-By Ommcom News
The recently concluded Winter Olympic Games in Beijing were in the news for many reasons. While a Russian biathlon participant took her grievance about meagre and unpalatable food to social media, another fellow Russian courted controversy after she tested positive for a banned substance. The journalists who first reported the story of Russian skater Kamila Valieva’s positive drugs test faced death threats and abuse.
The Chinese figure skater Zhu Yi, who fell during her performance, faced tremendous backlash and hate posts prompting social media giants in China including Weibo and Douyin to delete tens of thousands of posts. But perhaps the most significant development was the diplomatic boycott by some countries, led by the United States, of the Winter Olympic Games due to China’s ‘egregious’ human rights violations in the Xinjiang region against Uyghur Muslims.
In fact, in the report titled World Report 2022, Human Rights Watch has accused China of ruthless repression of civil liberties and human rights in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, even under the guise of COVID restrictions.
This systematic suppression and ‘re-education’ of China’s Muslim population is but a mere strand in President Xi Jinping’s grand design of renewed drive towards Sinicization – a term that euphemistically implies a process by which non-Chinese societies come under the influence of Chinese culture. In practice, however, the reality is much harsher and more unpalatable.
Take for instance the Chinese government’s efforts to erase the unique identity of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims. In January last year, a CNN investigation examining satellite imagery concluded that over 100 traditional Uyghur cemeteries had been destroyed. In August, another satellite imagery revealed that Xinjiang authorities had built over 260 “massive” detention structures, lending credibility to accusations of arbitrary detention of Turkic Muslims. Imagery also points to large-scale ‘re-styling’ of mosques where the domes and minarets have been removed in several places.
The story repeats in Tibet where China’s incessant authoritarianism has led thousands of Tibetans, including their spiritual leader the 14th Dalai Lama, to seek asylum in progressive societies. The devastation of Tibet by Chinese military that started with an unprovoked invasion in 1950 has been described in graphic detail in Heinrich Harrer’s memoir Seven Years in Tibet which was later made into an award-winning eponymous feature film.
Seventy years later, things have not changed much and Tibetans continue to suffer China’s repressive regime as the Dalai Lama spoke about “too much control” by “narrow-minded Chinese communist leaders” in November 2021. Coincidentally, March 10 was the 63rd anniversary of the Tibet Uprising Day, in which thousands of Tibetans gathered in defiance of Chinese invasion in 1959. This peaceful protest was violently crushed by the Chinese government. Click here to read more.