Ms. Rebiya Kadeer
Last week at the UN Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi reiterated China’s position on the Rohingya issue. He told UN Secretary General Antonia Guterres that China “understands and supports” Myanmar’s efforts in Rakhine. But why does China support Myanmar’s “security efforts” against the Rohingya? Is it because of China’s close relation with Myanmar’s government? No. Because of China’s opposition to Muslims or Rohingya Muslims? That isn’t it either. Then it must be China’s non-intervention policy and respect for Myanmar’s sovereignty, right? Not quite.
As the leader of a people who suffer under Chinese occupation, a former citizen who lived under the CCP regime and witnessed and studied the Chinese regime’s efforts and then opposed them, as a human rights activist struggling for the independence of her people, I’ll answer the question. China “understands and supports” Myanmar on the Rohingya issue because it’s in China’s interest do so. To act otherwise – to remain silent or condemn Myanmar’s violent crackdown on the Rohingya – would create a conflict of interest for China. Because while Myanmar violently suppresses hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, China is violently oppressing 10 times as many Uyghurs. Reports have classified the recent attacks on the Rohingya as ethnic cleansing, but Myanmar isn’t the only one engaged in this type of atrocity. China’s most recent ethnic cleansing of Uyghurs began in 2009 during the July 5th Urumchi Massacre and hasn’t stopped since. China’s unhypocritical support of Myanmar’s efforts against the Rohingya aligns with its interest in carrying out similar “security efforts” against the Uyghurs.
My words may seem exaggerated to some. Today, we know about the plight of the Rohingya because Myanmar is a democracy – at least in name now – and is relatively accessible. But the oppression of the Uyghurs living under Chinese occupation and dictatorship remain largely a mystery to the world. For example, we know that close to 400,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh and other neighboring countries. Today, China detains thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of Uyghurs in re-education camps in Eastern Turkistan, and Uyghurs are being held captive not just in prisons, detention centers and re-education camps, but also in their own villages, cities and homeland. Many Uyghurs can’t even visit their neighboring village or city without permission from law enforcement authorities.
UN officials estimate more than 1000 Rohingya deaths as a result of the Myanmar military crackdown. Since the 2009 July 5thUrumchi Massacre, thousands of Uyghurs have been forcibly disappeared. And very few have been identified. Human Rights Watch identified at least 43 of the disappeared Uyghurs, while Radio Free Asia Uyghur identified about 40 . Recently, Chinese billionaire businessman Guo Wengui – who is now seeking asylum in the United States – leaked that more than 500 Uyghurs were buried during the Urumchi Massacre, But no organization or news agency has shown interest in this information because there is no way of confirming the accuracy of Wengui’s leaks. To this day, China has not revealed the number or names of those disappeared during the Urumchi Massacre. Nor has the regime released information or the deceased bodies to their families. China has refused to answer international organizations’ questions about the forcibly disappeared. China imprisoned Ilham Tohti for calling on the Chinese government to release information about the disappeared to their families.
I apologize for borrowing attention from the suffering Rohingya for even a moment. I applaud the humane governments and organizations that are struggling to address the plight of the Rohingya. But the Chinese Minister’s remarks at the UN has forced me to speak up. China’s support for Myanmar’s violent campaign against the Rohingya emboldens the Myanmar regime. It seems it is not enough for China to oppress and murder my people in their own homeland because now it seeks to support the oppression and ethnic cleansing of my human brothers and sisters in Rakhine.
Every day, I read reports and see pictures of Rohingya Muslims throwing themselves over the limp bodies of their loved ones and weeping for justice. And I weep with them. I weep to think that in my homeland, the Uyghur people cannot even weep for their unjustly killed loved ones without being labeled terrorist sympathizers. Just this year China sentenced 65-year-old Uyghur veterinarian Haliq Mahmut to eight years in prison for treating an Uyghur injured suspect.
Is it possible for a state like China – a country that is currently engaging in the ethnic cleansing of the people it occupied and concealing it from the world –to have an objective or impartial view on the Rohingya issue? How can a state that crushed its own youth with tanks at Tiananmen in 1989 to preserve its own authority have any say on matters of international peace and justice? Has China not “understood and supported” the Serbs when Kosovo was struggling for independence, Gaddafi and Mubarak when the Arab Spring was still blooming, and Assad when Syria is under siege” just like it seems to “understand and support” Myanmar when the Rohingya are struggling to survive?
China’s interest in supporting Myanmar is this: The existence and escalation of the suffering of those like the Rohingya and Syrians at the international stage so that the plight of the peoples of Eastern Turkistan and Tibet never see the light at the international stage. At the same time, China uses the Rohingya as an example to influence those within and outside of its borders by showing that China isn’t the only iron fisted state. By ensuring the oppression of people outside of its borders China cements it authority to oppress within its borders. It’s interested in the suffering of the Rohingya as a tool to direct international attention away from its own ethnic cleansing campaigns and to manipulate its own people to tolerate and submit to its dictatorship.
So, if those within Myanmar who are genuinely interested in stopping the suffering in Rakhine and the international community are looking for opinions and advise on addressing the Rohingya issue, they should ignore China and look to a country who has more sincere and humane interests in the matter.