Muslim Governments Silent as China Cracks Down on Uighurs
Bloomberg, 30 August 2018
By Bloomberg – As calls grow in the U.S. and Europe to pressure China to halt alleged human-rights abuses against its Muslim minority, Beijing has so far escaped any serious criticism from governments across the Islamic world.
Almost three weeks after a United Nations official cited “credible reports” that the country was holding as many as 1 million Turkic-speaking Uighurs in “re-education” camps, governments in Muslim-majority countries have issued no notable statements on the issue. The silence became more pronounced this week after a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers urged sanctions against senior Chinese officials.
“We are hopeful that the State Department will seek addition opportunities to condemn these abuses while also undertaking robust diplomatic engagement with like-minded governments to further elevate this human rights crisis in international forums and multilateral institutions,” lawmakers led by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey wrote Wednesday in a letter to Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. They joined European Union officials who have previously expressed concern about the camps in Xinjiang.
By contrast, the leaders of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Pakistan haven’t released public statements on the clampdown. Neither has Saudi Arabia. Even Turkey, which has in the past offered favorable policies to Turkic-speaking groups and hosts a small Uighur population of its own, remained silent as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan grappled with an economic crisis.
Trade Ties
The split underscores how China’s position as a key trading partner and aid provider to many Muslim-majority nations — as well as its longstanding policy to avoid commenting on the internal affairs of other countries — is now paying off. The alleged abuses are also occurring in one of China’s most remote and heavily policed frontiers, making it hard to acquire first-hand evidence, such as photos and videos, that might sway public opinion in the Islamic world.
The silence on Uighurs contrasts with outrage last year when some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fled clearance operations by the Myanmar military, which the UN has since likened to genocide. One big difference between the two cases: Myanmar’s economy is 180 times smaller than that of China, which is the top trading partner of 20 of the 57 member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
China accounts for about a 10th of Saudi Arabia’s oil exports and roughly a third of Iran’s, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. It is Malaysia’s top source of foreign investment. And it has ensured the flow of more than $60 billion in loans for China-Pakistan Economic Corridor infrastructure projects.
Muslim nations “don’t want to damage their relations with China, and consider China a potential ally against the West and the U.S., and therefore they are trying to stay silent,” said Omer Kanat, chairman of the executive committee at the World Uyghur Congress, an overseas Uighur advocacy group.
Over the years, these governments have vocally opposed U.S. slights of Muslims, including President Donald Trump’s 2017 ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries. Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif called it “a great gift to extremists.”
An expert testifying before a United Nations human rights panel on Aug. 10 cited reports that Beijing may be holding up to one million Uighurs in re-education camps. Bloomberg reported in January on the government conducting experiments with facial recognition technology in the region.
The governments of Turkey, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt did not respond to requests to comment for this story. Multiple phone calls to the OIC for comment were not answered.