TWoU - Ch6 - Cultural genocide 2017–2020

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• Todo need sources

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• The term ‘cultural genocide’ is attributed to Polish lawyer who coined the term genocide in the 1940s, Raphael Lemkin.
  • He defined the term as ’the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group.
  • He notes that it is rarely done through the ‘immediate destruction’ of a group. (mass murder)
  • Instead, it’s almost always implemented gradually through systematic eradication of the group’s cultural distinctiveness and way of life, the ’essential foundations of the life of national groups.’
  • The purpose involves the

    ‘disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.’

• Instead of Lemkin’s definition of genocide, the popular view is more narrow: the mass murder of members of a nation or group to completely obliterate their gene pool.

• The campaign against the Uyghur terrorist threat targeted went beyond religiosity and ‘separatism.’
  • [ s ] Take Ilham Tohti’s case for example. ^6zlxh3
• As early as 2014, plans for the genocide were set in motion.
  • [ s ] The logic for genocide was already established.
    • Carried clear biopolitical logic
      • [ s ] Evident from government documents that say “polluted by religious extremism,” “cleansed,” etc.
        • [r_i] Suggestive of a strategy requiring treatment and quarantining to ensure extremism does not spread.
  • [ s ] The procedures and techniques were already being tested
    • [ s ] Many counties in Xinjiang began establishing ’transformation through re-education’ programs to target ’extremists’.
      • [ q ] These were previously limited to Falun Gong, drug addicts, and hardened criminals.
      • [ q ] Throughout 2014-2015 it was in an experimental phase.
        • [ s ] Some appeared to be daytime ‘reform schools,’ others had temporary boarding, others involved longer term detention.
      • [r_e] Did not stop violence which only escalated during 2014-2015
        • [r_i] So the successes claimed by local authorities are false.
    • [ s ] China Electronic Technology Group (PRC military contractor) was already building a database of all Uyghurs to serve in a ‘preventative policing’ program. ^6njap8
      • This system would be online by 2016.
      • And legally justified by new anti-terrorism law, allowing the state greater access to personal data.
• Now it only needed the motivation for the state to finally give up on having Uyghurs voluntarily assimilate and start aggressive assimilation.

• Chen Quanguo became governor on 29 August 2016.
  • [e_c] His work on stabilizing Tibet made him the logical candidate.
• His arrival coincided with the 2016 Bishkek Embassy Suicide Bombing
  • Even though the false flag couldn’t be clearer, the PRC would use it to hype up the terrorist threat, blaming ETIM once again.
• This played into Chen’s hand, so he stressed ‘placing stability above all else’ and he started his term by building an unprecedented police state.
  • [ s ] In his first year, he advertised almost 100,680 security-related jobs.
    • [ q ] This is >13 times the average annual security-related recruits for 2009-2015
  • [ s ] He established estimated 7,300 ‘convenience police stations’ in urban areas based on his Tibetan model.
  • [ s ] He used the previously built database for mass social evaluation.
  • Chen would collect a lot of biometric data on every Uyghur.
    • [ s ] Byler notes this was done through ‘free health exams’ in 2016, where Uyghurs had to provide DNA, fingerprints, voice signatures, and face signatures, all of which went into the system.
    • [ s ] The sate claimed to have collected such data for 18.8/21.8 million Xinjiang citizens.
    • [ q ] The new counterterrorism law already allowed the state to access bank and social media accounts, work and travel history.
  • [ s ] New internet regulations by December 2016.
    • [e_p] To legally monitor all content posted by Uyghurs and mine for ideological inclinations.
  • [ s ] VPNs were criminalized, calling them “terrorism software."^[https://globalvoices.org/2016/10/26/leaked-xinjiang-police-report-describes-circumvention-tools-as-terrorist-software/]
• Integrated Joint Operations Platform is the official name of this big data surveillance and profiling program.
• IJOP took every opportunity to collect data about Uyghurs
  • [ s ] Cadres regularly visited Uyghur homes and asked a lot of questions to household members.
  • [ s ] Detailed questionnaires for Uyghurs regarding religious observation, daily habits etc.
• IJOP would be used as a tool for social control.
  • [ s ] Every Uyghur would be evaluated for ‘safeness.’
    • Those deemed normal were allowed to continue unrestricted
    • Those deemed deviant or abnormal were likely to be subjected to interrogation, detention, imprisonment or extensive political re-education.
• Still, violence was not stopped by the end of 2016.
  • In Karakash in December, a group of Uyghurs drove a truck into the yard of regional CCP HQ and blew up the truck. They were immediately killed by authorities.
  • Another alleged attack in Guma county, February 2017. Three Uyghurs entered a residential compound and killed 5 people. All three attackers were killed.

