Chinese Crackdown on Regional Minorities
This is why you have never heard of the Uighur Turks.
China is a place that is likely where your phone, computer, clothes, etc were made. The Chinese government wants that to be the window you look at them through. When talking about Communist China, it is often difficult to cover any topic beyond the major cities such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Beijing. This projects a message of a united people and industry that is a growing power in the world. However, the country is heavily guarded by its government meaning that everything is substituted in the shape of Weibo and other Chinese social media sites that are essentially censored. Hence, when a group like the Uighur Turks pushes for the civil rights and liberties such as the freedom to exercise their religion, it is crushed by the Chinese government.
Of course, this is mere conjecture to the Peoples Republic due to the nearly complete media blackout that exists in China's most western province of Xinjiang where 45 percent of the population is Uighur. The persecution of this minority is evident through many satellite images for desert concentration camps such as Dabancheng where this minority "disappears" to. When a journalist from the British Broadcasting Channel called random numbers of locals in the area, many identified this place as a "re-education camp".
Recent reports of the death of a Uighur Turk, Abdurehim Heyit, jailed for a song he wrote drew international attention with the Turkish government condemning it and claiming that "more than one million Uighur Turks" have been jailed in Xinjiang, China. It is sad to see a man gave his life for a song he wrote that the Chinese government did not like. These are the kind of brutalities that happen outside of that window that the Chinese government wants you to look through. While the landscape is undoubtedly pretty and the cities are bustling with life, people, whom expressed their beliefs, are dying in "re-education" camps. It appears the horrors of the "Cultural Revolution" are alive and well..
Barcenia Morgan
