CONCLUSION
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CONCLUSION Throughout this book, we have examined the cruelty that communist China inflicts on its own people and the evidence for the silent genocide of the Muslims of East Turkestan. Given that the disasters inflicted on the world by Darwinism are very evident, it is the responsibility of all people of good conscience to wage a serious struggle of ideas against an ideology that has led to the shedding of so much blood. One important dimension of that struggle is opposition to the Darwinist, communist ideology that has led the regime in China to be utterly ruthless. The whole world needs to be told that, although China has turned in the direction of a free market economy, that does not change the fact that it still represents the "Red Menace." A campaign needs to be waged against Maoist communism that still represents the political view of the Beijing regime and against the Darwinism on which it is based. The terrible crimes against humanity that this ideology has led to in China, Cambodia, Albania, North Korea and other countries must be constantly before us. Darwinism and Maoism-and all the other variations of communism-are not, as many people in China imagine, ideologies of liberation, but are deceptive, leading to savagery and enslavement, and this must be made crystal clear. A campaign against communism is still essential, and it must not be forgotten that every step taken to reveal its true face will be a step towards helping those innocent nations, such as the Muslims of East Turkestan, currently suffering under communist oppression. The cruelty and suffering being inflicted upon the Uighurs living in East Turkestan, because they are Muslims, imposes a great responsibility on all Muslims in the world. As God notifies in one verse: What reason could you have for not fighting in the Way of God-for those men, women and children who are oppressed and say, "Our Lord, take us out of this city whose inhabitants are wrongdoers! Give us a protector from You! Give us a helper from You!"? (Qur'an, 4:75) As commanded in that verse, it is the duty of every Muslim to wage a war of ideas for the liberation of all oppressed Muslims. The systematic campaign of genocide being waged by China in East Turkestan needs to be opposed by diplomacy, the media, and civil initiatives. China is expending great efforts to make the world forget that region, and to portray the innocent Muslims living there as "terrorists." In the face of this, every Muslim must use all of means at their disposal to tell the world about the suffering in East Turkestan and to attract the attention of international organizations. Muslims must publicize the issue in newspapers, magazines and on Internet sites. They must support the rightful cause of the people of East Turkestan. Political leaders must take the issue up, demand justice and permanent solutions in their relations with China and the West, and members of the public must encourage them to do so. Civil organizations must also take up the issue, and hold seminars, conferences and remembrance days about East Turkestan. By bringing the issue onto the international agenda, legal sanctions must be imposed on China, and the Muslims of East Turkestan must be given new hope by being shown that they have not been forgotten. Beyond that, the whole world needs to be introduced to Islam, and shown that Islam has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism, but actually intends to do away with such acts of violence. Speaking out and decrying those who claim they resort to terrorism in the name of religion, and explaining and practicing Islam's tolerant and peaceful attitude towards other religions is one of the greatest responsibilities of the present age. In that way, the wind can be taken out of the sails of oppressive regimes such as that in China, which attempt to gain world sympathy by portraying the Muslims they oppress as terrorists, and it will also enable the real truth to emerge. Muslims must make it absolutely clear that they are not seeking a "conflict of civilizations," but that, on the contrary, they wish to see peace and harmony between all religions and civilizations, and that this is an essential element of the morality of the Qur'an. In short, Muslims must work to bring peace and stability to the world, and oppose all forces that stand against that peace and stability, even those that hide under an "Islamic" mask. We must not forget that the rule of war and chaos, as opposed to peace and security, is described in the Qur'an as "fitna" (disbelief and its imposition on others) a sin which God has cursed.
THE HISTORIC RESPONSIBILITY FACING TURKEY The views that have been expressed above regarding the situation in both East Turkestan and the Islamic world, reveal that the Republic of Turkey has a particular responsibility in this context. Let us first consider the matter from the point of view of East Turkestan. More than any other nation, Turkey needs to extend a helping hand to the Muslims of East Turkestan, because the Uighur Muslims are Turks. That gives Turkey a great international advantage when it comes to defending the legal rights of East Turkestan. In the same way that Turkey is seen by the international community as quite justified in defending the rights of the Turks in Macedonia and the Turkmens in Northern Iraq, it will also be seen as justified in taking up the rights of the Turkic Uighurs in East Turkestan. Furthermore, defending the legal rights of the Muslims of East Turkestan is also a strategic necessity for Turkey itself. The Turkish republics of central Asia are witnessing a battle for influence among a number of different countries, such as Turkey, Russia and Iran. One way that Turkey can become more influential in the region is by turning to political initiatives to secure the love and trust of the people of that region. If Turkey were to take on the cause of East Turkestan, there would be an increase in belief in Turkey's strength and determination over all the Turkish republics. The second aspect of the matter is portraying true Islam as a role model to the world as considered earlier. The strongest candidate in the Islamic world to be able to achieve this is Turkey. Muslim Turkish people have fully grasped the principles of love, respect and tolerance enshrined in Islam, and are modern and contemporary. They also possess a huge cultural legacy and historical vision inherited from the Ottoman Empire. Of all Islamic countries, Turkey is the best integrated with the Western world. Turkey can provide the most effective solution to the artificial "conflict of civilizations" that is being encouraged between the Islamic and Western worlds. It is to be hoped that the twenty-first century will see a solution to the East Turkestan problem, and that the whole Islamic world, including East Turkestan, will enjoy peace and security. The future of East Turkestan, like that of the Islamic world itself, is, by the will of God, bright and hopeful. Signs of that have already begun to appear. Muslims are determined to stick by their beliefs despite cruelty and oppression, and there is now a worldwide trend towards a return to religious morality.
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THE COMMUNIST PARTY'S POLICY OF OPPRESSION
God does not love corruption.
(Qur'an, 2:205)
THE COMMUNIST PARTY'S POLICY OF OPPRESSION
There have been two main stages in Chinese communism: The Mao period and the Deng period. Although Mao and Deng differed in theory and practice, looking at them from a wider perspective, based on the criteria of human rights and democracy, two very important similarities exist in the two periods. Throughout both periods the country was kept under the strict control of the Communist Party. The present rulers are also still continuing to repress the Chinese people under that same despotic regime.
The Mao period lasted from 1949 to 1977, and witnessed the deaths of millions of people from starvation and the killing of millions of others. Strict discipline prevailed in all areas of life, little individual freedom was allowed, and whole communities were kept in line by violence and oppression. Food could only be purchased with coupons, only one type of costume was allowed, and people could only work in the fields and the factories allocated by the state. The Communist Party decided who could marry whom, where they would live, and how many children they could have.
  The image of itself China gives to the outside world is very different from what actually goes on inside the country. Skyscrapers, modern roads and luxurious workplaces are not enough to cover up the fact that some 100 million people are forced to work in inhuman conditions in the labor camps, scavenge in refuse heaps because they do not have enough to eat, or spend hours queuing for work. |
Although food today can be purchased without coupons, and people can wear what they want and visit neighboring cities, these economic-based changes have not led to any change in the mentality of the party. The Chinese people still can enjoy freedom only within the limits set out by the Communist Party. In fact, the latest economic changes began when the Communist Party allowed private investments in order to revive the Chinese economy which had been bankrupted by Mao's policies. Furthermore, that renewal and progress was not reflected in rural areas, in which the level of poverty is rising. Alongside this, the executions that we examined in detail in an earlier section of this book, the labor camps, the selling of victims' organs, compulsory family planning and other such practices still go on. Following the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, President of China Jiang Zemin's statements revealing that economic reforms will continue, but nobody should have any dreams of democracy was of great importance in summing up the party's policy.
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One article in the New York Times described the Chinese idea of democracy in these terms:
The Ministry of Justice admits to holding more than 2,000 "counter-revolutionary" political prisoners, a number that has declined in recent years. But countless thousands of other political and religious prisoners of conscience are in labor camps and mental institutions. In a heavily policed society, little has changed since 1979, when young intellectuals like Wei Jingsheng and Xu Wenli pasted up on Democracy Wall their calls for reform... Wei went to prison, where he remains today, and Xu is a political hermit.76
As we have seen, although the Chinese government claims that everyone is free to express his thoughts, Chinese citizens are not permitted to criticize the regime or senior party officials and their actions, nor are they allowed to publish such criticism. The party strictly monitors all views that conflict with its own. People are punished on the grounds of state security if they issue the slightest criticism. Those who do are detained, and can be kept for months without being taken to court and without their relatives being notified of their whereabouts.
THE TIANANMEN SQUARE MASSACRE
On June 4, 1989, the world once again witnessed the brutality of communist China. University students in Tiananmen Square demanding greater democracy and freedom found themselves opposed by their own country's army. The Chinese government paid no attention to the fact that the protestors were their own citizens, only 19 or 20 years old. In the view of communist China, the important factor was the existence of a potential threat to the state, and the Politbureau decided that the university students did in fact represent a threat. That decision led to the deaths of thousands of people, with thousands more being wounded and tens of thousands being tortured in detention.
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On June 4, 1989, the People's Liberation Army marched against the protesting students in Tiananmen Square and, according to Chinese Red Cross figures, killed 2,600 people. This figure did not include those secretly buried by the army or otherwise "disappeared". Other sources estimate the death toll was between 7,000 and 20,000. More than 7,000 people were injured during the incident. About 40,000 were arrested (most of these were later publicly executed).77 In this way communist China once again showed the world just how "successfully" it had dealt with its opponents.
Tiananmen Square had been one of the most important centers of the widely supported democratic movement that the Chinese people initiated against the colonialist Western powers in 1919. Protests there had a particular symbolic significance. The fact that there are many public buildings around the square was also a reason why it was chosen for protests. The 1989 protests began when Beijing University students wanted to commemorate former General Secretary of the Communist Party Hu Yaobang, who had died shortly before and was known for his reformist views. After the death of Yaobang on April 15th, a man who had always looked warmly on the students' demands, university students held marches to honor Hu and mourn his death. These eventually developed into meetings at which greater democracy, university autonomy, greater employment opportunities and freedom of the press were demanded.
On April 18th, tens of thousands of students staged sit-in at Tiananmen Square and put forward Seven Demands. But that movement and the students' wishes were ignored. On April 22nd, the students again demanded a dialogue and submission of a petition letter to the government, but their demands were rejected again.
The students then announced that they were setting up the Autonomous Students Union of Beijing. Workers soon began supporting the federation, and the Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation joined it. This development seriously alarmed the Politbureau because the federation was ceasing to be a simple student protest and was turning into a movement that people from all sections of society were joining. It represented a threat to the communist regime, and the Politbureau was terrified of losing its dictatorial powers. On April 26, the government announced that it was banning all demonstrations. The headline "It Is Necessary to Take a Clear-Cut Stand Against Disturbances" in the government's official mouthpiece, the People's Daily, showed that the Politbureau intended to make no concessions to the protestors. The editorial which condemned the students' movement as "turmoil" and called it a "conspiracy," angered the populace. The next day, some 200,000 students from rallied on all main streets supported by one million citizens.
On May 4, the students read a declaration calling on the government to fight corruption, guarantee constitutional freedoms, speed up economic and political reform, adopt a press law and permit the publication of private newspapers. Students from all over the country set off for Beijing to support their colleagues in the capital. The people of Beijing formed a huge wall around the square, and workers from various parts of the country declared that they were backing the students. The Chinese government feared, however, that acceptance of the students' demands would mean the beginning of the end of their regime: any rights granted to the students would have to be granted to other sections of society. This was a grave danger to the communist regime, which regarded people more as units of production, and thought it was far more important for them to work than to enjoy these rights.
    The protest begun by university students in Tiananmen Square in 1989 was ruthlessly punished by the Communist Party. |
The hunger strike begun by the students on May 13 enjoyed wide support from intellectuals and teachers. Within a few weeks, the hunger strike was backed by millions of people. The number of protestors in the square reached half a million. Zhao Ziyang, a moderate who tried to establish dialogue between the students and the government, was shortly afterwards forced to resign. Deng Xiaoping's uncompromising attitude forced him to resign, as did the declaration of a state of war by Deng and almost all the elderly members of the Politbureau. Their idea that violence was necessary to put down the student protest led to the bloodiest operation since the brutal days of the Cultural Revolution.
