‘Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it’, George Santayana wrote these words forgetting that human nature contains a propensity for evil just as it does for good. Being aware of the evils of the past does not prevent evil deeds. China’s totalitarian socialist political system has continued its strangulation of individual liberty, advancing into genocide – bringing into memory the harrowing events of the not-so-long-ago past against the Jewish people.
In an atheist socialist regime, it is sacrilege to speak up against the systematic imprisonment and neutering of the Uyghur and Kazakh people. Xi Jinping’s oppressive regime has directed an onslaught against religion, tearing down Catholic churches, destroying sacred statues and crosses and replacing them with deified images of China’s President. Whilst it would be natural to suggest that the violence directed towards the Uyghurs follows a national purge of religion, the funnelling of Muslims into ‘vocational training centres’, reminiscent of the Nazi concentration camps, reveals that the motive is closer to outright genocide. Inside the ‘training centres’, sentences are given for a variety of ‘crimes’, on a point system that penalises Uighurs for owning a Qur’an, having too many children, speaking Uyghur or for speaking up against the treatment of other Uyghurs. In an even clearer sign that the Chinese government is yet again invested in tampering with eugenics, a campaign promoting the intermarriage of Uyghurs and Hans Chinese promises money for housing, as well as amenities such as a refrigerator.
Chinese scholar, Adrian Zen, was one of the first to report that the Chinese government were forcing Uyghur and Kazakh women to undergo sterilisation – an AP report in 2020 revealed far more detailed draconian measures that the government is taking to diminish its Muslim population. By interviewing women in Xinjiang, it was discovered that the Muslim women in the province are forced to undergo regular pregnancy tests, forced to have intrauterine devices implanted which prevent pregnancy, as well as sterilisations and abortions. Women reported being forced to swallow pills or be forcibly injected with unknown medication that made them feel severely unwell, later finding out that they were unable to produce children as a result. Dina Nurdybay, a Kazakh woman imprisoned in one of China’s ‘training centres’, witnessed a Uyghur woman having to recite a speech denouncing herself in Mandarin for having too many children in front of guards. Tursunay Ziyawudun, another Uyghur woman, recalled how she had been given undisclosed injections until she stopped getting her period, and during the process was repeatedly kicked in the stomach as part of the interrogations. China is in the middle of a mass genocide, and it says much for the power of the Chinese government that they can pursue this without real threat of global condemnation and consequences.
What does it say of human nature that despite no excuse of ignorance of the violence and inhumane treatment of the Uyghur Muslims, nothing of meaning is done to denounce Xi Jinping’s malicious regime? The full details of the violence inflicted towards the Uyghurs is unlikely to be known until the distant future, due to fierce policy guarding and censorship, and China’s tradition of denying outright facts. But perhaps the most sinister and chilling truth lies in the reality that China launched a modern genocide against a Muslim minority within its borders, without genuine fear of consequence, without outcry from the Arab world in the Middle East, and without a concern for history’s dark past repeating itself. China’s position as a global economic powerhouse, and the world’s increasing dependence on the country has put a price on a promise to ‘never again’ relive the atrocities of the Nazi regime.
HISTORY IN POLITICS 