China: Uyghurs Opposing Their Own Genocide Are Part of ‘Anti-Asian Hate Wave’

Members of the Muslim Uighur minority hold placards as they demonstrate to ask for news of
YASIN AKGUL/AFP via Getty Images
John Hayward

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took its eagerness to exploit #StopAsianHate rallies in the United States to the next level Monday by accusing Uyghur activists in U.S. of “hating Asians” because they objected to their own genocide at a rally over the weekend.

China’s state-run Global Times pounced (to borrow a phrase popular with the American media in other contexts) on some Uyghur activists who drove past a “Stop Asian Hate” rally in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, shouting epithets such as “Fuck China!” 

The pro-Uyghur vehicles were festooned with signs calling on the Chinese government to cease its ruthless persecution of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang province, which the world community is increasingly recognizing as outright genocide. The United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the European Union imposed sanctions against Chinese officials this week for abusing the human rights of the Uyghurs.

The CCP seized the opportunity to denounce the Uyghurs, and everyone else who criticizes the brutal regime in Beijing, as anti-Asian racists — once again using the ideology and language of the American left to argue that the Western world lacks the moral standing to criticize China’s atrocities:

As a microcosm of Asian Americans’ predicament in the US, a #StopAsianHate rally in DC on Sunday clashed with protesters who support Xinjiang separatists. The latter group shouted slogans such as “wipe out China,” the very anti-China voice avidly promoted by extreme forces hostile to China in the US, which unfortunately led to anti-Asian hate wave in the US.

The discrimination against Asian Americans has been a long-existing issue, but the surge was around former US president Donald Trump’s rhetoric of the “Chinese virus,” or the “kung flu” since the COVID-19 pandemic. The anti-Chinese sentiment he ignited and the popular fear and rage against East Asian-appearing people he channeled soon swept across the US. 

Numerous US institutions and public figures played an accomplice role. Out of the zero-sum mentality and ideological prejudice against China, US politicians and some anti-China forces made up and spread lies and rumors about China and fanned the anti-China sentiment. They indulged the discrimination against Chinese students and Chinese citizens in the US. They also monitor, assault and even arrest the Chinese at the excuse of national security. The NGOs, for instance the National Endowment for Democracy, targeted China by assisting Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong secessionist forces, spreading the US-style democracy and circulating China xenophobia sentiment. The trend continues to the current US administration. 

“The so-called democracy and freedom are tools US politicians and institutions use to gain a sense of superiority and suppress other countries,” the Global Times sneered, invoking the Black Lives Matter protests as further evidence of American evil.

The Global Times editorial on Monday praised Black Lives Matter for attempting to defund the police in order to “end racism against them,” disregarding China’s status as the biggest and ugliest police state on the planet, with a “judicial system” that functions like a kidnapping ring, a million-censor army patrolling the Internet, concentration camps that can be seen from orbit, and a vague charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” that can be used to throw almost anyone in jail at any time.

China’s complaint that the Uyghur people protesting the genocide against them are “anti-Asian” disregards the fact that East Turkestan — their native region that China refers to as Xinjiang — is squarely in central Asia. China notably did not describe its own treatment of the Asian Uyghurs as anti-Asian.

Among the atrocities Uyghurs are currently enduring, Beijing has forced Uyghur women to live with Han Chinese men after their husbands were dragged off to concentration camps. Some in those concentration camps have been shipped across China by labor programs to keep them from marrying each other and raising children in their religious and cultural traditions. Many have been simply sterilized to keep their population down.

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