China’s Vanishing Muslims: Undercover In The Most Dystopian Place In The World

How Xinjiang Became Muslim ft. Let's Talk Religion

China cuts Uighur births with IUDs, abortion, sterilization

 The hundreds of millions of dollars the government pours into birth control has transformed Xinjiang from one of China’s fastest-growing regions to among its slowest in just a few years, according to new research obtained by The Associated Press in advance of publication by China scholar Adrian Zenz.

“This kind of drop is unprecedented....there’s a ruthlessness to it,” said Zenz, a leading expert in the policing of China’s minority regions. “This is part of a wider control campaign to subjugate the Uighurs.”

U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo denounced the policies in a statement Monday.

“We call on the Chinese Communist Party to immediately end these horrific practices,” he said.

China’s foreign minister derided the story as “fabricated” and “fake news,” saying the government treats all ethnicities equally and protects the legal rights of minorities.

“Everyone, regardless of whether they’re an ethnic minority or Han Chinese, must follow and act in accordance with the law,” ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Monday when asked about the AP story.

Chinese officials have said in the past that the new measures are merely meant to be fair, allowing both Han Chinese and ethnic minorities the same number of children.

For decades, China had one of the most extensive systems of minority entitlements in the world, with Uighurs and others getting more points on college entrance exams, hiring quotas for government posts and laxer birth control restrictions. Under China’s now-abandoned ‘one child’ policy, the authorities had long encouraged, often forced, contraceptives, sterilization and abortion on Han Chinese. But minorities were allowed two children — three if they came from the countryside.

Under President Xi Jinping, China’s most authoritarian leader in decades, those benefits are now being rolled back. In 2014, soon after Xi visited Xinjiang, the region’s top official said it was time to implement “equal family planning policies” for all ethnicities and “reduce and stabilize birth rates.” In the following years, the government declared that instead of just one child, Han Chinese could now have two, and three in Xinjiang’s rural areas, just like minorities.

But while equal on paper, in practice Han Chinese are largely spared the abortions, sterilizations, IUD insertions and detentions for having too many children that are forced on Xinjiang’s other ethnicities, interviews and data show. Some rural Muslims, like Omirzakh, are punished even for having the three children allowed by the law.

State-backed scholars have warned for years that large rural religious families were at the root of bombings, knifings and other attacks the Xinjiang government blamed on Islamic terrorists. The growing Muslim population was a breeding ground for poverty and extremism which could “heighten political risk,” according to a 2017 paper by the head of the Institute of Sociology at the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences. Another cited as a key obstacle the religious belief that “the fetus is a gift from God.”

Outside experts say the birth control campaign is part of a state-orchestrated assault on the Uighurs to purge them of their faith and identity and forcibly assimilate them. They’re subjected to political and religious re-education in camps and forced labor in factories, while their children are indoctrinated in orphanages. Uighurs, who are often but not always Muslim, are also tracked by a vast digital surveillance apparatus.

“The intention may not be to fully eliminate the Uighur population, but it will sharply diminish their vitality,” said Darren Byler, an expert on Uighurs at the University of Colorado. “It will make them easier to assimilate into the mainstream Chinese population.”

Some go a step further.

“It’s genocide, full stop. It’s not immediate, shocking, mass-killing on the spot type genocide, but it’s slow, painful, creeping genocide,” said Joanne Smith Finley, who works at Newcastle University in the U.K. “These are direct means of genetically reducing the Uighur population.”

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China's Muslim Concentration Camps Paint a Bleak Picture of the Future Awaiting the Hong Kong Protestors

What started in June as a series of peaceful demonstrations against Beijing’s growing exertion of its rule over Hong Kong has devolved into escalated violence between protestors and the territory’s police force.

The chants in favour of democracy and opposition to the Chinese Communist Party have now been replaced by violent confrontations, culminating with the police shooting and killing an unarmed protestor at point blank range on Monday.

The protestors’ core five demands, known as “Five Demands and Not One Less”, have remained the same since the protests began. But, until now, only one of them has been met – the withdrawal of an extradition bill which would have allowed criminal suspects to be sent to China for trial. The other four include the establishment of an independent commission to investigate allegations of police brutality and misconduct; the retraction of riot charges against arrested and detained protestors; and the implementation of full democratic rights for all citizens.

In other words, the citizens of Hong Kong are demanding less of Beijing’s rule and influence and more democracy. While there’s little doubt a great many of the territory’s citizens and residents have grown tired of disruptions caused by the protests – with some questioning the means and methods deployed by some of the protestors – it is also true that an overwhelming majority of the island is grateful that these protests resulted in the withdrawal of the extradition bill.

There’s also no denying that these pro-democracy and anti-Beijing protestors rightfully and understandably believe that they are fighting for their lives and the future of their families. In almost every conversation I’ve had with those attaching themselves to the Anti Extradition Bill movement, the words “Xinjiang” and “Tibet” have come up.