On the eve of martial law, a huge number of students poured into Beijing. According to Railway Ministry figures, some 57,000 students entered Beijing between May 16 and 19 by train alone. The vast crowd of students, most of whom came from outside the city, was made up representatives of 319 separate schools.78 The rising numbers in the square alarmed the government even further. The declaration of martial law allowed 40,000 soldiers from 22 separate divisions to set out for Beijing (the majority of them were prevented from entering the city by the populace).
That popular resistance did not last long, however. On the morning of
June 3, troops began surrounding the square. Fighting broke out in the
afternoon, and by the evening army units had overcome the barricades.
Many Beijing residents lost their lives in the fighting, as did students,
when the Chinese army opened fire on the crowd at random, and its tanks
crushed anyone who got in their way, even bystanders. On the morning of
June 4, all the roads leading into Tiananmen Square were sealed off. The
fighting lasted for a day or two more, and by June 9 thousands of people
had been killed. The cleaning up operation was not restricted to dispersing
the crowd. Tens of thousands of people were arrested, including intellectuals,
workers, politicians, students, and Beijing residents. Those members of
the Politbureau who had taken a moderate line were expelled from the party
and arrested.
SCENES AFTER THE MASSACRE
The 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre was a terrible reminder to those who had forgotten the savage face of communism. The whole world saw once again just how savage, ruthless and brutal communist ideology could be when it came to defending itself. Asiaweek magazine described the Chinese rulers who gave the order for the massacre in these words, "Words like "paranoia," "irrational," "bloodthirsty" fail to explain the rage of Beijing's supreme leaders."79 Eyewitnesses of the massacre described the scenes as follows:
… at one command, the soldiers raised their guns and fired one round at the residents and students, who fell to the ground. As soon as the gunshots stopped, other people rushed forward to rescue the wounded. The steps of a clinic near Xidan were already covered in blood. But the struggle at the intersection did not stop. Armoured vehicles ran over roadblocks, knocked over cars and buses. The unarmed people had only bricks… What they got in return was bullets… People dispersed and ran for their lives. Soldiers ran after them, guns blazing. Even when residents ran into courtyards or into the shrubbery, the soldiers would catch up with them and kill them.80
Thousands of eyewitnesses made similar statements, giving details of the massacre and the ruthlessness of the Chinese army. Statements by the relatives of those who lost their lives in the massacre add to the proof of the savagery. One of these was a petition by the "June Fourth Victims' Network," set up by relatives of those who had been killed, which comprised statements by 105 individuals, part of which read as follows:
He was shot from the back of his head, and his shoulders, ribs and arms all had gunshot wounds. There was a bayonet wound about 7 to 8 centimeters below his bellybutton. It was obvious that he didn't die immediately after being hit by several bullets, then he was stabbed to death. Both his palms had deep cuts from bayonets. He must have tried to take away the bayonet and was cut. When we saw his body, the upper body was covered with blood. It was too horrible to see. [From the statement of the family of Wu Guofeng, a 20-year-old student].
[In order to find my son] We went from hospital to hospital with many names, perhaps 400, on each list. People crowded around, trying to find the names of missing relatives. We looked through many lists without finding our son's name, and also went into the hospitals to look for him among the unidentified corpses. It was pitiful, a blur of blood and flesh, young bodies with wild, staring eyes. [From the statement of the family of Wu Xiangdong, killed by a bullet to the neck.]
After daybreak, the troops buried the dead on Chang'an
Bouleavard where they had died. Wang Nan and several others killed near
him were buried west of the lawn in front of the No.28 High School to
the west of Tiananmen. Around June 7, because the bodies were buried not
far from the surface, their clothes became visible above the surface after
a torrential rain. They also began to smell. So the school reported the
matter to the Xicheng District Public Security Bureau. The health bureau
and the public security bureau jointly exhumed the bodies. Since all identification
documents (or death certificates) had been taken away by the soldiers
who buried the bodies, these became unidentified corpses. [Statement of
the family of Wang Nan, killed at age 19].81
   The brutality witnessed in Tiananmen Square continued after the protest itself had come to an end. Many of those who took part were later executed, and many others arrested and sent off to the labor camps. |
All these statements reveal the dimension of the human tragedy in Tiananmen Square in 1989. In the same way, as with the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution in the past, the communist Chinese leadership had again showed that it attached little importance to human life and that communism was a repressive and dictatorial regime. Chinese prisons are still packed with people arrested during the Tiananmen Square incident.
Furthermore, these are not the only factors that have turned China into a state of terror. The communist Chinese regime employs all possible forms of oppression and brutality to keep itself in power. It also uses its own citizens like robots to keep its economy on its feet. Working conditions in China and the general situation of the populace are terrible evidence of the ruthless, selfish and soulless nature of communist regimes.
HOW PRIMARY SCHOOL CHILDREN ARE MADE TO WORK
In the same way that the Chinese administration compels the people of East Turkestan to work while taking the profits of that labor, it also exploits its own people in order to preserve the system. On the one hand, those guilty and accused of thought crimes are forced to work in the labor camps, and, on the other, the public are made to work for the state and the profits taken away. Even children of primary school age are also used in order to get the very last drop of blood out of the people. Since people are only of value to the communist system as long as they keep producing, and the age, health and working conditions of those who carry out that production are often irrelevant. It is therefore entirely natural according to the communist mindset that children should be exploited as well. The use of children provides cheap labor, and constitutes a serious advantage for the Chinese economy.
Livestock is raised, farming and tailoring carried out, and even fireworks are produced in Chinese schools. There are sometimes even mass deaths among the children who perform such labor, because children are generally used to perform dangerous jobs such as filling and preparing fireworks. Fifty children were killed in one explosion in the village of Fangling in the district of Jiangxi in eastern China, and another child seriously injured.82 As well as studying and doing their homework at that school, its 200 students are also responsible for producing fireworks. The 13-year-old student Gao Yun, told the Reuters news agency about the work they did:
We started making fireworks in the school four years ago, once or twice a week. Pupils in higher grades made the barrels and those in low grades attach the fuses. If we produce more, our teachers give us rewards like pencils or notebooks. But if we don't meet our targets we are not allowed to go home.83
The communist administrators who were capable of having children work at such dangerous tasks exhibited the exact same callousness when it came to informing the families of the children who had been killed in the explosion, telling them, "It's not so bad, it is like a kind of family planning."84
The most striking example of the way that people in China are used like machines, for whom concepts such as love, affection, understanding, tolerance and compassion have little meaning, is the conditions that Chinese people are forced to work under.
Chinese people describe how they are constantly humiliated, belittled, forced to work in appalling conditions and are afraid of being punished, and how their working conditions are a form of "suicide by degrees." One of the reasons for this is that health conditions in Chinese working environments are usually very poor. Workers usually have to labor from seven in the morning until late at night, and frequently suffer various deadly diseases because the necessary precautions are not taken to ensure their good health. The way they are psychologically belittled and treated like animals places them under even greater pressure.
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One study by the Australian researcher Anita Chan in 1998 revealed the details of that environment. The study discussed a letter sent to a newspaper by 20 workers at the Zhaojie shoe factory in the province of Guangdong. It particularly concentrated on events experienced by workers brought in from other districts to the factory, a joint state-owned and private venture, and the health and safety conditions in it. According to the letter, there are more than 100 security guards on permanent patrol at the factory, and the migrant workers are never given permission to leave it. One of the workers described what went on there:
Being beaten and abused are everyday occurrences,
and other punishments include being made to stand on a stool for everyone
to see, to stand facing the wall to reflect on your mistakes, or being
made to crouch in a bent-knee position. The staff and workers often have
to work from 7am to midnight. Many have fallen sick… It is not easy even
to get permission for a drink of water during working hours.85
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It should not be imagined that this was an exceptional case stemming from the cruelty of the local managers in charge. Similar conditions exist in factories all over China, and particularly those in East Turkestan. Fines and penalties imposed for just about anything are among the most prominent features of such places. Among the forms of behavior that can lead to the imposition of such sanctions are laughing and talking during working hours, loitering in company premises outside of working hours, and leaving the lights on. Even the length of time workers can spend in the toilet is strictly supervised. There are even cases where employees are fined two days' wages for going to the toilet more than twice a day.86
As in many other fields, the brutality and violence that are so much a part of the communist system are meted out by troops and the police in the workplace. Security officers use electric prods to enforce obedience to company regulations, and are in constant collaboration with the local police. This serves to prevent any protest by workers about their working conditions or unpaid wages.
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SOCIAL COLLAPSE IN CHINA
The disasters that communism has visited on China are by no means restricted to the examples we have already seen. China has suffered for years under a despotic regime, and is currently undergoing a serious social collapse. Increasing unemployment, unpaid wages, the rise in the crime rate, and the news of protests and clashes that erupt all over the country on a daily basis are a striking revelation of the damage that communism can inflict on a society. On the one hand, there are the continuing human rights violations, and on the other, a very unfair distribution of income, and both of these are accelerating the social collapse in China. The Chinese people are being used like guinea pigs, and are being dragged from one catastrophe to another.
There has recently been a huge crime wave in China, with vast rises in theft, prostitution and white slavery, drug abuse and white collar crime. Unemployment and a wave of migration from rural areas to the cities have led to a rise in thefts and robberies in urban areas.
One of the crimes that have increased most in recent years is the drug trade. The spiritual emptiness which communism brings with it has brought about a huge increase in drug abuse and trafficking.
Statistical studies reveal that the crime rate among women is exceptionally
high and rising. A rise in crimes committed against women, such as prostitution
and white slavery is also rising. Women and children are frequently involved
in the business of prostitution. These crimes reveal the moral degeneration
going on in the Chinese society. Increased bribery and corruption is another
element of the ongoing social collapse in China.
 
News reports concerning the rapid rise of drug abuse frequently appear in the world media. According to one story in Newsweek, at the end of 1997, some 540,000 drug addicts in the country applied for assistance under programs to help them overcome their dependency. The figure now stands at around 800,000. Three-quarters of these people are under 25. |
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The Chinese Communist Party ignores all forms of spiritual education and is firmly convinced that it is possible to train human beings like animals. As we have seen, it is now attempting to wrestle with a monster of its own making. It is resorting to even greater brutality to deal with crime. However, arresting, executing and punishing even more people is certainly not the way to deal with this physical and moral collapse. China is currently going through the inevitable result of all communist regimes, and the first step on the way to deal with the problem lies in raising a strong and healthy younger generation. Only those with a sound spiritual formation can hope to avoid immorality and evil. Someone who has no knowledge of God and His religion, who has no love and fear of Him, and does not expect to have to give an account of himself, has no firm reason to avoid evil. Only religious morality will keep one from a life of wickedness and immorality. God has forbidden indecency:
… My Lord has forbidden indecency, both open and hidden, and wrong action, and unrightful tyranny, and associating anything with God for which He has sent down no authority, and saying things about God you do not know. (Qur'an, 7:33)
Those who fear God abide unconditionally by these commands:
The believers are only those who have believed in God and His Messenger and then have had no doubt and have strived with their wealth and themselves in the Way of God. They are the ones who are true to their word. (Qur'an, 49:15)
THE CHINESE STATE IS POISONING ITS OWN CITIZENS
The increase in prostitution and drug abuse in China is also a cause of the spread of contagious diseases including AIDS. According to official figures, there are some half million known AIDS sufferers in China today, and the real number is estimated to be much higher. Yet Chinese state is not taking realistic measures to deal with their moral collapse, and is not taking precautions to grapple with AIDS.
