MUSLIMS LIVING AS MINORITIES
Beijing’s Genocidal anti-Uyghur Campaign and Stalin’s Gulag Archipelago China’s latest attempt to disappear Xinjiang’s majority Uyghur Muslim population BY SARAH WINTER
G
eorge Santayana, the SpanishAmerican philosopher, once famously wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (“The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense” [Scribner’s, 1905], p. 284). History has seen this all before: identities stripped, freedoms revoked, families separated, the eradication of entire cultures, systemic rape, abuse, starvation and torture. China’s ongoing assault on Xinjiang’s majority-Uyghur Muslim population is so heinous that it seems unduplicatable, and yet it brings another relatively recent situation to mind — Stalin’s forced labor camps in the Soviet Union from the 1930s to the 1950s. Beijing’s current campaign features some eerily similar tactics: hiding the camps from the public, portraying them as opportunities for “learning” and “reform” and silencing and eliminating opposition by ensuring the masses are living in fear. Similarities through censorship, denial, strategy and eradicating
entire populations to gain more control over a state connect these two harrowing situations. Such a reality reminds us that understanding the past is necessary to comprehending the present and constructing a more egalitarian future. Chinese president Xi Jinping claims that the Xinjiang internment camps are necessary to fight “Islamic extremism” and contain what he recognizes as a “contagion” that is bound to spread beyond Xinjiang if let go. The New York Times has revisited Xi’s past regarding the management of Uyghur Muslims and how he has formerly “called on the party to unleash the tools of ‘dictatorship’ to eradicate radical Islam in Xinjiang” (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html). The alarming report further stated, “There are also references to plans to extend restrictions on Islam to other parts of China” (ibid.), and continues to unintentionally draw striking comparisons
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of Xi to Stalin by detailing the elimination of party opponents and the numerous human rights lawyers who have disappeared (ibid.). All of this demonstrates Xi’s ability and willingness to establish extreme measures and destroy anyone standing in his way. Given the adamant denial of these accusations, along with the censorship and media manipulation that have become commonplace in China, it is not far-fetched to believe that horrible crimes are being committed behind these internment camps’ closed doors. The draconian policies Stalin employed to operate his Gulag parallel how Beijing is operating its internment camps, which are reportedly holding over 1 million Uyghur Muslims as prisoners. Throughout the history of Stalin’s ruthless camp system, he and his top officials, much like Beijing, claimed that its purpose was to protect society from dangerous criminals who threatened national security (Golfo Alexopoulos, “Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin’s Gulag” [Yale University Press, 2017], p.3). The reality is the vast majority of these “criminals” were poor, uneducated citizens who were wrongfully and maximally punished for minimal crimes. The most minimal of crimes could result in 25 years of imprisonment, a virtual death sentence. In her monograph, Alexopoulos explains, “Moreover, the illiterate, the semiliterate, and individuals with only an elementary school education made up that vast majority of gulag prisoners, as many as 80 percent before the war” (p.275). This supposed institution of reeducation and protection was, in reality, a grandiose and complex torture system that exploited civilians for economic purposes. An estimated 1 million people died in Stalin’s Gulag, and “In addition, there is the currently unknown number of those who died shortly after being released from the Gulag” (http://www.jstor. org/stable/826310). Survivor testimonies at this point are incredibly rare, yet vital to investigations. One survivor, Tursunay Ziawudun, courageously chose to speak out and recollect her experiences in a rare interview with BBC during February 2021. Her experience reveals a torturous existence in which rape and abuse are commonplace and many nights are filled with the sounds of screaming victims as camp guards ripped them from their cells after dark (https://www.bbc.com/news/ world-asia-china-55794071). The BBC article shares an additional report of another former
