MIDDLE EAST – CHINA Uighurs criticize the Islamic delegation that praises Chinese policies in Xinjiang

A group of 30 experts from various Muslim-majority countries visited China’s extreme western periphery area. He praised Beijing’s fight against terrorism and made no mention of abuses. The president of the World Uyghur Congress returns to denounce the persecutions and the “criminalization” of daily acts such as wearing the veil or reading the Koran.

Dubai () – Praise and recognition for the effective and rigorous fight against “terrorism” but no reference to the repeated complaints of human rights violations against the Muslim minority. Academics, scholars and prominent figures from the Uyghur community are attacking what they call “propaganda” carried out by the delegation of Islamic leaders from various countries that has visited Xinjiang in recent days. The group was made up of some thirty religious experts from 14 Muslim-majority countries, including Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), who praised Chinese goals and policies while keeping silent on unresolved issues regarding with rights and persecutions. A propaganda, they warn, that will be useful to Beijing and will serve to more forcefully deny the information about thousands of Muslim Uyghurs imprisoned or detained in re-education and work centers.

The delegation is part of the World Council of Muslim Communities (WMCC), which originally promoted the visit. This was concentrated in various points on the extreme western periphery of the Chinese giant, where the Uyghurs and other Turkic-speaking Islamic minorities live. The group was headed by the Emirati scholar Ali Rashid al-Nuaimi, whose image has been repeatedly reproduced by the official media in Beijing. One of the objectives of the WMCC is precisely to support the faithful of Islam in countries where Muslims are not the majority, protecting them “intellectually and spiritually, from ethnic cleansing or racial discrimination.”

In a note, Nuaimi, one of the main promoters in the Emirates of the normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab world, reiterated that the cases of Chinese attacks against the Uyghurs are part of the fight against terrorism in Xinjiang. Interviewed by Middle East Eye (MEE) Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, attacked the representative of the United Arab Emirates and spoke of the “pretext” of terrorism to justify the persecution. In the region, he accuses him, they end up criminalizing everyday behaviors such as “wearing the veil or owning a copy of the Koran.” “It is scandalous – he adds – that the WMCC has participated in this propaganda visit and is now echoing the narrative of the Chinese government”.

Abduweli Ayup, an activist who fights for the revaluation of the Uyghur language native to Kashgar, describes the trip as “a cover-up” of China’s crimes against the Muslim minority. Delegates from Saudi Arabia, the site of Islam’s holy sites, are the main target of criticism, but “disappointment” is also expressed at the presence of Bosnian scholars in the group. “When the genocide occurred in Bosnia -says Ayup- I remember that the Kashgar Uyghurs mobilized to raise funds and aid”. Now, he concludes, those same Muslim men and women “languish in Chinese concentration camps because they dared to practice their faith.”

The violations committed by Beijing against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang are a pending issue even at the UN Human Rights Council, which in recent months denied an internal report denouncing the abuses and refused to open a debate. Most of the countries that rejected the motion are Muslim, but they have long suffered from the lobbying campaign promoted by the dragon. One of the abuses attributed to Beijing is having locked up almost two million citizens -mainly Uyghurs- in real concentration camps, forcing them to do forced labor. The Chinese deny the accusations stating that Xinjiang there are professional training centers and projects for the reduction of poverty and the fight against terrorism and separatism.