Recent information has revealed that, instead of trying to prevent the spread of AIDS, the Chinese government is actually contributing to its spread. One of the most important reasons for its spread is people selling their blood, and that such blood exchanges take place in very unhygienic conditions. The Chinese authorities buy the blood of their citizens at very cheap prices. People are promised that, for five dollars a syringe, the plasma cells will be extracted and the blood then returned to them. However, the repeated use of the same syringe leads not only to the spread of AIDS, but also to many other contagious diseases.
CHINA IS NOT ABANDONING COMMUNISM
Mao's successor, Deng Xiaoping, resorted to several economic reforms in an attempt to stabilize the economy. These, including the adaptation of some free market principles to communism, partly reinvigorated the Chinese economy. Today, thanks to those reforms, Western companies are able to invest in China and private companies are allowed to operate. (In fact, the PLA is a partner in most of these private companies, and they have generals on their boards).
This led some people to believe that China had finally begun to break away from the teachings of Mao and develop a more democratic mentality. Yet, when what has happened in China over the last 20 years is examined from a broad perspective, all these so-called reforms and revisions have actually produced a more deep-rooted communist system.
In the same way that the collapse of the Soviet Union is thought of as "The collapse of a faulty application of Marxism" by die-hard communists, so Maoists in China and other parts of the world regard the present social collapse in China as the result of "incorrect practice." According to communist ideology, the ideal communist society has to go through a number of stages. First is capitalism, followed by a transition to socialism, and then communism. The real reason for the current capitalist picture in China is, therefore, an attempt to arrive at the ideal communist society. China is doing all it can to keep that capitalist picture restricted to the economic field, and continues to be devoted to Maoism in the political arena. For the transition to socialism, itself an important step on the road to communism, to be possible, the country is trying to revise the Communist Party to a socialist one.
Furthermore, China is today experiencing all aspects of the savage capitalism that is regarded as necessary for the transition to socialism. Inequality of income distribution, the ever increasing levels of unemployment, the rich are growing richer (as the poor grow poorer) and the moral collapse which came about as a result are intended to make the populace think that "Mao's time was best." Yet, although Maoism is portrayed as a viable alternative, it is really a regime of cruelty and savagery that has the blood of millions of people on its hands. In other words, people are going to find themselves out of the frying pan but in the fire.
  The traces of the catastrophes communism has brought to China can easily be seen all over the country. |
Recent research in China reveals that there is still great interest in Mao in the country, and that a large part of society still harks back to the days of Chairman Mao. The uncertainty and collapse due to the capitalist reforms that began in the 1970s have led to a peak in the protests that began in 1986, and led to Mao being reinstated on the country's agenda. A 1992 edition of Atlantic Monthly magazine describes China's return to Maoism as follows:
In fact, by the end of last year a surprising new craze for Mao trivia had spread throughout China. Although it lacked the political frenzy of the Cultural Revolution, during which weeping devotees of Mao marched across China in his name, beat to death supposed enemies of his revolution, and even pinned Mao buttons to their naked flesh, this latter-day infatuation was remarkably widespread… Capitalizing on this new infatuation with Mao, the state owned Xinhua bookstore sold more than 10 million copies of a new four-volume edition of Mao's collected works last year, and state-owned film studios have been cranking out docudramas. The 1991 film Mao Zedong and His Son was calculated to make Mao appear more human by highlighting an emotional scene in which he was told that his son Mao Anying had just been killed in the Korean War by the Americans. Such efforts to humanize Mao continued this year with the release of the propagandist Story of Mao Zedong.87
  Maoism's influence on the Chinese administration can be seen in the propaganda posters that Head of State, Jiang Zemin, had prepared. The poster on the left shows Mao, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin. |
Pro-Mao propaganda still goes on today. Quiz shows are aired on Beijing television in which contestants are asked to recite well-known quotations from Mao on command and to identify the dates, places and contexts of other quotations of his. More of his posters are being put up, and his teachings are broadcast again and again on the radio and television. Given the scale of the propaganda they are subjected to, a large part of the Chinese people see Mao as a savior, and even feel a kind of mystical devotion to him. Many of them believe that Mao protects them from accidents, evil and disease. In his book The Sun That Never Sets, however, the Chinese investigative journalist Jia Lusheng underlines certain other truths. According to Jia, China's devotion to Mao reflects a nostalgia for the days when the country seemed more stable. He writes that poor leadership, a degenerate society, and the rising crime rate have all helped to increase the nostalgia for Mao. A great many Chinese imagine that the sun will again rise over China when Mao's ideology is translated into life.
As these analyses have shown, China is by no means turning its back on communism, and may even be moving towards an even stricter form of communism within the context of an established program. Communist ideology means the oppression in East Turkestan will continue. That is because communist ideology has always been an implacable foe of Muslims and Islam, and will always be so.
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THE CHINESE "TERRORISM" DECEPTION
The terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, brought with them a new strategic order that would change many balances in the world. The United States began a global war against international terrorism, which sees that country as its main target. Some countries, however, took advantage of that struggle and hoped to use it for their own ends. The most important of these was China.
China tried to portray the United States' reaction to terrorism as "a war against Muslims," and issued a message in October, 2001. That message said, in essence, that China wanted to cooperate with the Western world against the Islamic terrorists in East Turkestan.
Yet that statement by China is a clear contradiction. The people of East Turkestan are waging an entirely justified struggle to protect their own values and culture, live according to their own religion, and speak their own language. For many years now, that struggle has been waged on a purely democratic platform, thanks to the good sense of the East Turkestan leaders. There may be individuals or groups in East Turkestan who are inclined to the use of violence, just as in any other society, but that does not change the fact that the struggle of East Turkestan is justified. The real terrorist force in the region, as we have seen throughout this book, is the Chinese regime, which is waging a long-term campaign of genocide against the innocent Muslims of East Turkestan.
Western commentators were not slow to express this fact. Former U.S. Senator Jesse Helms was one of these. An example is an article titled "Beware China's Ties to the Taliban" in the October 14, 2001, edition of The Washington Times, just after China's propaganda initiative. Helms had served for many years as Republican party senator for North Carolina, and had been a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In his article, he described how deceptive China's move to gain the support of the United States and the West really was. He stated that there were close links between China and the Taliban regime, and that China was hostile both to Islam and to the West:
…The second rationale for working with the Chinese is the weird assumption
that China and the United States share a common interest in fighting terrorism.
What a naive and dangerous fantasy. The fact is, the Communist Chinese
government is in bed with every one of the terrorist and terrorist-supporting
rogue regimes of the Middle East…
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Those who imagine that the U.S. shares common interests with the Chinese in combating terrorism most likely base their assumption on China's fight against supposed Uighur terrorism in Xinjiang Province, formerly known as East Turkestan. But there is an ugly catch to that:If the U.S. should end up receiving any kind of support from Beijing for our anti-terrorist efforts, it will almost certainly come at the price of acquiescing in China's crackdown on the Uighurs. That would be a moral calamity, for there is no justification in lumping the Uighurs with the murderous fanatics who demonstrably mean us harm. The Uighurs are engaged in a just struggle for freedom from Beijing's tyrannical rule, for the most part peacefully. For this, they have been viciously suppressed, with the Chinese government arresting and torturing political prisoners, destroying mosques and opening fire on peaceful demonstrations.
Strategically and morally, the United States cannot and must not assume that China is part of a solution to terrorism. Indeed, Communist China is a very large part of the problem.88
As we have seen, Americans are aware of what is happening in Red China and of the terrible oppression of the Muslims of East Turkestan, and therefore regard China, not as a "part of a solution to terrorism," but as a part of terrorism itself.
That view has now come to be shared by many in the West. Various figures are warning of the need to be careful in the face of moves by certain countries that hope to take advantage of the US's fight against terrorism. In a November 5, 2001 article, Thomas Beal, one of the editors of The Asian Wall Street Journal stressed the following:
China's false indignation shows how it is exploiting world-wide revulsion at the attacks on America to justify a nearly 10-year crackdown on ethnic nationalism and religion in Xinjiang, whose Muslim Turkic Uighurs comprise half of the region's 18 million people. For backing, or at least not opposing, the U.S.-led campaign against Osama bin Laden, President Jiang Zemin hopes to milk greater sympathy from Western governments critical of China's human rights record.
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The Bush administration must reject China's attempt to equate the attack on America with its separatist problem. It should not give support, tacit or otherwise, to China's abuses of Muslims in Xinjiang…89
Later in the article, Beal turned to the Chinese regime's oppression of the people of East Turkestan, and stated that it was still going on. He concluded his article with these words:
… [T]he U.S. must not abet Beijing's abuses against the Uighurs, a people who know all too well why America is waging war on terrorism.90
For its part, Turkey needs to keep these facts in mind in its relationship with China, and to use diplomatic channels to support the rightful struggle of its fellow Turks and co-religionists in East Turkestan.
THE SOLUTION LIES IN REMOVING THE FUNDAMENTAL BASES OF DARWINISM
We have so far stressed that the philosophical bases of Chinese brutality are Darwinism and materialism. We have also touched on the link between Darwinism and communism. The many examples that have been considered in other works discussing the links between Darwinism and various godless ideologies reveal how Darwinism has turned the world into a place of war and conflict and has also incited racism and attempts at ethnic cleansing. How is it that Darwinism leads people to war, anarchy, chaos and conflict (and that they regard this state of affairs as part of the nature of life)?
- According to Darwinism's twisted view, humans are the product of natural law and chance, and they are a kind of advanced animal who exists only because of survival of the fittest. There is, therefore, no reason why he should not display such animal traits as aggression, ruthlessness and violence. Furthermore, since humans are the product of chance and natural law, we are not responsible for these traits. This idea is encouraged in the written and visual media, despite the fact that it lacks any scientific basis. Educational institutions portray it as if it were a proven fact, which leads people to fall under the spell of Darwinism without their being aware of it As a result young people are not directed in the direction of love, compassion and self-sacrifice, but are inclined to turn to crime, violence, and evil.
- Darwinism and materialism maintain that human progress is dependent on conflict that results in survival of the fittest. The fact that this is put forward as if it were scientific truth, and that it has been expressed by statesmen, rulers and military men over the years, has led to millions of deaths, huge numbers of people being crippled, and ruined cities and nations. Mankind has been through two world wars, and is sinking in conflict, anarchy and terrorism because of Darwinism's praise of conflict which it sees as essential to progress.
- Darwinism regards life as constant struggle, in which the strong can only survive so long as they are ruthless, and thus views "unfair" competition as quite justified. If life is a struggle, then war is the only way to survive, and being ruthless the only way to protect oneself. According to this perverted idea, the weak and feeble are condemned to be crushed and eliminated.
Darwinism leads individuals and societies towards ruthlessness and cruelty, regards war and competition as a biological necessity, and maintains that bloodshed and suffering (and even the infliction of suffering) are the seeds of progress. It regards all of these as a "law of nature." When such an idea becomes the official ideology of an entire state, terror will be the inevitable result.
It is for this reason that the elimination and removal of Darwinism ideology will also mean the elimination of that philosophy of conflict and its various manifestations. The black face of Darwinism must be unmasked, and a great effort must be made to help people to recognize God and believe in Him. The solid morality from religion must be fully explained to society.
God commands people to maintain justice under all circumstances, to love peace and be tolerant, and to oppose chaos and wickedness. The essence of religious morality, therefore, means the establishment of peace and security. All three divine religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) oppose conflict and violence. The rejection of Darwinist philosophy and its replacement by religious morality means the replacement of hatred and conflict by love, compassion, tolerance and forgiveness.
