Behind
the U.S. anti-China campaign: The facts
about Xinjiang
By
Sara Flounders
December 23, 2019 "Information
Clearing House"
- In
order to evaluate the claims of massive
human rights violations of the Uyghurs, an
ethnic and religious minority in the
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China,
it is important to know a few facts.
Xinjiang Province in the far western region
of China is an arid, mountainous and still
largely underdeveloped region. Xinjiang has
significant oil and mineral reserves and is
currently China’s largest
natural-gas-producing region.
It is
home to a number of diverse ethnic groups,
including Turkic-speaking Muslim Uyghurs,
Tibetans, Tajiks, Hui and Han peoples.
Xinjiang borders five Central Asian
countries, including Afghanistan and
Pakistan, where more than 1 million U.S.
troops and even more mercenaries,
contractors and secret agents have operated
over four decades in an endless U.S. war.
What
is happening in Xinjiang today must be seen
in the context of what has been happening
throughout Central Asia.
Xinjiang is a major logistics center for
China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative.
Xinjiang is the gateway to Central and West
Asia, as well as to European markets.
The
Southern Xinjiang Railway runs to the city
of Kashgar in China’s far west where it is
now connected to Pakistan’s rail network
under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor,
a project of the BRI.
The
U.S. government is deeply hostile to this
vast economic development project and is
doing all it can to sabotage China’s plans.
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This
campaign is part of the U.S. military’s
“Pivot to Asia,” along with naval threats in
the South China Sea and support for
separatist movements in Hong Kong, Taiwan
and Tibet.
Map features Central Asia and China,
including Xinjiang.
No U.N. report on Xinjiang
The
U.S. and its corporate media charge that the
Chinese government has rounded up 1 million
people, mainly Uyghurs, into concentration
camps. News reports cite the United Nations
as their source.
This
was disputed in a detailed investigative
report by Ben Norton and Ajit Singh titled,
“No, the UN did not report China has
‘massive internment camps’ for Uighur
Muslims.” (The Grayzone.com, Aug. 23, 2018)
They expose how this widely publicized claim
is based entirely on unsourced allegations
by a single U.S. member, Gay McDougall, on
an “independent committee” with an official
sounding name: U.N. Committee on the
Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
The
U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights has confirmed that no U.N. body
or official has made such a charge against
China.
CIA/NED-funded ‘human rights’
After
this fraudulent news story received wide
coverage, it was followed by “reports” from
the Washington-based Network of Chinese
Human Rights Defenders. This group receives
most of its funds from U.S. government
grants, primarily from the CIA-linked
National Endowment for Democracy, a major
source of funding for U.S. “regime change”
operations around the world.
The
Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders
shares the same Washington address as Human
Rights Watch. The HRW has been a major
source of attacks on governments targeted by
the U.S., such as Venezuela, Nicaragua,
Cuba, Syria and China. The network has long
called for sanctions against China.
The
CHRD’s sources include Radio Free Asia, a
news agency funded for decades by the U.S.
government. The World Uighur Congress,
another source of sensationalized reports,
is also funded by NED. The same U.S.
government funding is behind the
International Uyghur Human Rights and
Democracy Foundation and the Uyghur American
Association.
The
authors of the Grayzone article cite years
of detailed IRS filing forms to back up
their claim. They list millions of dollars
in generous government funding — to generate
false reports.
This
whole network of supposedly impartial civil
society groups, nongovernmental
organizations, think tanks and news sources
operates under the cover of “human rights”
to promote sanctions and war.
CIA-funded terror
Central Asia has experienced the worst forms
of U.S. military power.
Beginning in 1979, the CIA, operating with
the ISI Pakistani Intelligence Service and
Saudi money, funded and equipped reactionary
Mujahedeen forces in Afghanistan to bring
down a revolutionary government there. The
U.S. cultivated and promoted extreme
religious fanaticism, based in Saudi Arabia,
against progressive secular regimes in the
region. This reactionary force was also
weaponized against the Soviet Union and an
anti-imperialist Islamic current represented
by the Iranian Revolution.
For
four decades, the CIA and secret Pakistan
ISI forces in Afghanistan sought to recruit
and train Uyghur mercenaries, planning to
use them as a future terror force in China.
Chechnyans from Russia’s Caucasus region
were recruited for the same reason. Both
groups were funneled into Syria in the U.S.
regime-change operation there. These
fanatical religious forces, along with other
small ethnic groups, formed the backbone of
the Islamic State group (IS) and Al-Qaida.
After
the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center
bombing, the very forces that U.S. secret
operations had helped to create became the
enemy.
Uyghurs from Xinjiang were among the
Al-Qaida prisoners captured in Afghanistan
and held in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo
for years without charges. Legal appeals
exposed that the Uyghur prisoners were being
held there under some of the worst
conditions in solitary confinement.
U.S. wars dislocate region
The
U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and the
massive U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003
created shockwaves of dislocation. Social
progress, education, health care and
infrastructure were destroyed. Sectarian and
ethnic division was encouraged to divide
opposition to U.S. occupations. Despite
promises of great progress, the U.S.
occupations sowed only destruction.
