as East Pakistan. These examples are by no means the end of the list, there are many others. A little research shows that they aren’t uncommon and they aren’t all in history, they really do exist now.
But, is genocide taking place in China now?
The answer is no, it isn’t So, why do newspapers headlines suggest: “There is credible evidence…”.
To date, not one journalist, politician, diplomat or academic has offered any evidence to suggest that a single person has been killed or murdered let alone any deliberate attempt to wipe out a nation. In other words, the words Genocide, meaning the attempted murder of an entire nation is used to create hate, not to describe truth.
But then, when challenged, people say: “genocide of language”, “genocide of culture” or genocide of religion”. Once again, the legal definitions, Oxford dictionary and the UN’s own definition of genocide state the killing of PEOPLE, not the killing of anything else — perhaps, if these esteemed journalists wish to prove they are so good with words, they could actually use the words they mean: Linguicide for murder of language, Deicide means the killing of belief in God, there is no word in English for the killing of a culture so cultural murder, or even cultural slaughter if we really wanted to sensationalise this. But why would we need to use any of these if we can’t actually prove they are happening.
How can we know these are lies? In every single event of Genocide there has been a mass exodus of refugees into other countries. Xinjiang borders 8 different countries (Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, India, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan) and yet, not one single person has “escaped” or even, from the writer’s perspective, appears to feel a need to escape. Are the Chinese government so good that they can monitor and contain a region of 1.6 million kilometres (640,000 square miles)? This is bigger than Germany, France and part of Spain, or Bigger than Texas and half a dozen other states combined.
The border regions in the South and West are hostile and mountainous, difficult to control but easy enough to escape through. To the North the borders are wide open grasslands with nomadic people living there. They are porous and not difficult to cross for people with local knowledge. These vast distances make them also difficult for border control. The border to the East and Southeast are back into China.
People who do leave Xinjiang, usually do so with passports and through legitimate channels. A simple trip to Mongolia, a visit to Kazakhstan or a trip to Russia will easily establish that there are no refugee camps there. There are no NGO’s based there to handle the massive exodus, as there is in Bangladesh from Myanmar and even in France and the UK right now as refugees from such places as Yemen, Eritrea, Chad, Egypt, Sudan and Iraq attempt to enter.
So, if people aren’t “escaping mass extermination” perhaps they are living in an oppressed state of “linguicide”. Well, no they aren’t! Any visitor to Xinjiang can see there is language everywhere they look. It’s on the road signs, it over shop doorways, it’s in menus and on shop walls, it’s loudly spoken in the streets and the markets, so why do journalists suggest that it isn’t? Because the Chinese government has requested all children to learn and study in Mandarin, the language of 1.4 billion people, rather than only the language of just 12/13 million Uyghurs. If a visitor travels to any part of China, they will hear languages spoken that are not Mandarin. Kids in Xinjiang are being taught what they need to know to get along with their neighbours, their countrymen and businesses throughout the land.
If there’s no linguicide then, there must be Deicide, right? Wrong! There is a very strong Islamic community in Xinjiang, there are 24,000 mosques in the region, some of them are tourist locations such as the Da bazar, or Erdaoqio, in Urumqi, the Emin Minaret in Turpan or the Idgar Mosque in Kashgar. All of these function as operating Mosques but are open to tourists, of which there were more than 1 million during the 12 months leading up to the Covid lockdown. Imagine how one million tourists didn’t notice a “genocide” or even a Deicide, yet journalists who haven’t been there write of one occurring with authority and cite “credible sources”
Also, people like Abdulrekep Tumniaz, the leader of the Islamic Institute of Xinjiang and a member of the People’s National Congress is hardly a man who would openly support a government attempting to kill his religion. Nor would Shohrat Zakir, the Chairman of the region, and a Uyghur.
A quick look on Taobao (online shopping), will satisfy anyone who wishes to know: Is the Quran available in China? Yes, it is, and it costs between 33 and 45RMB ($7USD, £4GBP or less). Strangely enough, if anyone cares to look it’s actually available in Arabic, so it further refutes the narrative of linguicide.
Well then, it must be cultural slaughter that’s taking place. This is the most difficult to prove, but a look on YouTube, TikTok or any one of a dozen other social media platforms will easily demonstrate that there are not tens, not hundreds not even thousands, but tens of thousands of kids, adults, companies and organisations showing off their culture, products, services and businesses to the rest of the world. There seem to be as many Uyghur dancers and fruit sellers on TikTok as there are American teenagers. A great idea for anyone wanting to know if Uyghur culture still exists is to get a Chinese friend, download the Chinese version of Tik Tok, called Douyin and take a long look before believing that “credible reports” suggest anything other than Uyghur culture is alive and well.
If there’s no genocide, no linguicide, no Deicide, and no killing of local culture, what else can we assume is wrong about “credible reports” written by people who’ve never been there?
