TWoU.Introduction

Introduction

• A network of surveillance, indoctrination and internment is serving to destroy Uyghur identity by:
  • breaking linkages of social capital
  • discouraging Uyghur language use
  • dismantling any aspects of Uyghur cultural practices the state deems threatening.

Who are the Uyghurs?

• Uyghur definition
  • Uyghurs are mostly Muslim people speaking a Turkic language.
    • Language is intelligible to Uzbeks, who are also more settled.
  • They inhabit the northwest region of china known as XUAR or Eastern Turkestan.
    • Here, around 11 million Uyghurs live.
    • An additional 0.5 million live around the world, particularly many in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey.
  • Culturally, they share more with Central Asia than Han.
  • They are more settled compared ot the nomadic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Turkmen.

What is terrorism?

Transclude of What-is-Terrorism

The Dehumanization of Being Branded a Terrorist

• The GWOT quickly dehumanized ‘terrorists’.
  • [e_c] Because of the new type of warfare against an amorphous and irrational threat instead of state enemy.
    • [r_e] Thus the US assumed the rules of state-to-state conflict do not apply.

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• Being labeled a terrorist is devastating and dehumanizing.
  • [ s ] Because the enemies of the GWOT are characterized as an irrational existential threat.
    • It immediately brands a population as a biological threat to the entirety of the global system, deserving complete obliteration to ensure the health of society.
      • This is described in Foucault’s concept of biopolitics.
    • By framing them as a threat as opposed to a foe, it strips them of any political aims or history of oppression. Rather, like a cancer, they are imagined as merely irrational purveyors of death and destruction.
      • This was most apparent in the extra-judicial internment of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. Quarantined indefinitely without the status of either ‘prisoner of war’ or ‘criminal,’ outside the protection of the law.
  • [ s ] Because the enemies of the GWOT are culturally profiled.
    • [e_m] The threat they pose is seen as coming from an “extremist” strain of Islam.

Structure of the Book

• Ch 1. Uyghur relations with china from 1759-2001
• Ch 2. GWOT and its impact on the Uyghurs’ relationship to China
• Ch 3. Why the terrorist threat up to 2013 was almost non-existent.
• Ch 4-6: Developments in Xinjiang since 2001
  • Ch 4. Very few Uyghur-led “terrorist attacks” took place in Xinjiang from 2001-2011.
  • Ch 5. Covering 2013-2016, explains how China’s suppression of dissent led to a self-fulfilling prophecy of Uyghur militancy.
  • Ch 6. How the events from 2013-2016 laid the foundations for the cultural genocide campaign that began in 2017.