Uyghurs condemn World Muslim Communities Council delegation to Xinjiang
The love affair between Beijing and Muslim leaders deepened last December with a rare visit by Xi Jinping to Saudi Arabia. Then over the New Year, a group of Islamic dignitaries came to Ürümchi, supposedly to see for themselves how well their beleaguered Uyghur brethren are being treated by the Chinese government.
In early December 2022, Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 went to Saudi Arabia, where he met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and several leaders from Gulf countries, as well as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. A few weeks later, a group of representatives of Muslim countries visited Xinjiang on a junket that was arranged with remarkable speed.
Whereas the UN had difficulties accessing the region last year, the EU has had no progress in its request to visit Uyghur academic and Sakharov Prize winner Illham Tohti (sentenced to life imprisonment) during its tour. Moreover, a promised visit by Turkish officials is still on the back burner after five years. But the World Muslim Communities Council delegation’s visit sailed through, much to the consternation of exiled Uyghur groups.
In fact, this was the second visit by representatives from Muslim nations in five months: In August last year, 30 Islamic country representatives were called upon, in the words of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, to “play a bridging role and introduce a harmonious, stable, prosperous, happy, and beautiful Xinjiang to the international community in a comprehensive, objective, and fact-based manner.”
During their whistle-stop tour of the province, confounding the “lies” of Western media, they witnessed firsthand “the harmonious coexistence of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang, the full protection of freedom of religious belief, and the breakthroughs in poverty alleviation and rural revitalization.”
The follow-up visit began on January 8, 2023, when 30 Islamic scholars and experts from 14 Muslim nations did a repeat but slightly more curtailed junket. They went shopping in Ürümchi with Party officials, prayed with selected local Muslims at a mosque, and were treated to an exhibition on anti-terrorism, to counter the U.S. “smear campaign,” according to the Party mouthpiece the Global Times. To prove Uyghur culture was still intact, the visitors were treated to an evening of traditional music and chatted with local people. The rendering of a sample of the much-loved classic 12 Muqams, in a song and dance performance, “proved” to the Mauritanian delegate that “China is committed to protecting and promoting multi-ethnic culture in Xinjiang.”
The leader of the delegation, Ali Rashid Abudula Ali Alnuaimi, a former foreign minister of the UAE, who has visited Xinjiang several times, was unstinting in his praise for China’s counterterrorism measures. “In Chinese culture,” he told the Global Times, “there is no concept of targeting Muslims or the Islamic civilization.”
Egyptian representative Osama Elsayed Mahmoud Mohamed Saad, whose country was instrumental in the forcible return of thousands of Uyghur students studying at its Al-Azhar University in 2017, was satisfied that the version of events in Xinjiang as described by the Chinese officials was correct. “The new generation should learn about this,” he said.
Abdureqip Tomurniyaz, the president of the Xinjiang Islamic Institute, confirmed that “Muslims’ freedom of religion has been fully protected, and no one in the region has been treated unfairly due to their beliefs.”
Uyghur groups and activists are incensed that the Islamic world is cozying up to China again instead of condemning the atrocities against their people. The Twitter feeds of ordinary Muslims have been awash with condemnation of the visit.
Rayhan Asat, a U.S.-based attorney and Uyghur rights activist, lashed out at Alnuaimi, offering to point him to the “well-documented evidence of horrors in Xinjiang camps.” She drew his attention to the seven years of detention without trial and disappearance of her own 36-year-old brother, Ekpar. The 57-nation-strong Organisation of Islamic Countries never fails to dismay Uyghurs, desperate for support in their struggle against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Apart from Turkey, which has only recently whispered its condemnation for the persecution of its Turkic brethren, not a single Muslim country has stood up to China, or demanded the release of the captives. The opposite has, in fact, been true as debt burdens and dependence on Beijing have muzzled opposition, and caused the governments of many Muslim countries to lavish praise on the perpetrators of what the UN has recently adjudicated as possible crimes against humanity.
Last year’s feting of former Chinese foreign minister Wáng Yì 王毅 as a guest of honor at the OIC annual summit was condemned by Uyghur groups, noting that while human rights situations in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Yemen, Somalia, Palestine, and the Rohingya communities had been flagged, theirs was nowhere to be seen. The Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu alone asked whether it was “right” to ignore the situation of the Uyghurs.
Rushan Abbas, the director of Campaign for Uyghurs, called on Muslim leaders then to redress the “slap in the face” against her people and questioned the authenticity of a body that appeared to be betraying them. “Muslim leaders must defend their faith by speaking out against injustice, oppression, and tyranny,” she said.
This year’s visit was described by Rushan Abbas as a tool to “whitewash and deny” the “ongoing campaign of colonialism, genocide, and occupation of East Turkestan while actively waging war on Islam and criminalizing the entire normal practice of religion as illegal Islamic activities.”
U.K.-based Sheldon Stone, a prominent supporter of the Uyghur cause and a Times of Israel blogger, commenting on the recent delegation, said, “This is like the heads of the Jewish communities in 1940s having tea with Hitler in the Berghof, after a tour of the Theresienstadt show camp, to celebrate the ‘resettlement of the Jews.’”