 Those who support communism want to see a world dominated by conflict, fighting and terror. Muslims, who abide by Islamic morality, prefer to see a world where compromise prevails over fighting, brotherhood over conflict, and love and peace over terror. |
76. Patrick E. Tyler, "Concerning Liberties,
China Is Free to Prosper But That's All," New York Times, May 30, 1997
77. James Conachy, "Victims' Families Campaign for Reassessment
of Tiananmen Square Massacre," WSWS, July 14, 1999
78. Andrew J. Nathan, "The Tiananmen Papers," Foreign Affairs,
January-February 2001
79. Jonathan Mirsky, "Revolution's Dark Legacy," Asiaweek,
Vol 27, No 2, January 19, 2001
80. James Conachy, "Ten Years Since The Tiananmen Square Massacre,"
WSWS, June 4, 1999 (emphasis added)
81. James Conachy, "Victims' Families Campaign for Reassessment
of Tiananmen Square Massacre," WSWS, July 14, 1999
82. Carol Divjak & James Conachy, "Fifty Chinese Children Killed
in School Fireworks Explosion," WSWS, March 14, 2001
83. Carol Divjak & James Conachy, "Fifty Chinese Children Killed
in School Fireworks Explosion," WSWS, March 14, 2001 (emphasis added)
84. Carol Divjak & James Conachy, "Fifty Chinese Children Killed
in School Fireworks Explosion," WSWS, March 14, 2001
85. Berly Maurice, "A Glimpse of The Working Conditions Being
Created By Capitalism in China," WSWS, October 11, 2000 (emphasis added)
86. Berly Maurice, "A Glimpse of The Working Conditions Being
Created By Capitalism in China," WSWS, October 11, 2000
87. Orville Schell, "Once Again Long Live Chairman Mao," The
Atlantic Monthly, December 1992
88. Jesse Helms, "Beware China's Ties to the Taliban," Washington
Times, October 14, 2001
89. Thomas Beal, "Uighur Yearning for Freedom: Xinjiang's China
Problem", The Asian Wall Street Journal, November 5, 2001
90. Thomas Beal, "Uighur Yearning for Freedom: Xinjiang's China
Problem", The Asian Wall Street Journal, November 5, 2001
CHINESE TORTURE IN EAST TURKESTAN
God does not love corruption.
(Qur'an, 2:205)
CHINESE TORTURE IN EAST TURKESTAN
It has been shown in the preceding sections that the lands of East Turkestan have been Muslim for the last 1,000 years. Yet for more than half a century now, it has been living under occupation by the Chinese administration. A graffiti on a door at the University of Urumchi, described by Andrew Higgins (correspondent of The Independent) as "sheer racial venom" clearly reflects the Chinese view of the Uighur Turks:
Make Uyghur men our slaves forever and take Uyghur women as prostitutes for generations.25
China maintains up to 1 million soldiers under arms in the region, and controls everything that the Muslims in East Turkestan do. All vehicles are stopped at military checkpoints set up along the roads, the men are sometimes insulted and slapped about as their cars are searched, and Muslim women are abused. Chinese pressure is not restricted to stopping vehicles or frequent house searches by the military. The June 29, 2000 edition of the Japanese Mainichi Daily News described the oppression in the following terms:
Chinese
control [over East Turkestan] grows ever tighter and more intolerable.
People's Liberation Army soldiers are everywhere. Travel and attendance
at mosques are restricted. Communications are primitive and policed. Few
farm villages have telephones, and urban phones are liable to be tapped.
One can be jailed for years on mere suspicion of subversion.26
Muslims are arrested on invalid grounds and sent off to labor camps, executed on groundless charges, and from time to time murdered en masse. They are not allowed to fast, and are prevented from receiving religious instruction. The method used to stop the Muslim population from growing is utterly inhuman: Women are forced to have abortions, and the children of those who have more than one child are taken away from them.
In the face of all this cruelty and oppression, the people of East Turkestan have no means of protecting themselves or their rights. Muslims all over the world can help these defenseless people in many different ways. All measures to allow the voice of the people of East Turkestan to be heard and to attract the attention of international organizations are important.
The greatest assistance that can be given is to wage a struggle on the level of ideas to destroy the atheism that all that oppression stems from, and replace it with a just and proper morality. In that way, not just the Muslims of East Turkestan but all those who are wickedly killed all over the world, or are forced from their homelands just for saying, "God is our Lord," or can be helped.
All believers share an equal responsibility in this matter. God reveals in a verse, "… Whoever strives does it entirely for himself…" (Qur'an, 29:6). In another verse, He describes the responsibility that falls to believers in these terms: "Would that there had been more people with a vestige of good among the generations of those who came before you, who forbade corruption in the earth…" (Qur'an, 11:116) Preventing evil in this world is the common duty of all people of conscience.
  The Chinese army controls East Turkestan with an iron hand. The Muslims' lives are rigidly controlled, and those whom the Communist Party regards as a threat are arrested. |
THE STRUCTURE OF COMMUNIST SOCIETY
Communist ideology maintains that matter has no beginning or end, denies the existence of God, and rejects all spiritual values. It has been put into practice in a number of different countries, yet every time it has ended up inflicting terrible suffering. The reason for this is communist ideology's view of life and human beings. This is communist ideology's world view and the general structure of those societies in which it has been practiced:
-In communist societies, human beings are regarded as advanced forms of animal, based on Darwin's theory of evolution. For that reason, society is seen as a large herd of animals, and little value is ascribed to human beings.
- The logic of "There are many members of the herd, so one fewer does not matter" prevails. The mentality which regards life as a "struggle for survival," sees nothing wrong with the elimination of the weak. On the contrary, it regards it as necessary. Selfishness is its defining feature. The crippled or those who cannot work are expelled from the herd and left to die.
- Just like animals in a herd, society is made up of one type of human being. People are made to dress, think and speak alike. There is little room for different cultures, beliefs or ideas.
- Individuals' contributions to society are more important than
their own interests. Tireless workers and peasants are the ideal.
The system is based solely on the material concepts of work and production.
The logic of "production strengthens the herd" rules.
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- No account is ever taken of human characteristics or proper morality. There is little room in communist societies for human feelings such as forgiveness, compassion, faith or love.
- Since fear of God is systematically destroyed, people are held
back from committing crimes mostly because they fear the system itself.
That is why an improper action can be committed if the system will not
see it, or if the culprit will not be punished. Theft, prostitution, murder
and moral degeneration are widespread in communist societies.
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- According to communist ideology, which rejects belief in the
hereafter, people cease to exist when they die. That explains
why people do everything in their power to stay alive and remain strong.
Since they believe they are engaged in a struggle for survival and see
everyone else as a rival, they can easily perpetrate all kinds of evil
in their own interests.
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CHINA'S EAST TURKESTAN POLICY CANNOT BE SEEN AS INDEPENDENT OF COMMUNIST IDEOLOGY
China's policy on East Turkestan is a general reflection of communist
ideology. That is why it is impossible to evaluate what is going on in
East Turkestan independently of that ideology. Similar cruelty and oppression
is inflicted on different individuals and communities all over China,
which shows that a totalitarian structure is an inseparable part of communism.
In this section we shall, therefore, be considering the cruelty and suffering
inflicted by China's ideology and its despotic regime on its own people,
as well as the suffering of the people of East Turkestan.
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THE DEATH TOLL OF MAO
ZE TUNG'S ADMINISTRATION: 40 MILLION DEAD The teachings of Mao, based on ruthlessness and brutality, led to the death of millions. |
All
regimes that are hostile to religion resort to pressure and violence in
order to keep themselves in power. The most oppressive, dictatorial regimes
have always oppressed, even despised, the people who resisted their policies.
From this point of view there is little difference between Pharaoh and
Hitler, Hitler and Stalin, or Stalin and Mao. None of these leaders had
any hesitation about killing innocent people and ordering terrible slaughter
for the sake of power and their own ideologies. Just like the others,
Mao set up concentration camps in order to strengthen the communist regime,
turned them into torture centers, and had millions of people who failed
to think like him ruthlessly killed.
 Nothing in the Chinese government's policy of oppression changed during the time of Deng Xiaoping (side), who came to power after Mao. |
The People's Republic of China, founded in 1949, was built upon totalitarian despotism, intense bureaucracy, and a system of state control of all resources and means of production. The disasters brought about by Mao's economic policies and his policies of restricted famine led to enormous loss of life and a general collapse. Mao's successor, Deng Xiaoping, hoped to put the economy right by carrying out economic reforms and opened the country up to foreign investors and a liberal economy. Yet those economic improvements only benefited the top levels of the state machinery. The people of China benefited very little. Moreover, despite the trend towards a liberal economy there was very little equivalent political or social progress. No matter how much people talk about "the old communist system" with regard to China, and claim that communism has come to an end, the facts disprove this claim.
China is still run by a totalitarian mentality that has its roots in Mao's vision of communism. The reforms in the economic field have not brought about any major changes in the minds of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.
A large part of the economic progress and revenues are used to increase the repression of the population and to silence the voices of opposition. China currently has the highest capital punishment rate of any country in the world. Furthermore, it is perhaps the only country in which executions are turned into public spectacles, and where the internal organs of those executed are removed without their permission and sold for profit, where pregnant women are forced to have abortions. There are more than 1,000 labor camps in the country, and those detained in them are systematically tortured.
  Only Communist Party officials benefit from the economic liberalization in China, and the people as a whole continue to live in hunger and poverty. |
EXECUTIONS IN CHINA ARE JUST A ROUTINE MATTER
The death penalty is an important control mechanism of the Red Chinese regime. The famous Chinese dissident Harry Wu describes the situation in his country as follows:
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The dictatorship is tightly associated with violence and has even grown dependent on it. It practices the Chinese idiom of "Kill the Chicken to Scare the Monkey." The public education carried out by sentencing rallies and mass executions shows the Party's reliance on public violence.27
Although it is impossible to specify the exact number, millions of people have executed by the Red Chinese regime. Most figures are based on estimates, although the latest research has revealed that the number of people killed is much higher than was previously believed. The fact that the communist regime regards executions and murder as one of its basic principles is well known. In a confidential document dated May 16, 1951, Mao revealed that the number of people to be killed had been established in line with a definite quota:
Talking about the number of counter-revolutionaries to be killed, a certain proportion must be set. In rural areas, it should not exceed 1/1000 of the population. In killing counter-revolutionaries in the urban areas, generally it should be below 1/1,000 of the population; the number .5/1000 seems appropriate. For example, among the 2,000,000 people of Peking, over 600 were killed. Another 300 are planned to be killed. A total number of 1,000 will be enough… It is still necessary to kill other big batches and we must do all we can do to kill two thirds of those who are predetermined to be killed by the end of July. 28
When planning his massacres, Mao saw no need to prove that the person to be killed actually committed a crime. He regarded killing as necessary simply because of the fear it would instill in society, and saw that number of executions as a "matter of quotas." Another example of this way of thinking is found in Stalin's famous statement: "the death of one person is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."29 As a result of the communist Stalin's "statistical" murders, an estimated 40 million innocent people lost their lives.
Mao had no hesitation about personally signing the death warrants of those to be killed. In a document dated January 17, 1951, he gave the following order to his comrades, which included Deng Xiaoping:
In 21 counties in western Hunan, over 4,600 bandit
chieftains, local tyrants, and Kuomingtang agents were killed. Another
batch are planned to be killed this year by local authorities. I believe
this disposal is very necessary… in places, we must kill big batches…dealing
heavy blows means killing all reactionaries that should be killed with
a firm hand. 30
In the early days when Mao was still alive, executions were carried out
with great speed, sometimes in public and at other times in secret. In
1953, for instance, a woman called Yang Pei only learned that her husband
had been executed when she applied for a divorce.
Executions continued in the Deng period. At the same time, an unbelievable "savings" measure was started, under which the cost of the bullet fired into the skull of the person executed was paid by his family. The state also found another means of turning a profit out of executions: The internal organs of the victims were sold, and all the profits went into the state coffers.
It is clear, therefore, that the current rulers of Red China are merely following in the footsteps of their so-called "eternal" leader Mao when they stage public executions or murder people in labor camps.
