"Who is telling the truth?"
"Who is telling the truth?"
At the conclusion of the G7 meeting in Cornwall, UK early this month, the participants issued a communiqué that said: "We recognize the particular responsibility of the largest countries and economies in upholding the rules-based international system and international law…In the context of our respective responsibilities in the multilateral system, we will cooperate where it is in our mutual interest on shared global challenges…we will promote our values, including by calling on China to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, especially in relation to Xinjiang" (underscoring ours).
This part of the communiqué G7 drew an immediate reaction from Dr. Dan Steinbock, a senior Fulbright scholar and Visiting Fellow in the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS).
In an article in the European Financial Review entitled "Playing with Gene Politics: Zenz's Xinjiang Case," Steinbock slammed the Trump and Biden administrations for raising the charge of genocide against China that has since been joined by some European leaders.
He cited the statement of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in July 2020 blaming the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for “using forced sterilization, forced abortion, and coercive family planning against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang.” Pompeo, Steinbock said, based the charge on just one source, German researcher Adrian Zenz, who had never been to Xinjiang.
Zenz had claimed the fall of Uyghur birth rates and birth control measures in Xinjiang province offered proof of genocide. But in the UN Genocide Convention (1948), genocide is defined as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such.” In fact, Xinjiang has recorded a positive overall population growth rate, with the Uyghurs growing faster than the non-Uyghur population.
In April, economist Jeffrey Sachs and William Schabas, a leading international legal scholar of genocide, warned that “the Xinjiang genocide allegations are unjustified.” They noted that the US State Department’s 2021 Human Rights Practices report made similar genocide accusations, but also without evidence. They concluded that “unless the State Department can substantiate the genocide accusation, it should withdraw the charge. It should also support a UN-led investigation.”
It appears that Adrian Zenz graduated from the hyper-Christian Columbia International University, headquartered in South Carolina, where teachers can lecture only if they affirm the Second Coming of Jesus. As the Wall Street Journal once put it, Zenz feels “led by God” in his struggle against the Chinese communists. As a born-again Christian, Zenz associates biblical truth as the truth.
In 2014, the German crusader became a secular overnight “Tibet expert” who wrote two years about Tibet “under the threat” of CCP assimilation. In 2016, he suddenly became a “Xinjiang expert” after writing an essay for the prestigious American journal Foreign Affairs.
Zenz’s essay featured mainly his old materials, but also those of Uyghur separatists, including the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) backed by the U.S. government; Radio Free Asia owned by the U.S. government; and the Newlines “Uyghur Scholars Working Group”, whose core member is Zenz himself.
The WUC regards Xinjiang as “East Turkestan” and its Uyghur Muslims as members of a mythic pan-Turkic nation stretching from Central Asia to Turkey. Dedicated to separatist objectives, it seeks to destabilize Xinjiang and ultimately regime change. Portrayed as a bottom-up movement, the WUC is actually a top-down umbrella for its Washington-based affiliates, such as the Uyghur American Association (UAA), Uygur Human Rights Project, and Campaign for Uyghurs, that rely on U.S. funding.
In its review of the Xinjiang report, the Grayzone Project demonstrated that “Zenz’s assertion of genocide is concocted through fraudulent statistical manipulation, cherry-picking of source material, and propagandistic misrepresentations.”
Chinese activities in Xinjiang, according to Beijing, are aimed at stopping the terrorism of militant Islamic groups. In fact, between 1990 and 2001, Uyghur extremists committed over 200 acts of terrorism with over 160 deaths. In July 2020, the United Nations noted the presence of thousands of Uyghur fighters in Afghanistan and Syria, where the White House has occasionally supported “moderate Jihadists.” And until late 2020, the US still classified the Uyghur East Turkestan Islamic Movement as a terrorist group, battled Uyghur fighters in Afghanistan, and held many as prisoners.
The Chinese government, however, insists that since 2000, Xinjiang has been included in its national development strategy. Between 2014 and 2019, Xinjiang’s economy increased annually by 7.2 percent and nearly 3 million residents were lifted out of poverty. Urbanization rate climbed from 37 percent to 50 percent, which is at par with that of Thailand, while GDP per capita (PPP) rose to the level of Indonesia. Beijing apparently pushes for economic development in Xinjiang to foster economic growth, in part to prevent radicalization through cross-border infiltration from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
With allegations hurled by one side against another, who do you think is telling the truth?
(Email: ernhil@yahoo.com)