The news of Uighurs facing ethnic cleansing is on media every day. That Uighurs faces extreme difficulties that threaten their culture and society, basically the structure in which they live in. So the threat is fundamental. Unfortunately, looking at global and regional politics, it’s obvious that factors are not simply that of ethnic repression but goes into historical as well as contemporary political issues that produces the threats.
The Uighurs sit rather uncomfortably in the Chinese domain because it’s not part of the Chinese history which has built the current state. It’s not part of the Chinese majority Han ethnicity but central asia, who were mostly under the Soviet Union once.
Uighurs have not been part of that combo but with Soviet Union’s collapse, a new nationalism has arisen in the region and they are part of that. In China, they are an ethnic minority based autonomous region so part of the fringe in China. Interestingly, a sort of common reference point for all the Central Asian states is the state of Turkey and it is increasingly becoming involved in the issue. But what links all of them is the issue of Islamic terrorism, much more recent phenomenon.
Scholars and specialists are saying that a small minority inside China is part of a large force of Extremism that exists outside China. This concern about the Uighurs is not a Chinese state propaganda but a threat which China takes very seriously. And when that happens, their reactions are very hardline as media reports have said.
Meanwhile the US has been pushing the global propaganda machinery as expected to show China as anti-Muslim which again is part of the global information conflict. The West also hopes to capitalize on the bad press that China is getting bad also say that it’s not just the West which treats Muslims wrong but so does China. In effect, the Uighurs has become another playground for the ongoing global conflict between China and the West.
Turkey and other Central Asian states that are very pro-Uighur are also in a double bind as they are supportive of their causes but also wary that if the cause becomes very loud, it may actually inspire extremists in their own states and central Asian Extremism may take over. History shows that extremism thrives when there is an external threat and in this case , the Uighur is a classic example of that theorem. So a successful resistance also means that it may inspire extremists in their own backyard and no state wants that. So the Uighurs have no one to bail them out as they are not part of any international arrangement that will be mutually beneficial.
The bad news in this current world is that survival is not dependent on oneself alone. Far too many conflicts are overrunning causes and suffering of minorities is everywhere. Finding a position of non-conflict which will allow decent survival is important but how one reaches there is still unknown.