Executions are still staged on a regular basis in China. It is not known how many people are executed in the course of a year because the Chinese government treats such information as a state secret. However, the following figures will help to provide a general idea:
Amnesty International has reported there were 2,050
executions in China during 1994. It recently released the figure of 1,313
reported executions in China during the first half of 1995.31
In an article in The New York Times called "Chinese Justice Tools:Torture and Executions," it was reported that China has the highest number of executions of any country in the world. Some people sentenced to execution are first paraded in the streets, and then killed in full public view. The cost of the bullets used in executions is reclaimed from the victims' families.
Only a very few of the executions in China are
reported in the press, yet even these are enough to show the scale
of the brutality. |
The numbers have risen still further in the 2000s.
In the first three months of 2001, 1,781 people were executed.
That figure does not include the 2,960 people still awaiting execution.32
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That figure is more than all the other countries in the rest of the world
combined for the last three years alone. Among those executed are people
from all kinds of social groups, including girls aged 15-16 and religious
leaders.
The common "crime" of the great majority of these people was to want to
live in freedom in their own country and to enjoy the most basic human
freedoms, those of speech, thought and worship. Yet in the eyes of the
Chinese government, both common criminals and supporters of democracy
are all "counter-revolutionaries." That is why as many people are executed
for "thought crimes" as for ordinary criminal offences. What is more,
a number of new methods have recently been introduced in order for those
guilty of "political crimes" to be executed. The most widespread of these
is political detainees are accused of trumped up criminal offences.
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Chinese officials have always thought that capital punishment was necessary in order to keep the public in line and to strengthen the government. For that reason, they choose to parade those to be executed through the streets and then kill them in full public view. Those to be killed are brought before the public in handcuffs and made to face the spectators. Their names and crimes are written on placards hung around their necks. These scenes of savagery in full public view are also broadcast live on television.
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Following the publication of scenes of mass executions in Newsweek magazine
in 1984, the Chinese government feared that this might damage the country's
image, and issued an order that those condemned to die should no longer
be paraded through the streets. That order was subsequently expanded,
and the fact that political detainees had been executed was to be kept
secret even from their families. These instructions did not mean that
political killings had been done away with in China, but that they were
still proceeding apace, albeit out of sight. Following the events in Tiananmen
Square in 1989, concerns over domestic policy overrode the country's image
abroad, and many involved in the opposition were publicly executed.
Red China's habit of executing people due to their ideas was also seen
during the time of the Prophet Moses and one of the cruelest despots in
history - the Egyptian Pharaoh. Pharaoh threatened the followers of Moses
with death because they refused to obey him and to abide by his rules.
That threat is reported in the Qur'an:
He [Pharaoh] said, "Have you believed in him before I authorized you? He is your chief who taught you magic. But you will soon know! I will cut off your alternate hands and feet and I will crucify every one of you." (Qur'an, 26:49).
| FAMILIAR
IMAGES OF EXECUTIONS IN RED CHINA
       
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EXECUTIONS ARE STILL BEING CARRIED OUT IN EAST TURKESTAN
Although China's policy regarding its own people is utterly ruthless, things are even worse in East Turkestan. The number of East Turkestan Muslims executed is enormous. Any initiative by the Muslim population to live according to their religion or speak their own language, which are fundamental rights, is savagely punished.
Just as in China as a whole, executions still go on in East Turkestan, and innocent people are killed in the absence of any firm evidence. Chinese courts are not independent like those in democratic countries, but operate within the framework of the Communist Party's political agenda. That is why the cases of people condemned to death are heard very quickly, and defendants are not given the necessary time and means to defend themselves properly. The death penalty is usually carried out so fast that victims' families are unaware of its event. According to official figures, 210 Muslims were executed in East Turkestan alone in 1997-1999, and it is believed that the true figure is actually a great deal higher.33 Executions are carried out every single month, and Mao's method of "killing by quotas" is scrupulously implemented.
Muslims executed in East Turkestan. |
One of the methods resorted to by the Chinese regime in order to intimidate the Muslim population is mass arrests and torture while in detention. Most Muslims under arrest are sentenced to long terms in labor camps, and many of these are never heard of again. Families have no idea where prisoners are being held, or whether they are alive or dead.
 When the young people of East Turkestan express the entirely justified demand to be allowed to live by their own religion and culture, they are punished with death by the communist regime. At the outset, some executions were broadcast by Chinese television as a "deterrent." However, the Chinese government later abandoned that practice out of concern over protests. |
 
 
  Pharaoh said, "Have you believed in him before I authorized you to do so? This is just some plot you have concocted in the city to drive its people from it. I will cut off your alternate hands and feet and then I will crucify every one of you." (Qur'an, 7:123-124) |
Torture is widespread in Chinese prisons and labor camps. Various international organizations have drawn attention to the systematic torture carried out in China, and in their reports have warned the Chinese government. One of these was a 34-page report published by Amnesty International in 1999, which considered human rights violations in East Turkestan. One of the many incidents described in the report concerned descriptions of the grim prison conditions by the relatives of one 17-year-old detainee:
The jail was so crowded that prisoners were held 5 or 6 to a single cell - too small to allow them all to lie down at night; they had to take turns to sleep. Whenever police officers "visited" them in their cells, they were beaten. Those prisoners selected for interrogation were taken to a special room where they were beaten, kicked and given electric shocks with electric batons. The interrogation room was equipped with a rail fixed on the wall. Some prisoners were hung on the rail with one foot and one hand tied to the rail with handcuffs. They were left in that position for 24 hours. When they were untied, they could not stand straight. Some prisoners had their fingernails pulled out with pliers. Others had wires inserted under the nails.34
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The prisoner who underwent those experiences spent two months in prison, and was only released following payment of a 2,000 yen bribe by his family. The torture inflicted on another prisoner at the Public Security Bureau after being arrested was even more pitiless. What is more, that person's only crime was to meet and engage in an exchange of ideas with friends:
 Some Chinese torture methods |
Next to the detention centre is an underground place where some suspects are interrogated. He was questioned there in the evenings and tortured in various ways. For example, his hands were tied behind his back and the interrogators would lift his arms, pulling them up high in a twisted and painful position behind his back. He was given electric shocks with electric batons. The shocks were applied all over his body, including in his mouth and on his penis, which caused intense pain. The interrogators hit him on the bones of the legs with a wooden baton. They made him kneel down and hit him on the thighs and the shoulders with the baton. While tortured, he was made to wear a kind of metal helmet which came down over his eyes. The interrogators used this helmet to prevent fatalities, as some prisoners cannot bear the pain of torture and try to kill themselves by bashing their heads against the walls.35
Conditions in the so-called "re-education through labor" camps that convicted prisoners are sent to are even worse. "Re-education" in China means making someone accept communist ideology and be willing to obey the orders of the Communist Party, at no matter what price. The methods employed to that end are totally inhuman:
Prisoners in the camp work on average 10 hours a day at making and carrying bricks, cutting and transporting stones, and agricultural work. They are punished severely if they do not go to bed or get up on time, if they talk to each other, if they sing songs or shout, laugh or cry, if they secretly take water to wash themselves for prayer, if they do not finish their allotted tasks, or if they answer back to the police or guards. The punishments include being hit on the head, stomach and crutch with electric batons; being made to lie down and having their hand trodden on; being made to stand in the "flying aeroplane" position; being strapped to a pole and beaten, and being hung from the ceiling and beaten. On several occasions, police officers inserted an electric baton into a prisoner's anus. Many prisoners have lost their teeth, have bleeding ears, broken arms, infected and useless testicles due to torture. They are frequently insulted and humiliated by the guards. At mealtime, they have to sing songs of praise in Chinese, failing which they reportedly go without food. The camp has no doctor. Prisoners who are sick have to work or are given no food, and only those who are incontinent are taken to the hospital 36 kilometers away. Some have died on the way to hospital.36
China's policy in East Turkestan is a program of mass torture and genocide. According to information from the East Turkestan Information Center, some 10,000 Uighur Turks were arrested on trumped up charges between the beginning of 1999 and March of that same year, detained under the sort of conditions we have seen above, and sentenced to stiff punishment, especially the death penalty, by courts operating under the control of the Communist Party. The number of people sentenced to death by courts in East Turkestan or who died as the result of torture between the beginning of 1999 and March, 2000, is estimated to be 2,500.37
In the genocide campaign being waged by the Chinese
government in East Turkestan, even children are detained on various charges.
For instance, on October, 30, 1999, the Hotan Municipal Security Directorate
arrested a Turkish girl, a middle school student, on the grounds that
her writing resembled that of a poster that had been put up in the street.
During a speech made by Regional General Secretary Wang Le Chuan in Hotan,
which was closed to the press, he announced that a primary school student
had been arrested because he had torn the picture of Chairman Mao on the
cover of his school book.38
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  Foreign publications such as Amnesty International Briefing and Crescent International describe in great detail the oppression and cruelty faced by Muslims in occupied East Turkestan. Hundreds of Muslims are killed in organized executions. Thousands more are still in prison, awaiting execution. |
EXAMPLES
OF MAO-STYLE TORTURE
The name of Mao Tse Tung is remembered today for cruelty and brutality. He had unimaginable tortures inflicted on, not just the people of East Turkestan, but on his own people as well. The actions of the Red Guards under Mao's instructions during the barbaric period known as the Cultural Revolution in particular, were crimes against humanity. The following are just a few of them:
To put those special handcuffs tightly on the wrists of a prisoner was a form of torture commonly used in Maoist China's prison system. Sometimes additional chains were put around the ankles of the prisoners. At other times a prisoner might be manacled and then have his handcuffs tied to a bar on the window so that he could not move away from the window to eat, drink, or go to the toilet. The purpose was to degrade a man in order to destroy his morale… Since the People's Government claimed to have abolished all forms of torture, the officials simply called such methods "punishment"' or "persuasion." 1 The whole people were invited to public trials of "counterrevolutionaries," who almost invariably were condemned to death… Everyone participated in the executions, shouting out "kill, kill" to the Red Guards whose task it was to cut victims into pieces. Sometimes the pieces were cooked and eaten, or force-fed to members of the victim's family who were still alive and looking on. 2 In The Black Book of Communism an observer described the inhuman treatment meted out to university professors detained during the days of Mao: Hanging from their necks were pails filled with rocks. I saw the principal: the pail around his neck was so heavy that the wire had cut deep into his neck and he was staggering. All were barefoot, hitting broken gongs or pots as they walked around the field crying out: "I am black gangster so-and-so." Finally, they all knelt down, burned incense, and begged Mao Zedong to "pardon their crimes."… A few girls nearly fainted. Beatings and torture followed. I had never seen such tortures before: eating nightsoil and insects, being subjected to electric shocks, being forced to kneel on broken glass, being hanged "like an airplane" by the arms and legs. 3 The same book also mentions the prisons: The most varied and sadistic tortures were quite common,
such as hanging by the wrists or thumbs…. The most brutish people
were allowed to operate with impunity. One camp commander assassinated
or buried alive 1,320 people in one year, in addition to carrying
out numerous rapes. 4 |
THE LAOGAI "RE-EDUCATION CENTERS"
The laogai in China are the equivalent of Hitler's concentration camps and Stalin's gulags. The laogai system is intended to totally dominate people's thoughts, and turn them into slaves. It is one of the Chinese state's most important control mechanisms. So far some 20 million people have lost their lives in these camps. The aim behind these camps is "re-education" by means of forced labor. One of the most frequently employed slogans is "Forced labor is a means, and a revolution in thought the end." To put it more clearly, the intention behind the laogai is to use all possible means to oblige those who are seen as a potential threat to conform to the Communist Party's wishes. That in turn means humiliation, oppression, enslavement and torture.
