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Comment by Maeve Korengold
Held from the fourth to the twentieth of February, this year’s Winter Olympics have become a symbol of the world slowly returning to normal amidst the coronavirus pandemic. They’ve also begun to be regarded as the topic of a debate surrounding the ethics of the location of the games: Beijing, China.
For the last five years, national attention has been on China’s government-enforced internment and forced assimilation of the Uyghur people, an ethnoreligious group who live in the northwest part of the country. After the 2016 election of Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, the Uyghur population was subjected to heightened police presence and surveillance by the government in their communities, as well as their own homes. In 2017, the People’s Republic of China enacted laws with the purpose of “sinicizing” the country, or preventing the influence of Islam, the Arabic language, and Uyghur culture on Han–ethnic Chinese–society. Following the federal government, officials governing the Xinjiang region where Uyghurs reside initiated a ban on “expressions of extremification,” placing constraints on residents’ dress, grooming, diet, and other parts of life where Uyghur tradition is observed. Thousands of mosques have been closed, ruined, or had their identifiable Arabic writing removed. Moreover, the Xinjiang government began a crusade to reduce the birth rates of Uyghurs by forcibly sterilizing women, as well as forcing Uyghur families to separate. In a 2021 report commissioned by the Global Legal Action Network, the World Uyghur Congress, and the Uyghur Human Rights Project, the severe abuse of Uyghur people in Chinese internment camps has been detailed by senior barristers at Essex Court Chambers in London. The document, which is over one hundred pages long, is regarded as the first formal legal examination in the UK of China's actions in Xinjiang. It recorded what the barristers considered the “enslavement, torture, rape, enforced sterilization and persecution" of China’s Uyghur population. In addition to this, the report confirms the evidence of Uyghur children being separated from their parents and stripped of language, clothing, and other pillars of Uyghur Muslim tradition.
According to some, this treatment of the Uyghur population is justified by the motive to counteract terrorism. According to Reuters, the People’s Republic of China reported that authorities arrested thirteen thousand terrorists from 2014 to 2019 in a brief defending the measures they took to “de-radicalize” the Uyghur population. Since 2014, Xinjiang has “destroyed 1,588 violent and terrorist gangs, arrested 12,995 terrorists, seized 2,052 explosive devices, punished 30,645 people for 4,858 illegal religious activities, and confiscated 345,229 copies of illegal religious materials,” they added.
In a response to the 2019 paper, World Uyghur Congress spokesman Dilxat Raxit asserted that “counter-terrorism is a political excuse to suppress the Uyghurs. The real aim of the so-called de-radicalization is to eliminate faith and thoroughly carry out Sinification.” The letter the Congress wrote in response also swore that religious extremism in the name of Islam runs counter to foundational Islamic doctrines, and any extremist claiming to be a Muslim should not be affiliated with those who actually practice the faith.
Misinformation about the extent of the Uyghur death toll has also watered down the public perception of the reality of the crisis that the Uyghur population is facing. In 2020, an Instagram post asserting that more Uyghurs had been murdered by the Xinjiang government surfaced, and users quickly became skeptical of the Uyghur crisis as well as enraged at what seemed like the largest genocide in world history. The claim that Uyghur deaths have outnumbered the lives taken in the Holocaust only serves as inflammatory and can be quickly disproved. According to general consensus, six million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany. With Uyghur Muslims numbering between ten and eleven million in the Xinjiang region of China, about sixty percent of Uyghurs would have to disappear for the claim to be true. Although the information in China is controlled by the central government, cell phones and messaging applications are still available, making it completely unrealistic that the Uyghur population’s sixty percent decrease would go completely unnoticed by the neighboring regions. In addition to this, no national news outlet or watchdog with the ability to disseminate information across the world has reported a death toll as large as this. It’s entirely possible to condemn the genocide of one ethnic group without comparing it to another, and misinformation like this leads to the delegitimization of the struggle of the Uyghur people; preventing any intervention from occurring.
