Chinese communist dictator Xi Jinping’s visit to the capital of occupied East Turkistan, the Uyghur heartland, last week may be a “precursor to a more brutal campaign” against its native population, Salih Hudayar, the prime minister of the East Turkistan Government in Exile, told Breitbart News.
Hudayar also serves as the founder and president of the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement, an organization dedicated to restoring sovereignty to the region. The East Turkistan Republic was a sovereign state colonized by Mao Zedong’s communist China after the mass assassination of its leadership in 1949.
Salih Hudayar leads a rally outside the White House to urge the United States to end trade deals with China and take action to stop the oppression of the Uyghur and other Turkic peoples August 14, 2020. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Today, the Communist Party administers East Turkistan under the Mandarin language name “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” (XUAR). Xi initiated a campaign of genocide shortly after taking over the country in 2014, but the violence escalated to the construction and populating of concentration camps throughout the region in 2017. Today, extensive research by human rights experts and journalists, relying on leaked documents and eyewitness accounts, indicates that Xi has imprisoned as many as 3 million people in concentration camps, implemented a mass sterilization campaign against Uyghur and other non-Han women, and enslaved vast swathes of the region’s male population. China openly boasts about some of these programs, for example by branding the mass sterilization a victory for feminism.
Experts at a special tribunal in 2021 concluded that Han-dominated communist China was, beyond a reasonable doubt, guilty of genocide against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other indigenous people of East Turkistan.
Last week Xi made his first visit in eight years to East Turkistan, spending most of the week enjoying staged dance and art performances, speaking to local communist leaders, and promoting his philosophy of “ethnic unity” between Han Chinese and East Turkistan’s population. Hudayar told Breitbart News that Xi’s last visit coincided with the tremendous increase in violence that preceded the debut of the concentration camps.
“Xi Jinping visited East Turkistan after 8 years. The last time he visited East Turkistan, in May 2014, the Chinese government launched its ongoing campaign of genocide officially known as the ‘People’s War,'” Hudayar explained.
“Historically all trips to East Turkistan by Chinese Presidents/CCP General Secretaries are a precursor to a more brutal campaign to colonize and assimilate East Turkistan and its people while solidifying Chinese occupation and rule,” he continued. “We expect that things will get a lot worse, as Xi stated that ‘security measures’ in East Turkistan should become regular.”
“In other words, the Chinese government is stating that the genocide of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples will continue until China has obtained its full objective,” Hudayar explained.
The phrase “people’s war” has profound significance to communist China, typically indicating an extermination campaign against populations the communists deem unacceptable. Mao Zedong first launched a “people’s war” against the middle and upper classes as part of his initial bid to take over the country; that “war” would eventually evolve into the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, mass starvation policies and communist purges that led to the deaths of at least 40 million people.
China: In the summer of 1966 Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution by relying on the youth. (History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Xi first used the term “people’s war” in 2014 as a rebrand of the alleged “war on terror” occurring in the nation’s west. The Communist Party has insisted for decades that, since the population of East Turkistan is majority Muslim, it is vulnerable to radical jihadist terrorism and Beijing needs to employ a heavy hand to subdue it. China’s concerns about jihadist violence appear to end at its borders, however, as it maintains friendly ties with radical Islamist leaders in Taliban-run Afghanistan and Islamist countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, right, poses for photos with Amir Khan Muttaqi, acting foreign minister of the Afghan Taliban’s caretaker government, in Kabul, Afghanistan on March 24, 2022. (Saifurahman Safi/Xinhua via AP)
“Xi Jinping’s recent visit was to oversee the results of the Chinese government’s campaign as well as send a signal to the international community that its condemnations, sanctions, and economic boycotts are not going to deter China from continuing its atrocities against Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples,” Hudayar explained. “It’s important to note that Xi Jinping again emphasized the need to create a ‘united’ Chinese nation and urged local cadres to ‘tightly hold on to the goal of maintain[ing] social stability and political stability.'”
‘We have heard reports that Xi Jinping also promised further funding to build more camps across East Turkistan,” Hudayar added.
Uyghur Turks who say they haven’t heard any news from families and relatives in Eastern Turkistan attend a protest near the Chinese embassy, in Ankara, Turkey, Tuesday, May 24, 2022. (Burhan Ozbilici/AP)
China’s state media arms hailed Xi’s visit as a victory for “ethnic unity” in East Turkistan, which the communist regime typically uses to mean the replacement of indigenous populations in the region with the Han majority in the rest of China.
“President [sic] Xi Jinping’s remarks on the importance of ethnic unity and fostering a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation during his visit to the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region have made people in the region feel more confident,” the state-run China Daily claimed, “that by standing together and cherishing ethnic unity, Xinjiang will become more prosperous and they will have a better life.”
Xi reportedly described “ethnic unity” as the “lifeline for the entire Chinese people.”
“China is a unified multiethnic country, with the Chinese people of all ethnic groups united in diversity being a salient feature. Ethnic theories and policies in the country are sound and effective, Xi said during the visit to the university,” according to China Daily. “What’s more, China, a country with ethnic unity, is invincible and will have a bright future, he added.”
The state newspaper emphasized, however, that any ethnic identity had to be subordinate to “a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation” under the Communist Party.
The Xi regime has used “ethnic unity” as shorthand for the genocide occurring both in the concentration camps and within the homes of civilians in East Turkistan. Among the most notorious programs the Communist Party has implemented in the region is something called “Becoming Family,” in which the government forces local civilians to take in Han “relatives” to live in their homes, forcing them to speak Mandarin, abandon their religion, and adopt Han Chinese culture. Often, the families targeted for these programs have lost all the men in their family to the concentration camps and the government forces the matriarch in the home to sleep in the same bed with the Han “relative.” Survivor testimony indicates that sexual assault is rampant in the program, in addition to the rupture it causes between the adults in the family and the children, who are weaponized as spies against their parents.
An alleged local in Urumqi, the capital of East Turkistan, appeared in China Daily‘s coverage praising Xi’s visit last week.
“I believe that with people from different ethnic groups in Xinjiang standing together and cherishing ethnic unity, the region will become more prosperous and we will have a better life,” the individual, identified as Ablet Tursun, allegedly said.