The genocidal government of China, which spent much of the past decade forcibly programming the Uyghur Muslims of Xinjiang province to abandon their religion and worship communism instead, on Wednesday gave Sweden a lecture on respecting the religious beliefs of Muslims after a Swedish politician burned a copy of the Quran.
China turned the homeland of the Uyghurs into a high-tech surveillance state, herded millions of them into brutal concentration camps so huge they can be seen from orbit, and used physical and psychological torture to erase their purportedly dangerous religious beliefs.
Among other tactics, captive Uyghurs are forced to eat pork and drink alcoholic beverages, which are forbidden by their religion. Uyghurs are made to watch while Chinese officials systematically violate Islamic customs in their lands, such as the dawn-to-dusk fasting of the Ramadan holiday currently in progress, a practice the Chinese state classified as a “sign of extremism.”
Survivors of the camps have repeatedly testified that “deprogramming” Uyghurs from their religion and brainwashing them to become obedient communists is a major objective of the camp administrators. Chinese government documents leaked in 2019 confirmed these efforts to eradicate the Uyghur culture and religion.
China also implements far more restrictive immigration policies than most Western states, has a history of treating immigrants poorly, and adamantly refuses to take in refugees.
Opportunistic Chinese officials nevertheless look for every opportunity to harangue other nations as intolerant or Islamophobic, in part to keep their Islamic client states from dwelling on what happens in Xinjiang.
This photo taken on June 2, 2019 shows a facility believed to be a re-education camp in Artux in China’s Xinjiang. (AFP)
Such an opportunity presented itself in Sweden last week when politician Rasmus Paludan — who, unlike the Xinjiang concentration camps, cannot normally be seen from orbit — live-streamed the burning of a Quran and said he planned to begin burning the books at his political rallies.
Police officers stand at the outer entrance of the Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center in Dabancheng in western China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region on April 23, 2021. Urumqi No. 3, China’s largest detention center, is twice the size of Vatican City and has room for at least 10,000 inmates. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum says it has compiled evidence of increasing government repression against Uyghur Muslims in China’s western Xinjiang region (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Paludan is the Danish-Swedish leader of a Danish group that actually calls itself the “Hard Line Party.” They are fervently opposed to immigration, particularly from Muslim countries.
Paludan torched a Quran in a Facebook live-stream last Thursday and announced he would take a tour of Sweden, burning a copy of the Muslim religious text in every town he visited. He proceeded to do so on Friday and Saturday, bringing counter-demonstrations that quickly turned violent, which is exactly what he wanted.
After his third stop in Sweden, Paludan canceled the rest of his tour, complaining that Swedish police were “completely incapable of protecting themselves and me.”
“We have seen violent riots before. But this is something else. It is serious violence against life and property, especially against police officers. It is very worrying and we will take strong countermeasures. This should not continue,” said Swedish National Police Chief Anders Thornberg, after making dozens of arrests and counting at least 40 police and civilian injuries.
Several Muslim governments condemned Paludan for his Quran-burning, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Qatar, and Turkey.
“We condemn, in the strongest way possible, attacks and provocations against the Muslims, to Islam, to the Quran and to places of worship in different parts of the world during the holy month of Ramadan. The recent attacks against the holy book of Islam in Sweden show that no lessons have been taken from the past,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday.
“In Sweden people are allowed to express their opinions, whether in good or bad taste; it’s part of our democracy. No matter what you think, you should never resort to violence. We don’t and will never accept it,” Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson insisted.
Having spent the weekend mutually confirming their worst suspicions of each other, the last thing anyone in the Swedish fiasco needed was genocidal China’s opinion, but they got it anyway from Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin on Wednesday.
“China always opposes extreme behavior of attacking different religious beliefs and instigating conflicts between civilizations,” Wang said with remarkable chutzpah.
“Freedom of speech should not be used as an excuse to incite racial or cultural discrimination and create division in society. No civilization is superior to others. They are different only in feature and geographical distribution. We advocate replacing clash of civilizations with exchange of civilizations. We oppose discriminatory rhetoric against certain religions and civilization,” he said.
“It is hoped that Sweden will draw a lesson from the matter and earnestly respect the religious beliefs of Muslims and other minority groups, protect their lawful rights and interests, and square their words of respecting and protecting freedom of religious belief with actions,” he concluded, exhausting China’s strategic national reserve of hypocrisy.