These camps are often concealed by using other names for them, and may look like factories, mines or farms to fit the name. An article in The Washington Post described one of these camps, "Hunan Special Electric Machine Factory," or "Hunan Province No. 1 Prison," in which 2-3,000 prisoners are forced to work for an average of 16 hours a day. The factory used to make industrial generators, but now produces various goods such as wigs, medicine boxes, gloves, and Christmas lights.40
Laogai camps are actually intended to punish prisoners, and inmates are exploited by being forced to work under very harsh conditions. The inmates of laogai camps have no rights. They are made to work in state factories, mines, and farms, and to abide by the rules. An individual is kept in these camps until the authorities decide he has been completely reformed (in other words, torture and cruelty are applied until he is molded and obedient to the Communist Party's wishes.) That can sometimes take a whole lifetime, as even if a prisoner has served his entire sentence, he is still kept in the camp to carry out other tasks until the administration decides he has reformed. It is known that, as of 1997, there were more than 1,000 laogai camps in China as a whole, with 8-10 million inmates.41
  Millions of people have died in the Chinese concentration camps known as laogai. Even the few books that have described what goes on in these camps are sufficient to reveal the ruthlessness of the communist regime. |
The income from what the prisoners
produce forms an important part of the Chinese budget. One study in 1999
revealed that 99 laogai camps recorded annual sales figures of 842.7 million
dollars.42 In other words, a great many of those people
all over the world who use goods made in China are actually using products
made by forced labor in Red Chinese state camps. For example, China is
one of the world's major tea producers and one-third of the tea it exports
comes from laogai camps. The worker slaves in those camps produce 120
different varieties of tea, and are punished if their products are not
up to a sufficiently high standard.43
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In fact, one of communist ideology's fundamental principles,
the idea that "people are only important so long as they are productive,
and the important thing is to increase production," also applies
in the laogai. In the view of the Chinese Communist Party, human
beings are the most important means of production, and everyone must serve
as vehicles of that production. Violence is, in turn, the most effective
way of raising production. Harry Wu, who spent 19 years in the laogai,
now claims asylum in the United States. He has since used the Laogai Association
he founded as a means of fighting the human rights violations in China.
Wu calculates that the laogai make a profit of some 100 million dollars
a year, a figure that has been accepted in official statements from Beijing.44
As we have seen, the laogai are not simply a prison system, but rather
an important political tool for the survival of the Communist Party. Mao
expressed this in these words:
Marxism holds that the state is a machine of violence for one class to rule another. Laogai facilities are one of the violence components of the state machine. They are tools representing the interests of the proletariat and the people's masses and exercising dictatorship over a minority of hostile elements originating from the exploiter classes.45
No matter how much the Chinese government attempts to conceal the true nature of these camps, those people who have spent many years in them, and then found asylum abroad, keep telling the world about what goes on in the laogai. One of these is Jean Pasqualini who spent many years in a laogai. He claims that the laogai is not an institution, as has been claimed, but rather a system of torture. He describes how the most inhuman things possible go on in these camps. Pasqualini claims deceptive language is employed by Red China when discussing the laogai or the punishment of prisoners. In his view:
Prisoners in China are still compelled to work, to "reconstruct socialism with their two hands," in order to "reform themselves," to be "born once again," to become "new men." Slave laborers in "Laogai" brigades not only work hard under inhumane conditions merely to purge their crimes but also to "expiate for their sins." The Chinese penal system has a very peculiar vocabulary: nearly every inhumane terminology has a human correlation. One is never "punished," one "undergoes reform." Prisons are often called "schools" where one serves time by "studying and learning" and "reforming oneself." A prisoner never gets beaten, he is "given a lesson." He never gets insulted, he just gets "criticized." And the jail authorities lose no time to let you know that "criticism is proof that the government is concerned about you. Without criticism there can be no progress!" Informers are those who help the government (that is, the warders) to do its work well. They also "help" prisoners to "recognize their mistakes." The word "help" is considered the most frightful term in the prison vocabulary by the prisoners! Prisoners don't spy on each other, they just engage in "mutual supervision." Prisoners who have served out their time are said to have graduated or "have gone back to society," "to have obtained a new lease on life" or to have "once again joined the ranks of the people".46
  A news report headed 'Work and be silent' in the French magazine Le Courrier International revealed the full details of the repressive nature of the camps. The report spoke of minors under age 18 being forced to work without pay and locked in cells like stables at night. The article described how the Guangdong camps in particular were no better than the concentration camps of World War II, and concluded: "It is a truly terrible situation. These people are in an awful position in which it is difficult even to survive…" |
This deceptive terminology employed by the Chinese communists was described in George Orwell's 1984, and recalls the Ministry of Love, whose true purpose was to inflict suffering. This false terminology employed by communist totalitarianism can be seen in all areas of life. Jean Pasqualini discusses that peculiar terminology:
The dictatorship of the proletariat has now given way to the "People's Democratic Dictatorship." As if a dictatorship can be democratic. Or democracy can tolerate a dictatorship. One has to be one or the other. Not both! The terminology has changed, but its purpose remains the same. The terrible famine of early '60s that claimed 20 million lives was for a long time officially known as the "three years of temporary economic difficulties (or hardship)." Not a single word about the victims of the consequences of the Great Leap Forward which continued to be extolled during the catastrophic period. On the contrary, the situation then was described as being "good and great."47
CHINA SELLS PRISONERS' INTERNAL ORGANS
Under the pretext of medical aid, benefiting the sick, and research, for years the Red Chinese administration has sold the internal organs of people condemned to death in order to provide itself with income. In fact, victims' organs are sold for high profit. After people have been executed, the state makes an average 10-15,000 dollars profit out of each usable organ. Under the law "On the Use of Executed Prisoners' Corpses or Organs" issues in the '70s, the use of such organs was legalized. If a prisoner has no family, or if he or they have given permission for his organs to be used after death, those organs are removed and sold after sentence has been carried out.
That might seem quite acceptable, but one can see how unjust this policy actually is when the prevailing conditions in China are considered.
  Thousands of people are executed every year in communist China. The bodies are then skinned and their kidneys removed. Once the organs have been removed, the bodies are then regarded as waste products, bagged up, and thrown onto a rubbish heap. |
As we have already seen, human life is probably the cheapest thing of all in China, and an average of 300 people a month are executed. The great majority of those who are executed have nobody to look out for their interests because families are often not told where prisoners are kept. They only learn their relatives have been killed after the event. Most of the time the families of those killed hesitate to ask for the body out of fear of retaliation. This then justifies the extraction of internal organs from almost all victims' bodies. Harry Wu describes this fact with an example from his own life:
It is universally known that Mainland China is a society closely controlled by the communist party. In the People's Republic of China, as soon as one is labeled by the Beijing government as a "class enemy" or a "counterrevolutionary," almost all relatives keep aloof from him/her, or accuse and cast him/her aside… During my long nineteen years in the Laogai camp systems practically no relatives came to see me. I strongly believe that should I have been executed then, my body would have fallen under the category "nobody claims or family refuses to claim the body" and could have been "used" by the government for a profit.48
What is more, even if families do hear about an execution, the Red Chinese government feels no great need to secure their permission. In one way or another, it will prevail upon them to donate their relative's organs. In 1997, in New York, one Chinese physician described how the internal organs of those condemned to death are removed without permission by the Chinese authorities:
 Harry Wu |
Before Wu Hongda (Harry Wu) testified [in the United States], there was nothing like "consent," but now [the Chinese government] has certain formalities, and prisoners must go through the formalities willy-nilly, so when foreigners ask about this, we have something to tell them. Please don't worry!49
Harry Wu quoted a hospital cadre who had many times extracted organs at execution sites as saying, "A shot in [his] head, blow away his brain, and the guy is brain-dead. [He] has no more thinking, ceases to be a human being, just a thing, and we use the waste,"50 revealing the attitude of the Chinese government. That is, killing prisoners is perfectly acceptable, and their bodies can be used for spare parts.
These organs are then sold by the state to hospitals abroad at extortionate prices. In fact, doctors in China advise patients from abroad to wait for the public execution season. Once organs have been removed from prisoners' bodies, the communist state says nothing about how and why they will be used. As always, Communist Party officials enjoy the highest priority. Then come foreign citizens or Chinese citizens living abroad. The local population can also make use of these organs only if they have the money to do so. Those with the very least access to these organs are the ordinary poor of society, no matter how great their need. That means the system is not for the benefit of humanity, but merely works to benefit Communist Party administrators and the elite. Most of the time the system goes ahead by stealing the organs of innocent people killed for having different beliefs or ideas than the party.
 Dr. Wang Guoqi |
Research has shown that some 20,000 kidney transplants were carried out in China between the early 1970s and the middle of 1995. In its 1996 report, Amnesty International said that the organs of 90 percent of people executed were removed. In its June 27, 2001, edition The Washington Post printed claims by a doctor involved in the organ trade, which underlined how widespread this trade was in China.
According to the story, burn specialist Wang Guoqi, participated in more than 100 operations during which organs were removed from the bodies of dead prisoners. Guoqi helped to collect prisoners' skin and corneas, and witnessed how organs were sold for enormous prices at the Tianjin Paramilitary Police General Brigade Hospital where he worked. Dr. Guoqi provided the time and date of the executions, the names of the doctors who took part in the operations, and the medical procedures involved and described in considerable detail how, after being killed, the prisoners would immediately be loaded onto ambulances and their organs removed. The bodies were later taken to the crematorium, where Dr. Guoqi and other doctors would strip off the corpses' skin. Dr. Guoqi explains that:
After all extractable tissues and organs were taken, what remained was an ugly heap of muscles, the blood vessels still bleeding, or all viscera exposed. Then the corpse was handed to the workers at the crematorium.51
Even worse, Chinese officials did not always wait for the prisoner to die before removing organs. One incident experienced by Dr. Guoqi illustrates this. An officer shot a prisoner, and although he was still alive, the doctors were ordered to take to the ambulance. As urologists immediately began removing his kidneys, and Guoqi and the other burn surgeons harvested the skin. They then placed the remains of the half dead prisoner in a plastic bag and threw him onto a rubbish heap.52
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FAMILY PLANNING, RED CHINESE STYLE: BABY MURDERS
China has the largest population of any country in the world, and has long attached great importance to family planning in order to ensure social stability, enforced by a number of legal sanctions. Yet in any society that has no fear of God and where religious and spiritual values have no importance, it is easy for a system to turn truly horrifying. In China, instead of educating families and offering proper planning with a variety of medical alternatives, population control can be carried out even by killing babies while still in the mother's womb, or shortly after birth. This truly ghastly situation reveals the level of insensitivity and callousness of a society that lives with no notion of God, and has destroyed all its spiritual values, can descend into.
Nobody knows exactly how many women in China have had to undergo forcible abortions, but even if the figure were only 1 percent, that would still mean that millions of children had been murdered.
Another aspect of Chinese brutality
is the policy of forced abortions. Women who are not permitted to
have children are either made to undergo abortions, even if they
are in an advanced stage of pregnancy, or else their children are
killed after birth. |
Gao Xiao Duan, the head of a "planned birth" office who sought asylum in the United States in 1998, made claims that once again drew the attention of world public opinion to the problem of abortion in China. At a press conference, Duan described to the whole world how he had witnessed women in China being forcibly sterilized to prevent them from having children, and how babies taken from their mother's wombs were left to die. In one incident he described, a nine-month pregnant woman's baby was taken away from her because her papers included the words "no birth certificate allowed":
In the operating room, I saw how the aborted child's lips were sucking, how its limbs were stretching. A doctor injected poison into its skull, and the child died and was thrown into the trash can.53
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Another example of children being killed was an incident in the Caidian village in the province of Hubei, which was reported in the world media despite the restrictions on news and communications in China. The Times carried the story, which horrified the whole world:
China has been shaken by one of the most horrifying
cases of official infanticide in recent memory after family planners drowned
a healthy baby in front of its parents… She [the baby's mother] was forcibly
injected with a saline solution to induce labor and kill the child. However,
the baby was born healthy, to the surprise of family planning officials
who had ordered the injection, which ordinarily destroys the infant's
nervous system. Immediately after the birth, they ordered the father to
kill the child outside the hospital. He refused to obey but was
so scared of further punishment that he left the crying baby behind in
an office building, where it was found by a doctor shortly afterwards.
