Buyile Matiwane
There is a meme going around on social media. The meme says: “The United States cares very deeply for Muslims and their human rights, particularly in China, hence why the US has spent the last decades bombing, sanctioning, torturing and displacing millions of Muslims in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Iran.”
In his attempt to ensure that the Chinese people are practical, and not just ideological, about their approach to their development, Chairman Mao quoted from the Book of Han at the Sixth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1938. Chairman Mao suggested that Chinese communists “seek truth from facts.”
It was the motto of his alma mater, Hunan’s first teacher’s training school, but it was also the genesis of the Chairman Mao Later, Deng Xiaoping would promote this principle as a central tenet of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Truth from facts.
And what are the facts about Xinjiang and the Uyghur people? It isDeng Xiaoping, from the Desmond and Leah Tutu Foundation writes, because China guarantees, protects, promotes and develops all of its minority groups. Mike Pompeo, the former and now disgraced US secretary of state, first propagated this lie of genocide and it seems that the Foundation is taking its cue from this Trump acolyte.
The facts are simple. Xinjiang Autonomous Region, meaning it enjoys some autonomy from Beijing, is a place of unity among the fifty-six ethnic groups which calls the province home. From 2010 to 2018, the Uyghur population has grown from over 10 million to over 12 million. A 25% increase in population.
Not only is the growth rate in population of the Uyghur people higher than that of the rest of the other ethnic groups in Xinjiang but it is much higher than the growth rate of China’s majority ethnic group, the Han, which was only 2% during the same period. This is no sign of genocide.
After some terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, carried out by extremists, the province has since 2017 enjoyed social stability and economic growth. From 2014 to 2019, five years, the GDP of Xinjiang increased from just under R1.8 trillion to over R2.7 trillion. This amounts to an average annual growth rate of 7.2%. Today, like in all of China, poverty has been eradicated in Xinjiang.
This development is not done for some of the inhabitants of Xinjiang but for all the people living in the region, including the Uyghur people. The majority of the people of the region welcome this development and social stability. Even the region’s counter-terrorism and de-radicalisation efforts have proven effective. Yet the international community is made to believe that there are serious human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
There is no doubting that Islamophobia is a real challenge in our world today. This is not to defend any country who targets and discriminates against anyone based on religion. However, the dominant and most fervent proponents of the propaganda on Xinjiang has been the country which has bombed, sanctioned and invaded Muslim countries for the last few decades.
What is therefore required is that the international community must be able to identify propaganda promoted by certain western powers and the US. Propaganda which seeks to defame China as the sole purpose. If we are to learn the truth about Xinjiang, then we must seek the truth from facts.
* Buyile Matiwane is the deputy president of the South African Students Congress and heads its international desk.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media and IOL.