Although it is inappropriate to compare the severity of the plight of Uyghurs to that of Jews, the rhetoric that Xinjiang uses domestically and nationally to defend their treatment of Uyghurs is eerily similar to the language present in Nazi Germany. China’s goal of Sinification is reminiscent of Nazi-era calls for the Aryanization of Germany. Jews were deemed a threat to German national security, as are Uyghurs to Chinese safety. And, both countries attempt to use the patriotism and spirit intrinsic to the Olympic games to cover up their atrocities: the 1936 Berlin Olympics served as an opportunity for mistreatment of Jews to go unaddressed and for Nazi ideology to subtly spread, which would allow for the continuity of the largest scale genocide in world history. Jews were isolated in ghettos, as Uyghurs are in internment camps; sequestered from outside interaction with the rest of the country. This repeat in verbiage and practice is dangerous and necessitates national action.
To date, few tangible measures have been taken for the benefit of the Uyghur population, although there have been legislative progressions. On June 17, 2020, former President Trump signed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020, which was designed to impose sanctions on Chinese officials determined to be liable for human rights abuses against Uyghurs. To date, the United States has sanctioned ten current or formal government administrators on this basis. On the last day of his presidency, the Trump administration publicly acknowledged what was happening as genocide. On October 21, 2021, at the UN Third Committee, forty-three countries produced a statement that expressed their concern for the ongoing violations of Uyghur’s human rights.
The crisis has been pushed to the side since then, but public conscience has been renewed as the Beijing Olympics entered the news cycle. Towards the end of December, President Biden’s administration declared that they would not send an official delegation to the 2022 Beijing Olympics in response to “the PRC’s ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses,” but American athletes would still compete. Lawmakers of eleven different parliaments put out resolutions addressing the location of the 2022 Olympics, writing that holding the Games in the same country in which Uyghurs are being displaced, forcibly assimilated, and murdered “discredits the ethos of the Olympic movement and undermines its purpose.” The European Union, Canada, Czechia, Sweden, and Denmark have all put forth motions that suggest government officials not attend the Games, and citizens boycott them.
In an endeavor to pacify those standing against the Uyghur genocide, China chose Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a Uyghur skier, as one of the final torchbearers at the Olympic Opening Ceremony. This decision has been condemned by many as an effort to distract the public from the actuality of China’s human rights violations, including U.S. United Nations Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield. “We’ve made clear that crimes against humanity are being committed in China,” she said in a Sunday appearance on CNN’s State of the Union. “It is important that the audience who participated and witnessed this understand that this does not take away from what we know is happening on the ground there,” she added.
Many human rights groups, especially Jewish-centered organizations, have dug into the Uyghur cause: holding protests across countries, boycotting brands sponsoring the 2022 Olympics, and spreading public awareness of the Uyghur’s plight. Mischa Ushakov and Bini Guttmann, who co-founded Never Again Right Now, a German Jewish group devoted to raising awareness about the situation, believe that their positions as Jewish organizers put them in a good place to advocate for the Uyghur community. Ushakov told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “When Bini and I started this campaign we hoped that as Jews talking about genocide – and some of us are descendants of Holocaust survivors – we would get more attention.” The Jewish community understands how public indifference to human rights abuses affects a population and is often on the front lines of activism pertaining to the mistreatment of ethnic groups because of this. Moreover, people familiar with the gravity of the Holocaust look to the surviving Jewish community as responsible for raising awareness of current genocides based on their collective background. While this perception is not always constructive and can veer into martyrdom, the principles of defeating indifference and doing all that one can for those suffering are Jewish values that are strengthened by the joint experience of having their persecution ignored, and surviving.
Many Uyghur groups are also protesting on behalf of their community members outside of the Olympic gates, as well as organizing protests for Olympic athletes. Kabir Qurban, an Uyghur-Canadian activist, is encouraging players to make a crescent-shaped hand sign to demonstrate hope as they stand on the Olympic podium. This year’s athletes are in a difficult place, as the Games are a formative occasion in which many make their debut, break world records, and advance their careers–and any criticism of China could affect their participation. Many human rights organizations who have condemned the location of the Olympics and China’s treatment of Uyghurs have warned athletes against partaking in protests or other demonstrations while in Beijing, due to the ambiguous rules set by the Olympic Committee as well as the Chinese government pertaining to speech and protest. Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter expresses that "no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.” Athletes were also cautioned not to bring personal devices to the Games due to data privacy and government surveillance concerns.
As this year’s Olympic Games progress and crowds gather to celebrate the volume of athletic talent present on China’s stage, the Uyghur community continues to suffer behind the curtain. Less than a hundred years ago, the world promised that never again would a group of people be systemically murdered while they watched. It’s time to keep that promise.