• The campaign started in 2017 was a culmination of events, but the attacks in 2016 and 2017 provided a perfect justification.
  • [r_e] Following the truck bombing, 96 rural cadres were punished for not monitoring Uyghurs intensely enough.
  • [r_e] An open letter campaign began to require that high-ranking Uyghur officials issue public written statements declaring their loyalty to China.
    • [r_i] Thus, from now on, even Uyghurs who appeared loyal to the Party were liable to be infected with extremism.
  • [r_e] Military parades were held in January and February of 2017.
• In March, new deextremification regulations were approved by the regional CCP: Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Regulation on De-extremification
  • Clarification of the 2015 Counterterrorism Law and Religious Affairs Regulation
  • Fifteen different manifestations of extremist behavior, including:
    • [ q ] All forms of advice or dawah given to other Muslims.
    • [ q ] Discouraging others from marrying/living with/intermingling with other ethnicities/faiths.
    • [ q ] “Generalizing Halal,” to make its scope beyond halal food.
    • [ q ] Encouraging others to be religious.
    • [ q ] Promoting extremism through abnormal beards and specific clothing styles.
  • The regulations sought to ban anything deemed extremist (i.e. Islamic) from every sphere of life.
    • [ s ] criminalizes any academic research on anything that could be interpreted as promoting extremification.
    • [ s ] Subsequent articles outlined how manifestations of extremism must be removed from the commercial sphere, public health, education, telecommunications, media, transportations, and any area of governance.
  • laid the foundations for the soon to be established re-education system.
    • [e_c] It prescribes efforts to establish

      ’educational transformation, implementing a combination of individual and group education; combining legal education and mentoring; combining ideological education, psychological counseling, behavioral corrections, and skills training; combining educational transformation and humanistic care; and strengthening the effectiveness of educational transformation.’

• March 2017 marks the beginning of the state’s year-long process of obtaining construction services
  • The earlier smaller re-education centers served as testing grounds.
    • [ s ] Zenz cites a local Party-led study for re-education work against extremism from 2014-2016, which recommended the stablishment in all prefectures and counties of ‘centralized transformation through education training centres.
• The complex of policies and measures promoting cultural destruction are
  • Re-education internment camps
  • Other forms of incarceration
  • Comprehensive system of surveillance and evaluation
  • Cleansing Xinjiang of uniquely Uyghur structural markers
    • language destruction
    • erasure of local traditions
    • razing of cultural monuments and communities
  • Establishing a distinctly Chinese landscape
    • both culturally and physically
  • Policies of forced assimilation
  • Coerced residential labor
  • Coerced miscegenation
  • [e_m] Breaking down Uyghur collective identity
• Only in september 2017 did reports get out by The Globe and Mail, HRW and RFA.
• As the existence was being revealed throughout 2018, PRC continued to deny their existence, until October 2018 when they claimed they’re ‘vocational training centers’ meant to rehabilitate alleged ’extremists.’

• There is solid evidence that people are not sent merely for hitting some criteria, but that regional administrations are given quotas.
  • [ s ] One county RFA spoke to in March 2018 said at least 10% of the village was sent to such camps.
• Not all camps are the same. Some are crowded while others aren’t, some are new while others repurposed, and what really matters is who is in charge of a camp.

• There is some uniformity about what internees are subjected to.
• Most accounts mention intensive Mandarin training and hours of ‘political education.’
  • This is more like brainwashing.
  • CCTV would monitor people, and if they dozed off, they would be warned via loudspeaker.
  • Students did not have a common level of Mandarin
    • [e_c] Some had better skills than the teacher while others had no experience at all
      • [r_i] This suggests these classes are less a means of instruction and more a powerful show of power of Chinese over Uyghur language.
  • Political education was more akin to chanting propaganda slogans.
• Life outside classes were even more spirit-breaking
  • Internees were forbidden to speak native language.
  • Some had to use buckets instead of toilets.
  • Minimal rations of food.
• The purpose of the classes was to erase people’s culture.
  • As a Kazakh citizen said:

    We had Chinese-language lessons. We learned the Chinese anthem and other official songs. We learned Xi Jinping’s policies. I couldn’t speak Chinese and I can’t say I learned anything from the classes. If their purpose was to teach us Chinese, why did they have so many old people in the camp? How could they learn Chinese? What I gathered from those classes was that they just wanted to erase us as a nation, erase our identity, turn us into Chinese people.¹

• Attempts since 2018 to link re-education camps with new centers for forced labor.
• Related to anothers state-led program to transform rural Uyghur farmers and Kazakh herders into factory laborers.^[Is this proletarianization?]
• Starting 2019, numerous capms started adding factory spaces.
• This provides propaganda cover for the PRC.

• In 2017, 87000 people were convicted of crimes in Xinjiang.
  • [ q ] That is 10 times more than 2016.
• In 2018, those imprisoned were 133,198.^[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/31/world/asia/xinjiang-china-uighurs-prisons.html]
• Most Uyghur cultural figures have received actual prison terms rather than re-education.
• The lines between re-education and prison interment are blurry.
• The large amount of Uyghurs who have been either interned or imprisoned is astronomical.