In particular, Xinjiang’s Muslim concentration camps loom large in the minds of those who live within touching distance of China.

In a revelatory article for The Atlantic, Zeynep Tufekci shared a summary of conversations he held with protestors on the streets of Hong Kong this week. “They talked about Xinjiang and what China had done to the Uighur minority,” he wrote. “I’ve heard about the fate of the Uighurs from so many protestors over the months. China many have wanted to make an example out of the region, but the lesson Hong Kongers took was in the other direction – resist with all your might, because if you lose once, there will be a catastrophe for your people, and the world will ignore it.”

Protestors in Hong Kong have also familiarised themselves with recent revelations regarding the depraved level of mass rape, torture, executions and other forms of physical and psychological abuse meted out by Chinese authorities to the Uighur minority in an systematic effort to eliminate their culture and indoctrinate them into vigorously adhering to the Communist Party’s ideology.

When the Washington Post published a Uighur woman’s harrowing ordeal in a Chinese concentration camp last month, it went viral in Hong Kong, particularly among the protestors. It told of how 2,500 prisoners, ranging in age from 13 to 84, were subjected to the brutality of the Chinese state. “They would punish inmates for everything,” Sayragul Sauytbay told an interpreter. “Anyone who didn’t follow the rules was punished. Those who didn’t learn Chinese properly or who didn’t sing the songs was also punished.”

Her accounts regarding the pack rape of both men and women not only drew attention in Hong Kong, but also globally. She told Haaretz: “While they were raping her they checked to see how we were reacting. People who turned their head or closed their eyes, and those who looked angry or shocked, were taken away and we never saw them again.”

Uighur activists have now documented nearly 500 Muslim concentration camps in Xinjiang, with Randall Schriver, the top Pentagon official for Asia, estimating that the total number of detainees is “likely closer to three million citizens” or roughly 25% of the total Uighur population.

“If we lose, Hong Kong will become Xinjiang,” Jackool, a 30 year-old theatre technician and protestor, told AFP in September.

There’s little doubt that if, or when, Beijing sinks the full weight of its gigantic force into Hong Kong, the present reality of Muslims in Xinjiang is the future that awaits pro-democracy activists on the island territory.

The Chinese Communist Party views Islam as a cancer that has the potential to threaten or disrupt its economic imperatives in the north-west of the country, which is also how Beijing views democracy in Hong Kong – an ideological threat that has to be eliminated at some point or another.

Xiao Qiang, director of the Counter-Power Lab at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Information, has said that the party views Xinjiang as its “frontline” testing ground for data-driven surveillance measures, which allow authorities to track the every movement of every Uighur every second of the day via GPS tracking devices, facial recognition cameras and DNA databases.

“China’s goal is to use these technologies to suppress dissent and to predict and snuff out any challenge to the ruling Communist Party’s grip on power,” observes The Washington Post.

While it’s patently obvious that protestors in Hong Kong are immediately focused on pressuring the Government into implementing democratic reforms, there is also little doubt of the mobilising affect China’s Muslim concentration camps are having on the territory’s eight million citizens.

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Muslim Chinese Street Food in Shanghai!! HALAL XINJIANG Market Street Food in CHINA!

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Uighurs fled persecution in China. Now Beijing’s harassment has followed them to Australia

Alfiraa Dilshat and Rashida Abdughufur were picnicking in the small seaside town of Victor Harbor in late December when Abdughufur got a video call from her mother.

With Abdughufur living in Adelaide, a city in southern Australia, and her mother in the Xinjiang region of China, it was a rare chance for the two to connect. At first, Abdughufur said, she was excited because she hadn’t talked to her mother in a long time.

Then came “disaster.”

Abdughufur’s mother appeared on the screen in handcuffs, sitting next to a police officer. “They started interrogating me,” Abdughufur said. Fearing for her safety, she complied, sharing sensitive details and documents the police demanded from her, including her Australian driver’s license.

When Abdughufur finished the call, “her face was pale,” her friend Dilshat remembered. Shortly thereafter, an audio message from Abdughufur’s mother arrived. “These people will look for you,” it said. The WeChat account used to contact Abdughufur was disconnected soon after. Abdughufur hasn’t heard from her mother since.


This was the kind of danger that she and other Uighurs had hoped to escape. In the past few years, China has conducted a sweeping campaign to suppress Uighur identity and restrict the practice of Islam. As many as 1 million Uighurs and members of other minority groups — mostly Muslim ones — are being held without charges in brutal internment camps, according to the United Nations. It is just the latest episode in a decades-long history of tension between Uighurs and the staunchly secular, Han Chinese-dominated government in Beijing.

Abdughufur herself fled Xinjiang in 2017, when China intensified its crackdown. Shortly after moving to Australia, her younger brother and father were sent to internment camps.