The doctor took the baby back to the hospital and reunited it with its
mother and sent the family home. Five officials were waiting for them
in their living room. During the ensuing argument, the officials
grabbed the baby, dragged it out of the house and drowned it in a paddy
field in front of its parents.54
 Sabah, 6.8.01 CHINA FORCES WOMEN TO HAVE ABORTIONS VIOLENT MEANS OF POPULATION CONTROL  Sabah. 28.8.00 AS SOON AS A BABY WAS BORN IN CHINA IT WAS STRANGLED BY OFFICIALS BIRTH PLANNING BY MURDER |
nother important issue to consider when evaluating the Chinese family planning policy, as implemented in East Turkestan in particular, is the justifications given by the Chinese government in defending that policy. The most striking of these is the slogan "Forming a better quality nation." One often comes across this Darwinist slogan in fascist regimes, and it is a sign of the implementation of the theory of eugenics in China, which first came to light in the nineteenth century. The theory of eugenics means elimination of the sick and handicapped and the "improvement" of a race by encouraging healthy individuals to multiply. The best known example was the systematic killing carried out by the Nazis in order to build the Aryan race. (For details see Harun Yahya's Fascism: The Bloody Ideology of Darwinism, Arastirma Publishing, Istanbul, 2002).
The way the policy is implemented with regards to Muslims takes on more serious dimensions when ruthlessness and cruelty are unchecked. From time to time Chinese families are permitted more than the allowed number of children (or only very mild punishments are imposed for having larger families than allowed). Yet Muslims are, under no circumstances, allowed to have more than one child. Muslim women pregnant with a second child may be removed from their homes, even during the eighth or ninth month of pregnancy, and the baby removed. In fact, Chinese units generally move around from village to village and town to town, loading women about to have a second child onto trucks. The abortions are carried out under primitive conditions, and as a result the mothers frequently die.
As a result of this policy, the birth rate in East Turkestan has declined by some 19 percent over the last nine years.55 Arslan Alptekin, the son of the late leader Isa Yusuf Alptekin, recounts the stories of two of the hundreds of women who have died after forced abortions:
On May 6, 1986, a 29-year-old woman by the name of Turahan Aysem died from loss of blood after an abortion had been performed on her. In August, 1997, a woman called Cholpanham from the Toksu district of East Turkestan was forced to have an abortion because she was pregnant, and her husband was fined 3,000 yuan … Taken from her home by force, the woman fled the clinic at the first opportunity, took shelter in a cemetery and gave birth by herself. She was then taken home by another individual. However, she was detained again following a tip-off, and the baby was killed by being plunged into hot water at the police station she was taken to. Unable to bear the agony of that, the mother also died.56
One official from East Turkestan who did not want to identified said that, in a town of 200,000 people, some 35,000 pregnant women were subjected to government "checks", and 686 were obliged to have abortions. 993 women were forced to discontinue their pregnancies, and 10,708 women were forced to undergo sterilization. Again, according to the same official, in another town of 180,000 people only about 1,000 women were allowed to give birth (one woman out of every 35). At the same time, 40 people were sacked from their jobs because their wives were pregnant.57
Similar examples of such brutal family planning methods have been employed by dictators and despots in order to impose their own ideologies and secure their own regimes. One such was Pharaoh, who has gone down in history for the suffering he inflicted on a people who refused to abide by his false man-made religion, but had faith in God. Just like the atheist leaders in Red China, Pharaoh tried to prevent the number of believers growing and the weakening of his own authority over them by oppressing them and killing their children. This is described in the Qur'an:
Pharaoh exalted himself arrogantly in the land and divided its people into camps, oppressing one group of them by slaughtering their sons and letting their women live. He was one of the corrupters. (Qur'an, 28:4)
However, God punished Pharaoh for his brutality, causing him to die in
a manner that served as a lesson to all. There is no doubt that those
who share a similar mindset to Pharaoh and refuse to abandon their own
cruel ways will meet a similar fate to those who have gone before them.
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CHINESE FAMILIES WHO KILL THEIR
CHILDREN JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE GIRLS
Ever since the communists took power in China, the strict measures they have taken against religious teaching and religious life have led the Chinese people to undergo a material and spiritual collapse. The resemblance between this state of affairs in which human beings are regarded as a group of animals (and as a result violence is seen as something completely normal) and the atheist societies described in the Qur'an is most striking. One of these similarities is the way that people who have female babies kill them because of the low esteem in which their society holds daughters. This brutal practice is described in the Qur'an as a feature of ignorant societies, and is widespread today in China, a country that has rejected belief in God. When compulsory family planning policies are combined with China's anti-religious customs, the result is that a great many families killing their baby daughters. Chinese families are legally allowed only one child, and if their first baby is a girl, they frequently leave the child to die. The reason is because, according to Chinese custom, male children are more valuable, and if their first child is a girl, they will be unable to have a son. As a result families kill the daughter to prevent this from happening. It is estimated that some 1 million baby girls are abandoned to die in China every year. 1
In the Qur'an, however, it is stated that everyone, male and female, is equal in the sight of God. God has revealed that the only measure of superiority between people lies in godliness, avoiding all sin and disobedience that might harm people in the hereafter and lead to eternal torment: Mankind! We created you from a male and female, and made you into peoples and tribes so that you might come to know each other. The noblest among you in God's sight is the best in conduct. God is All-Knowing, All-Aware. (Qur'an, 49:13) It is morality, not the gender of children, that matters
to a believer. In societies that do not recognize God, however,
that have no fear of Him, nor belief in the hereafter, terrible
crimes such as killing baby girls just because they are female can
easily take place, and with the passage of time can even turn into
a custom. However, discriminating between male and female children
is fiercely condemned in the Qur'an, and God has described the situation
of those families that do so: |
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CHINESE MIGRATION TO EAST TURKESTAN
One of the assimilation policies implemented by China in East Turkestan is the systematic, organized migration of Chinese people to the region. This is actually the final stage of China's great plan for East Turkestan. After Muslims of East Turkestan are arrested, killed, sent to labor camps and forced to leave their land and, by encouraging Chinese settlement, they gradually reduce the local Muslims population. In this way, the Muslims who now represent the majority in East Turkestan will be systematically reduced in numbers, and will eventually have no claim to their own land.
When Mao seized power in China, Uighur Turks made up 93 percent of the population of East Turkestan, and Chinese only 6-7 percent. Over the 50 years that followed, the Chinese population has risen to 42 percent. It is estimated there are now more than 6 million Chinese in East Turkestan, whereas 50 years ago there had been fewer than 300,000. Policies, such as improving agriculture and protecting migrants, were brought in at the beginning of the 1950s to support the Chinese settlers in East Turkestan. The rise in ethnic tensions in the region at the beginning of the 1980s was accompanied by a relaxing in official policies in support of Chinese migration. That did not mean, however, that the government had abandoned its aim of turning the region into a Chinese province. This time, the Chinese element of the population was raised, thanks to the number of qualified personnel moved in to man the factories installed to serve the Chinese economy in East Turkestan.
China's policy of eroding the Muslim Turkish presence had the effect of making Muslims second class citizens in their own land in the face of the Chinese settlers. The settlers who poured into the country were placed in the most productive areas, and the local people were forced to move into arid ones. The Chinese are able to enjoy all political, economic, technological and social benefits, while the Muslims have grown ever poorer. The difference in the living standards of the local Muslims and the Chinese settlers is described by Arslan Alptekin:
The Turks are made to do the very hardest jobs for subsistence wages, while the Chinese migrants are given special political and economic privileges. The Muslim people live in rural areas or in shanty towns, while special settlement areas with full infrastructure have been built for the Chinese migrants. Social inequality is weighted against the Turkish people from all points of view.58
China's attempts to increase the number of Chinese in East Turkestan were sped up in the 1990s. In order to justify that increase, the Red Chinese government speaks about various economic investments, and special projects, most of which have been developed solely with that in mind. For instance, the October, 1992, edition of the Hong Kong magazine Trend disclosed a secret program which planned the settlement of 5 million Chinese in East Turkestan by the year 2000. This figure does not include the People's Liberation Army units who are permanently stationed there, qualified Chinese personnel, or convicted Chinese criminals who have been deliberately sent to the region.59
THE ROLE OF THE BIN TUAN IN EAST TURKESTAN
Following the communist takeover, one of the most important elements of Mao's Great Leap Forward was the investments made in ethnically differentiated regions such as East Turkestan. Within the framework of the program, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), known as the Bin tuan, was set up in the 1950s with the alleged purpose of developing East Turkestan. The so-called civilian members of that force were supposed to reconstruct this backward area of China. As a result, ethnic Chinese were brought in from all parts of the country and began working in the camps that had been set up.
As the military units that had been brought in to quell the Muslim uprising against the Chinese administration found they had less to do, the unit set up to support agricultural development programs was dissolved in 1975. In 1981, the Bin tuan was reformed under the peculiar name "Xth Agricultural Division," and is still active today. It consists of some 2.28 million people, 1 million of whom are workers. Its responsibilities include ruthlessly suppressing Muslim independence movements, running the laogai labor camps, and bringing in hundreds of thousands of Chinese criminals and settling them in East Turkestan.
As many academics have revealed, the Bin tuan's real purpose is the colonialization of East Turkestan. In his book New Ghosts Old Ghosts - Prisons and Labor Reform Camps in China, for instance, James D. Seymour of Columbia University's East Asian Institute and Richard Anderson provide considerable detail about the Bin tuan, and unravel the links between the organization and the prisons and labor camps. Bin tuan is established along the border separating the north and south of East Turkestan. It has jurisdiction over several million hectares of land and is largely made up of ethnic Chinese. It is independent of the Uighur Autonomous Administration and has its own security forces, courts, and agricultural and industrial enterprises. It also runs a large network of labor camps and prisons.60
More surprisingly, these so-called "production units" of Red China that violate human rights are financed by the World Bank. China set out a number of programs under the Great Leap Forward and secured World Bank support for them. A number of work areas were to be set up, allegedly to regenerate East Turkestan and help it to develop, which would both help the economy and create employment for the local population. Yet, the project actually developed in a very different way than the paper plan. These work areas were labor camps to punish China's criminals, principally Muslims. The revenues obtained went, not to the local economy, but to the central economy. That was the true face of the Great Leap Forward project backed by the World Bank. A 1998 report by Dr. Paul George emphasized how Harry Wu described the position:
The World Bank became embroiled in a major controversy over the XPCC in 1996 when the leading Chinese dissident, Harry Wu, testified before the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the organization was running 14 forced labour camps, or Laogai, in Xinjiang under Bank supported development projects. The World Bank loans had been aimed at helping the Uighurs but, according to testimony from two Uighur former officials from the XPCC, had actually strengthened government control over the region and facilitated a crackdown against anti-Chinese dissidents.61
Officials estimate that, in the years that followed, the amount of land controlled by the Bin tuan actually tripled. That is because an independent Chinese province was slowly emerging within East Turkestan. Moreover, China always looked on the organization as one of the basic elements in ensuring stability in East Turkestan. One important example of this was the way that, after an uprising in Gulja in 1997, the Bin tuan 4th Unit was positioned in the region and used to capture and arrest Muslims. Still today the organization is still performing its role of intimidating Muslims.
The Red Chinese regime sends hundreds of thousands of people convicted of murder, rape and theft to East Turkestan, but those who have served their sentences are still not allowed to return to China. The great majority of these people are settled on land that Muslims have been thrown off. Such people are known as "reformed farmers," and are allowed to bring their families to join them, and thus to settle in East Turkestan.