• Threat of arbitrary interment or incarceration has created an environment of complete fear. Reasons for detainment in Xinjiang are vague by design.
  • [ s ] Roberts’ colleagues could not engage substantively with anybody because of self-censorship.
• The real power comes from the profiling through the IJOP system.
  • Being scanned multiple times a day at checkpoints involves having IJOP profile checked a lot of times.
    • 38 people on the Qaraqash List were identified for internment by such IJOP ‘push notifications.’
  • The constant monitoring and evaluation of Uyghurs’ lives and loyalties makes unable to talk about it with anyone.
• In rural areas, cadres were sent to do house-to-house inspections and report on families’ behavior.
  • According to a Xinjiang TV report, 24 million rural Uyghur homes between 2016-2018 were visited, conducting 33 million interviews. #todo/need_sources
  • These cadres are tasked with propaganda and data collection duties.
• The power is two-fold
  1. The fear it instills breeds distrust within the community.
  2. It makes all Uyghurs incapable of resisting CCP-led campaigns to promote assimilation.

• The assimiliationist strategy has been a priority since 2014 when the state first identified the source of alleged extremism.
  • Xi Jinping said at the second Xinjiang Work Forum, to defeat ’terrorism,’ the state had to promote intermingling of ethnic groups so they become tightly bound, like a pomegranate.
  • Until 2017, most Uyghurs resisted becoming a pomegranate seed, but resistance became futile after 2017.

• The PRC has long been changing the landscape of Xinjiang, but since 2017, it was not possible anymore for Uyghurs to leave their mark.
• This effort has involved removing many signs of Islamic religion.
  • Began with the removal of crescent symbols on minarets.
  • Progressed to repurposing mosques.
  • Destroying many of them.
  • Shrines of sufi saints.
    • These are very important to Uyghurs’ identity.
  • Cemeteries are uprooted
• Altering the structure of rural Uyghur villages
  • Part of a larger policy seeking to promote the ‘ Three News’
    1. Advocate a new lifestyle
    2. Establish a new atmosphere
    3. Construct a new order
  • To renovate houses to remove traditional Uyghur architectural elements and replace them with allegedly modern attributes associated with Han lifestyles.
    • Ridding homes of the mahrab niche (indicates the direction of mecca)
    • Demolishing traditional supa beds
    • Replacing traditional furniture (particularly the dining table)

• The drive to change the human terrain is promoted in campaigns that are framed as ‘modernizing’ and promoting ‘poverty alleviation.’
• One example is the various coercive labor programs for rural Uyghurs.
• Another is the Three News campaign which seeks to condemn religion and coerced participation in events that promote Chinese culture and values.
  • Reinforced through the cadre ‘relatives.’
  • Flag-raising ceremonies, patriotic songs etc.
    • [r_e] These seem benign, but they shape a new social environment for rural Uyghurs.
  • Being asked to partake in drinking of alcohol or cigarette smoking by cadre relatives.
  • Consuming pork to honor the ‘Year of the Pig’
    • Refusal to participate could quickly be flagged as ’extremism’
• Changing the educational system.
  • All-Chinese-language education required students to take the nationwide exam between eight grade and high school in Chinese.
    • [ q ] If they don’t pass, they go –> vocational school –> factory.
  • In 2017, the extra points for Uyghurs were slashed from 50 to 15. (this is not the gaokao)
  • [r_e] High schools in Xinjiang now have a higher proportion of Han students.
    • [r_e] More assimilationist experience for those who do get admitted.
  • Since those schools are in urban areas, rural Uyghurs who want to go to high school must study in boarding school environments.
• Children of interned parents face intergenerational separation.
  • [ q ] This is the hallmark of settler colonialism and cultural genocide.
  • By late February 2017, the government began construction g 4387 preschools intended to serve 562,900 new students to be done before the 2017-18 school year.
  • While the total preschool intake target in fall 2017 was 1 million, the actual number enrolled was closer to 1.4 million.^[https://www.jpolrisk.com/break-their-roots-evidence-for-chinas-parent-child-separation-campaign-in-xinjiang/#_ftn79]
    • [r_i] This increase of 50% over last year must’ve been caused by parents being interned.
• Then there’s the coerced miscegenation.
  • Incentives are provided to mixed-race couples.
    • 20-point advantage to mixed children (higher than the 15 points Uyghurs get)
  • There have been campaigns to draw Han men to the region for this purpose, showing the exotic beauty and caring nature of Uyghur women.
  • Refusing a Han man’s hand in marriage could have grave consequences.
    • mentions interference with the intermingling of ethnicities. So if parents were to refuse to give their daughter’s hand in marriage, they could be marked up for extremism.

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• The PRC wants, once and for all, to integrate Xinjiang into a more homogenous, Han-centric state, leaving it open for unfettered re-development.
• IMPORTANT PART The motivation for Uyghur genocide:

  Arguably, this had been the goal of the Party in the region since at least the late 1990s, but especially since the early 2000s, and it had poured billions of dollars into the region’s development for this purpose. In the face of this development, which was accompanied by assimilationist policies, Han in-migration, and an ever-increasing securitization, many Uyghurs responded with sporadic resistance, sometimes violently. As this resistance became increasingly violent in 2013–2015, the state had decided it needed to take drastic measures to completely neutralize the population so that it could go about its work of developing the region unfettered as an integral part of China.