In
this long war, U.S. prisons in Afghanistan,
Pakistan and Iraq were notorious. The CIA
used “enhanced interrogation” techniques —
torture — and secret rendition to
Guantanamo, Bagram and the Salt Pit in
Afghanistan. These secret prisons have since
been the source of many legal suits.
According to U.N. investigations, by 2010
the U.S. held more than 27,000 prisoners in
over 100 secret facilities around the world.
Searing images and reports of systematic
torture and prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in
Iraq and Bagram airbase in Afghanistan
surfaced.
Exposing coverup of war crimes
In
July 2010 WikiLeaks published more than
75,000 classified U.S./NATO reports on the
war in Afghanistan.
In
October of that year, a massive leak of
400,000 military videos, photos and
documents exposed, in harrowing detai,l
torture, summary executions and other war
crimes. Army intelligence analyst former
Private Chelsea Manning released this
damning material to WikiLeaks.
Based
on the leaked documents, the U.N. chief
investigator on torture, Manfred Nowak,
called on U.S. President Barack Obama to
order a full investigation of these crimes,
including abuse, torture, rape and murder
committed against the Iraqi people following
the U.S. invasion and occupation.
The
leaked reports provided documentary proof of
109,000 deaths — including 66,000 civilians.
This is seldom mentioned in the media, in
contrast to the highly publicized and
unsourced charges now raised against China.
Prosecuting whistle blowers
The
CIA’s National Endowment for Democracy pays
handsomely for unsourced documents making
claims of torture against China, while those
who provided documentary proof of U.S.
torture have been treated as criminals.
John
Kiriakou, who worked for the CIA between
1990 and 2004 and confirmed widespread use
of systematic torture, was prosecuted by the
Obama administration for revealing
classified information and sentenced to 30
months in prison.
Chelsea Manning’s release of tens of
thousands of government documents confirming
torture and abuse, in addition to horrific
photos of mass killings, have led to her
continued incarceration. Julian Assange of
WikiLeaks is imprisoned in Britain and faces
deportation to the U.S. for his role in
disseminating these documents.
Rewriting history
How
much of the coverage of Xinjiang is intended
to deflect world attention from the
continuing crimes of U.S. wars — from
Afghanistan to Syria?
In
2014 a Senate CIA Torture Report confirmed
that a torture program, called “Detention
and Interrogation Program,” had been
approved by top U.S. officials. Only a
525-page Executive Summary of its 6,000
pages was released, but it was enough to
confirm that the CIA program was far more
brutal and extensive than had previously
been released.
Mercenaries flood into Syria
The
U.S. regime-change effort to overturn the
government of Syria funneled more than
100,000 foreign mercenaries and fanatical
religious forces into the war. They were
well-equipped with advanced weapons,
military gear, provisions and paychecks.
One-third of the Syrian population was
uprooted in the war. Millions of refugees
flooded into Europe and neighboring
countries.
Beginning in 2013, thousands of Uyghur
fighters were smuggled into Syria to train
with the extremist Uyghur group known as the
Turkistan Islamic Party. Fighting alongside
Al-Qaida and Al-Nusra terror units, these
forces played key roles in several battles.
Reuters, Associated Press and Newsweek all
reported that up to 5,000 Turkic-speaking
Muslim Uyghurs from Xinjiang were fighting
in various “militant” groups in Syria.
According to Syrian media, a transplanted
Uyghur colony transformed the city of al
Zanbaka (on the Turkish border) into an
entrenched camp of 18,000 people. Many of
the Uyghur fighters were smuggled to the
Turkish-Syrian border area with their
families. Speaking Turkish, rather than
Chinese, they relied on the support of the
Turkish secret services.
China follows a different path
China
is determined to follow a different path in
dealing with fanatical groups that are
weaponized by religious extremism. China’s
action comes after terror attacks and
explosives have killed hundreds of civilians
in busy shopping areas and crowded train and
bus stations since the 1990s.
China
has dealt with the problem of religious
extremism by setting up large-scale
vocational education and training centers.
Rather than creating worse underdevelopment
through bombing campaigns, it is seeking to
engage the population in education, skill
development and rapid economic and
infrastructure development.
Terrorist attacks in Xinjiang have stopped
since the reeducation campaigns began in
2017.
Two worldviews of Xinjiang
In
July of this year, 22 countries, most in
Europe plus Canada, Japan, Australia and New
Zealand, sent a letter to the U.N. Human
Rights Council criticizing China for mass
arbitrary detentions and other violations
against Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region.
The statement did not include a single
signature from a Muslim-majority state.
Days
later, a far larger group of 34 countries —
now expanded to 54 from Asia, Africa and
Latin America — submitted a letter in
defense of China’s policies. These countries
expressed their firm support of China’s
counterterrorism and deradicalization
measures in Xinjiang.
More
than a dozen member countries of the
Organization of Islamic Cooperation at the
U.N. signed the statement.
A
further statement on Oct. 31 to the Third
Committee of the U.N. General Assembly
explained that a number of diplomats,
international organizations, officials and
journalists had traveled to Xinjiang to
witness the progress of the human rights
cause and the outcomes of counterterrorism
and deradicalization.
“What
they saw and heard in Xinjiang completely
contradicted what was reported in the
[Western] media,” said the statement.
This article was originally published by "Workers
World"
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