After months of denying the camps existed, China switched last year to justifying them. Beijing insists it is merely providing job training and “de-extremism education” in a region that is poor and steeped in fundamentalism. “As a result of the vocational education and training, the social environment of Xinjiang has seen notable changes, with a healthy atmosphere on the rise and improper practices declining,” said Shohrat Zakir, the de facto No. 2 official in Xinjiang, in October.

The Chinese embassy in Australia did not respond to requests for comment.


On Friday, Uighurs across Australia rallied in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide to highlight the plight of their communities in China, but also to protest against their treatment by Beijing abroad.

Uighurs in Adelaide said efforts to infiltrate their community go back more than a decade. One man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he still has family in China, said that during a visit to China in 2005, he was offered what was then an average wage in Australia if he agreed to spy on his community. Another woman, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her family, said she was approached with a similar request as recently as 2011.

Open intimidation on Australian soil is a much more recent concern. It has taken the form of WeChat messages or phone calls, often from individuals claiming to be Chinese officials. They may ask for a call back regarding passport or visa matters, or claim a package has arrived at the embassy for the person they are calling; many of them demand sensitive personal information that Uighurs believe Chinese authorities would already have because of prior visa requests.


That pattern, said Michael Clarke, who researches the treatment of Uighurs at Australia’s National Security College, is “consistent, not just with incidents in Australia, but also in other places around the world.”

Some researchers caution that there is no statistical evidence of such tactics, but Uighur community leaders say complaints about calls, messages and video chats have proliferated as Adelaide’s Uighurs have become more politically active over the last two years. Uighurs say the calls began in March, just hours after the community staged its largest-ever protest in Canberra, Australia’s capital, to highlight the plight of China’s Uighurs.

“After the protest in Canberra, even young kids who were born here got the phone calls,” said 37-year-old Adam Turan, who said his 80-year-old father died weeks after being released from an internment camp in Xinjiang in the fall.


A spokesman for Australia’s Department of Home Affairs told The Post that “the Australian Government takes seriously its responsibility to protect our sovereignty, values and national interests from foreign interference" and highlighted the passage of a stringent new espionage and foreign interference law last year.

The calls and messages have taken a heavy toll. The tightknit Adelaide Uighur community of about 170 families has watched helplessly as an increasing number of their relatives in China have been taken to the internment camps. Many think their activism has led to such imprisonments — and, in some cases, deaths. The community’s growth has also trickled to a standstill as leaving China has become harder and harder for Uighurs.

“Because we live here, they suffer,” Turan said. As he sat in a Uighur restaurant in central Adelaide and recalled his own father’s death, he was interrupted by the restaurant’s owner, who approached the table to share details about his own family’s disappearance.


Police officers walk alongside two women in Kashgar, in the Xinjiang autonomous region, China, on Nov. 8, 2018. (Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
All of the Uighurs interviewed for this report said they had experienced depression or anxiety following the detention of their relatives and continuing harassment. “Sometimes I want to kill myself,” said Almas Nizamidin, 28, a construction worker who says his wife is being detained in a Chinese internment camp and who has lobbied Australian lawmakers unsuccessfully to raise the issue with Chinese officials.


“We all have psychological issues here,” Turan agreed. “At work, I try not to cry.”

For him, the questions he used to fear most began early in the morning, at the breakfast table with his children. “Do you have parents?” his 5-year-old son repeatedly asked. “Why are they not here?”

“Even the children go through this trauma,” Turan said. “That’s the hardest part.”

China is Australia’s biggest export market, putting Canberra in an awkward position. Australia’s government is a vocal critic of the treatment of Uighurs; it joined the United States as recently as November in calling on China to close its camps. But Nurmuhammad Said Majid, the president of the East Turkistan Australian Association (“East Turkistan” is the term used by Uighurs to describe Xinjiang), believes that Australia’s increasing dependence on China has made it made it more difficult for his community to have their complaints heard.


“We’re paying a heavy price for what we do here,” Majid said.

While sitting for an interview at Southern Australia’s State Library in Adelaide, Majid noticed red lanterns outside the library, announcing a new exhibition on ancient China. Such exhibitions and other intercultural exchanges have become more frequent in recent years, despite Australia’s criticisms of China’s human rights record.

“When I see those lanterns,” Majid said, pointing to them, “I see the blood of our families.”

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Grandmaster Wang Zi-Ping

Grandmaster Wang Zi-Ping (1881 - 1973) was a proud Chinese Muslim. He had a beautiful fist length beard and followed the Hanafi school. He specialised in Chinese Martial Arts and he was known for his mastery of Wushu and Tai Chi. He also served as the leader of the Shoalin Kung Fu division of martial arts. 

Islam has been practised in China since the time of the Sahaba - 1400 years ago. May Allāh assist and grant relief to all our brothers and sisters who are being oppressed in China and across the world because of their faith in Allāh and His Messenger ﷺ.

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