I’m going to say a few things that’s pure opinion and based on anecdotal evidence, so just keep that in mind from this point forward. There is oppression everywhere in this world when you live under a government, this part is true. Sometimes they are superficial day to day restrictions, and sometimes are more serious things, like how America used to arbitrarily put suspicious people on no-fly lists or how they’d send undercover FBI agents into mosques. While I don’t believe the levels of oppression in Xinjiang match what Western media would like people to believe, I believe there is oppression, and probably more so than in the US. Not however more than the oppression experienced by terrorists addressed by America in lands that don’t even belong to them. For those people, it involves not only arbitrary detention and torture, but drone attacks that kill innocent people, as we learned in more detail from Daniel Hale who is now being punished for exposing these secrets. For those suspects and innocent bystanders, it involves their children receiving American bullets through the head. Pardon my graphic descriptions, but I really do find American hypocrisy and lack of shame really truly disgraceful.

Back onto Xinjiang, I can’t imagine that anyone would want to live under the threat of terrorism, but I also believe some people must be unhappy with the increased police presence and scrutiny on peoples lives and actions. I highly doubt that the people living in Xinjiang have been sufficiently briefed about what China is dealing with. I also highly doubt that they understand that China will now have to be under high alert after America delisted ETIM as a terrorist organization, and now that there’s a increased likelihood America will want to mobilize terrorists against the region, especially when you judge America by how they typically operate.

Based on my experience speaking in private with a Tibetan friend for example, he never knew that the Dalai Lama’s brother wrote in his book that the biggest regret of his life was cooperating with the CIA and that he realizes he was just being used, writing “There is no doubt that today, if it were not for the great strength and power of the Chinese Government, the entire continent would have already become the blood-soaked purgatory as has happened to the Middle Eastern countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria as well as Africa”. This gave my friend a bit of perspective on the situation in Tibet and gave him an ability to empathise with the government a bit more than he did before. There needs to be sufficient opportunity for people to learn about this context.

But onto the current issues, I personally find it hard to believe that innocent people in Xinjiang weren’t unfairly targeted by this anti-terrorism campaign. Of course, instead of being killed in an American military operation, they’re being sent to vocational training centres.  It doesn’t make it right, but that’s some valuable perspective nonetheless. Based on my own observation on how the government works here, it’s a bit different from the West, where a directive comes down from the top and seems to become more and more diluted by time it reaches the ground and lands in the hand of some lazy civil servant. In China, it seems like objectives get amplified the further it travels down, by people who really want to contribute towards their country and society. As one of my friends in China says, the central government says “cut the hair”, then the local government walks off and says, ok, “cut the head”… I of course mean this metaphorically, which is worth mentioning to foreign readers who have a unusually skewed and dark image of China in their minds. My purpose of mentioning this is that I think Beijing is well intentioned, but I suspect they aren’t always aware when local governments are perhaps taking things a bit too far.

After the terrorist attacks in America, there was a massive rise in xenophobia against not only Muslims, but even people who just had brown skin. They were racially profiled but also subjected to mob violence. A Sikh man was stabbed to death in a gas station when he was mistaken as a Muslim, mosques were burned down and it was generally a rough time for Muslims in America. China had a real risk of this getting out of hand as well, but it looks like unlike in America, where they let fake stories of Muslims cheering the 9/11 attacks run wild, after the terror attacks in China, China started using it’s censorship tools to protect the Muslim populations in China, including by removing overly Islamophobic content from the internet. However, it’s still not perfect, if someone from Beijing could convince an ethnic minority to speak with them honestly, I think you’ll find that they still face discrimination and difficulties when they travel, try to rent homes or hotel rooms and so on. I really hope that we’re not so distracted by needing to refute the extraordinarily exaugurated claims of the West, that we lose sight of real smaller issues that really should be addressed somehow.

I hope they are addressed and not just swept under the rug, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because this is a vulnerability that could be exploited by either the West or separatist forces. I worry that if the real issues and concerns some ethnic minorities face aren’t honestly addressed, China will risk turning people who are otherwise patriotic citizens, ready to serve their country and stand by its side into people vulnerable to outside influences and forces who are eager to exploit even the smallest grievances in order to use them as a tool of destruction against their own country.

This is a playbook they've used many times, including in my mother's country of Guyana. Declassified documents show that the US and the UK instigated brutal race riots in the 50s between the African descent and Indian descent populations for the purpose of overthrowing an elected socialist leaning government they didn't like. Understanding history, looking at America's current fears & goals, it's exceedingly obvious that the true people in power responsible for America's foreign policy, are guided by their own geopolitical interests, and have a far greater interest in exploiting the ethnic groups of China more than they do to actually truly help them in any meaningful way.

If the West was really coming from a place of true care and concern, there could have been so much potential benefit. There are real scholars in the West who truly care about racial issues and minority rights, but the good ones are usually focusing on their own issues at home. Imagine if China could collaborate with these well intentioned people, if only their leaders weren’t so hellbent on making it into a geopolitical issue with such obviously exaugurated false claims, maybe it could have been possible. If the West didn’t have such a superiority complex issue, there could even have been great mutual benefits.

I think of the Native/Inuit Member of Canadian Parliament from Nunavut, Mumilaaq Qaqqaq, who got up in front of parliament and desperately pleaded for the housing improvements and basic human rights that she’s been waiting for and have been promised for over 30 years. The housing, clean water, infrastructure and general improvements to remote communities like Mumilaaq’s is EXACTLY what China has excelled at and done on an epic scale. Imagine how many ethnic minorities and natives in China, Canada, America, Australia and all over the world could have their lives improved if the West was really engaging China in an honest collaborative way.

However, now you’ll need to excuse my pessimism, but the only thing worse than proving the West’s exaugurated propaganda against China’s ethnic minorities as false, is pushing the West to actually do something for their own minority populations, that, is perhaps far less tolerable to the average Western politician who wants to virtue signal others and not actually put any hard work in to improve the lives of their OWN people.

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