Xinjiang has been by all means a police state for the past six years. The official motive is based on the need for a stricter control of the area in question, considering the fact that some terrorist cells, including the Islamic Movement of East Turkestan, have been created and organised within jihadist groups. However, what does emerge is that not only the members of the terrorist groups, but the entire Uyghur population is subjected to strict surveillance through forced installed applications on their phones in order to check navigation, and facial recognition cameras in the area, as well as mass telephone wiretapping.
The motivation adduced by Beijing is the necessary fight against terrorism; yet behind this facade, there seems to be a broader process of sinicization of the region, through the de-Islamisation of the local population that leads to the de facto cancellation of the people themselves. This is corroborated by various journalistic investigations that have revealed the existence of detention and re-education centres where about a million Uighurs are allegedly imprisoned, forced to work in cotton fields and indoctrinated with Chinese culture as part of a progressive de-Islamisation process. Therefore, while the central government justifies these places on the international scene by defining them as “professional education centres” to eradicate extremism and terrorism, ordinary citizens with a clean criminal record, whose only fault is being born into the wrong ethnic group, are in fact imprisoned here.
To make the overall picture bleaker, the Chinese government is becoming more conscious of a sort of plan to reduce the Uighur birth rate, aimed at causing their eventual extinction. This concept is defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as demographic genocide, and is carried out in Xinjiang through mass sterilisation, induced abortions, the imposition of contraceptive methods and, in the worst case scenarios, the killing of babies.
Consequently, China has been the subject of accusations by NGOs, activists and human rights experts at the UN, which has recently led the US, Canada, Europe and the UK to announce sanctions against Chinese officials. It is interesting to notice that the business branch in the fashion industry is also contributing to the cause by taking a firm stance on the situation in Xinjiang. H&M, Nike, Adidas and Burberry have all taken a stand, with H&M declaring that it will no longer buy cotton from Xinjiang, that has prompted a reaction from China’s state-run Cctv, which has called on consumers to boycott the Swedish brand.
It will be interesting to see how the international balance of power and the “cold war alliances”, as defined by Russia’s Foreign Affairs minister Sergei Lavrov, will evolve in the coming months. As of today, China portrays itself as a victim of the mistakes made in the unfolding narrative of the situation in Xinjiang and classifies the unilateral sanctions against it as unacceptable because they are based on lies and false claims, urging the US and EU to recognise the seriousness of their mistakes by stopping the confrontation to avoid causing further damage.
Regardless of the truth of each one, among the multitude of words expressed by all the parties involved regarding the Xinjiang issue and its international consequences, one concept stands out. As simple as it is revealing, at the end of his public speech, when the European ambassador was summoned to Beijing on 22 March, Foreign Minister Qin Gang stated: China’s determination to safeguard its sovereignty, security and development interests is unshakeable.