Together with a rise in the numbers of these so-called reformed farmers, the crime rate in East Turkestan has also risen, particularly murder, rape, theft and child kidnapping against the Muslim population. Very seldom are kidnapped children found. The Muslim people fear that such children are either taken to China and sold, or else killed and their bodies used in the organ trade. The police, who are again mainly Chinese, refuse to take Muslims' complaints seriously, and often do little to properly protect them.62
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What we have seen in considerable detail are examples of Darwinist-communist
brutality. Women forced to undergo abortions and being subjected to inhuman
practices, (such as the killing of babies in their cradles under the pretext
of population control) and the use of people as guinea pigs in nuclear
tests (which will be examined in more detail in the later sections of
the book) are all the result of the Darwinist idea that regards people
as animals. Such cruelty is the implementation in a communist state of
the Darwinist suggestion that sees life as a struggle of self interest.
It can only be brought to an end when that dark ideology is wiped off
the face of the earth.
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ISRAEL ARMS THE CHINESE ARMY
When one compares China's actions in East Turkestan with those of Israel in Palestine, one encounters a number of similarities, even though the former has a communist form of government and the latter a capitalist one. Both countries are engaged upon a campaign of genocide against Muslims. Both states are occupying lands that belong to Muslims, and the Muslim populations are forced to live under military, political and economic occupation. Torture, groundless detentions, massacre and slaughter are some of the commonest words in both regions. This similarity between China and Israel has formed the basis of cooperation between them. China obtains some weapons for its People's Liberation Army from Israel. The military relationship between China and Israel began in the first half of the 1970s. Israel first helped the Chinese army update its old Soviet weapons. After the mid-1980s, official contact was established between the Chinese and Israeli ambassadors at the United Nations. This relationship was furthered under such pretexts as "agricultural cooperation," but what really kept it on its feet were the arms China secured from Israel. The considerable quantities of arms sales by Israel to China were carried out by Israeli businessman Shaul Eisenberg, who worked for Mossad. After everything had been placed on a firm footing, secret agreements and delivery were the responsibility of Mossad.1
During a visit by Yitzhak Rabin to Beijing in 1993, cooperation agreements were signed between Israel and China on nuclear testing and technology. The scale of the military cooperation between the two countries, which continued to develop further in the ensuing years, was discussed by the Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post in its September 10, 1998, issue: Israel's got the defense technology. China wants it. The Chinese seem to value the Jewish mind highly. But what they clearly want is "technology," and the high-tech weapons systems Jewish minds in Israel have developed during 50 years of conflict and several wars… Israel's defense ties with China go back to the late 1970s, way before diplomatic relations were established in 1992… Hundreds of skilled Israeli technicians, engineers and weapons experts began surfacing in China - having reportedly entered using passports of various countries - and were soon busy at work. The Sino-Israel partnership only became public knowledge during a military parade in Beijing, when Western military attaches noticed that the tanks being displayed were equipped with an Israeli-invented "thermal fume-extraction sleeve" on the barrels of their cannons.2 At the basis of this rapprochement lies the unease
felt by China at the rise of Islam in East Turkestan or the regions
around it. In the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, it
was reported that the Chinese-Israeli alliance was based on China's
attempts to "neutralize Islamic movements", and that China was
alarmed at the presence of some 20 million Muslims in East Turkestan.3 |
CHINA'S ISRAELI MODEL
One of the projects prepared by China to settle another 5 million Chinese
in East Turkestan was described in the International Herald Tribune.
The report not only discussed the project itself, but also drew attention
to the similarities between the practices in China and Israel. Under the
project, a 14 billion dollar investment was to be made in a region in
which Chinese people had been a minority for hundreds of years (in other
words, East Turkestan), and this would allow the agricultural and underground
resources of the region to be used at full capacity by the Chinese economy.
The project was actually a cunning way of disguising further Chinese migration into the region. Despite all the investments and advantages bestowed on Chinese migrants, their numbers had actually dropped. The Chinese government therefore began to establish Chinese settlements in exactly the same way that Israel is now doing in Palestinian territory. In order to make migration seem more attractive to Chinese people facing hunger and poverty in other regions, a number of economic investments were planned. The aim was to prevent a return wave of migration back to China and to tilt the population balance in China's favor.
As we have seen, the plan bore all the signs of Israeli colonialism. It appears that not only does Israel support China by selling it arms and providing intelligence, but it also recommends that Red China employ the same methods of violence and repression (since it believes that these have been successful) that it used against the Muslims of Palestine. Just like Israel, Red China has occupied a land that does not belong to it, and in the same way that Israel constantly builds settlements on Palestinian lands in the face of protests from the whole world, China also intends to eliminate the Muslims from the land it has occupied by bringing in its own settlers.
  The left picture from the French magazine Le Figaro documents the cruelty and torture inflicted on the people of East Turkestan by the Chinese police.Those who protest against the Chinese oppression of the people of East Turkestan are brought before the public and humiliated by Chinese troops. (right) This is generally followed by torture and death. |
The historian Michael Dillon, who teaches modern Chinese history at Britain's University of Durham, offered the following analysis of the intention behind this policy of China's in an article of his titled "China Goes West: Laudable Development? Ethnic Provocation?":
China is embarking on an ambitious project to develop
its vast western regions, for centuries the poorest and least densely
inhabited areas of the country. The overt motivation is an economic one,
specifically the relief of poverty. But the "Go West" (Xibu da
kaifa) project could dramatically alter the ethnic and social balance
of the region and is likely to increase inter-ethnic conflict.63
 China's aim is not to bring about economic development in East Turkestan, but rather to intimidate the local population by the use of military force. |
As Dillon stated, the project is one of modern colonialism, aimed at increasing ethnic conflict in the region and thus justifying a policy of oppression against the Muslims of East Turkestan. Under the guise of economic reconstruction, China is also trying to finance this project with Western capital. Dillon describes the situation in these words: In these tense circumstances, economic development can never be merely a neutral device for the alleviation of poverty. It is a conscious political tool, designed to stabilize the western regions, which borders with Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. Stabilization necessitates Chinese government suppression, by political or military means, of movements demanding autonomy or independence. The Chinese government is thus caught in a bind. China cannot attract foreign capital [to] China's West if there is constant danger of riots, demonstrations and sabotage. 64
The words "economic reconstruction," are actually a tool employed by China to attract foreign capital into the region. The real aim is to uphold a system and its component bodies that will allow it to exploit the region for its own interests. As we saw in the preceding section, China has managed to take advantage of foreign capital under a number of pretexts, and used it to oppress the Muslims of East Turkestan and to violate their human rights in a most ruthless manner. For instance, a similar reconstruction plan was implemented in Kashgar, and Muslim farmers were forced off their own lands and obliged to work elsewhere. In fact, every initiative that Red China has undertaken to pull the wool over the eyes of the West has resulted in greater oppression of Muslims, a rise in violence, and in their being forced to give up their land to the Chinese. It is quite obvious that if this latest Israeli-inspired plan goes ahead it will just mean greater suffering and difficulties for the local Muslim people.
THE AUTONOMOUS ADMINISTRATION DECEPTION
East Turkestan is today known in political literature as the "Uighur Autonomous Region of Sinkiang." The concept of "autonomous administration" means a form of government that answers not to the wishes and instructions of central administration, but rather to the needs and wishes of the majority of the population, and is indeed semi-independent. However, the form of autonomous administration practiced in East Turkestan bears little similarity to this generally accepted definition. Although Uighur Turks are found in the various administrative bodies in the region, it is impossible for them to act in the light of the wishes and needs of the people, because, although they may be in charge of offices, they actually enjoy little real authority.
Any administrator who tries to act in the light of the people's wishes and needs is often punished by being removed from his post. In the event of any dispute between a Chinese administrator and an Uighur one, the East Turkestanian is usually punished.
   Communist China's economic encirclement of East Turkestan has led to the local population living in misery and poverty. |
Autonomous administration, authority, equality between different ethnic groups, minority rights, and other rights that are protected by law, are all regularly being violated by Beijing (which prepared the laws). All authority lies in the hands of the Chinese. The political, economic, supervisory and military decision-making powers of those ethnic groups that are appointed to autonomous administration bodies as puppets are all actually under the control of the Chinese Communist Party. The article "Pekin's Campaign to Destroy Uighur Culture" by the German writer Ulrich Schmid sets out the position in these terms:
 |
In other words, the real pattern of power here in China's most northwesterly province differs vastly from the rosy façade… in China the real power lies not with the organs of government but with the leadership of the Communist Party at various levels.65
In a report about East Turkestan, Der Spiegel magazine said that the area was a Chinese colony rather than having an autonomous administration, and that Chinese administrators were insensitive to the Muslim Uighur population:
The Chinese rule in Xinjiang is in every respect a colonial phenomenon. Although they have lived in this country for decades none of the Chinese officials speak the local language. They are not interested in the country where they earn their living. They undermine the local peoples' customs. In brief, the Chinese officials hate the local people...66
Another indication that East Turkestan is not autonomous, but rather a colonized country, is the fact that the people under the administration are not free to travel as they wish in their own land. Despite Article 5 of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Treaty, the Chinese government restricts freedom of movement in East Turkestan. People in East Turkestan are not allowed to migrate from one village to another, or to another province or city at will, but need to obtain permission first. That is why 90 percent of the East Turkestan population live in rural areas. Restrictions are imposed on their right to travel abroad. Even though they may have no record of any kind, most people are not allowed to go abroad (or even to travel to other regions in China).
The list of similar methods of oppression is long. Another example is, East Turkestan Muslims are not allowed to go on the hajj pilgrimage, which is an obligation incumbent on all able Muslims. When 1,200 Uighurs were ready to go abroad to participate in the hajj in 1999, their passports were seized by the police, and 122 elderly Uighurs who objected were detained.67
 
China's constantly sending Chinese
migrants to East Turkestan results in the Muslim population having
to leave their homes and resettle in rural areas. The Muslims enjoy
very few possibilities, and are able to educate their children under
the most difficult conditions. |
ECONOMIC PRESSURE IN EAST TURKESTAN
Despite all its underground wealth and fertile land, East Turkestan is currently one of the poorest regions in China. This contradiction can be easier understood by bearing in mind that East Turkestan is a supplier of raw materials for the Chinese economy. Such underground resources as uranium, natural gas, oil, and gold are transferred from East Turkestan to China, and all aspects of the use of these resources are under central government control. The Muslims of East Turkestan, to whom those resources actually belong, cannot even find out the production levels, nor what their share of the profit actually is.
A brief look at the statistics will suffice to demonstrate the vital importance to China of East Turkestan's natural resources. In the first quarter of 1989, East Turkestan sent 7.68 million barrels of crude oil, 906 thousand tons of coal, and 444 thousand tons of raw salt to China.68 In 1993, 10.4 million metric tons of crude oil were extracted in East Turkestan, yet all the profit went to China.69 China exploits East Turkestan's resources for its own economy and citizens, and condemns the Muslim population to poverty and hunger.
Economic oppression is an important part of the genocide that China is carrying out in East Turkestan. Most of the East Turkestan population are today living in poverty, and more than 80 percent subsist below the minimum dietary threshold. On account of the discriminatory policies that are also pursued in the field of education, Muslim Uighurs are unable to educate themselves to find better employment.
|
Since almost all areas of employment in East Turkestan are in Chinese hands, the Muslim population is facing a severe unemployment problem. Yet despite this, the Chinese government still keeps transferring people from the west of China to work in the region. In this way the government is not only trying to alter the population balance in its own favor, but is also trying to maintain control of the East Turkestan economy. The statistics reveal the scale of China's repressive policies: Only ten percent of the 200,000 industrial workers around the capital, Urumchi, are Uighurs, the rest are Chinese. Only 10 percent of the workers in a textile plant near Urumchi are Uighurs. The number of Uighurs in one textile plant near Kashgar which employs 12,000 people is only 800. A tractor factory near Urumchi has 2,100 workers, yet only 13 of these are Uighurs. A new petro-chemical plant was opened in the city of Poskam in 1986, and all of the 2,200 workers are Chinese.71
The number of Chinese oil companies coming to East Turkestan in search of oil has grown rapidly since 1989, although almost all of the 20,000 workers employed in the Tarim Basin alone were selected from among the Chinese population.72 This discriminatory policy against the people of East Turkestan has gone so far that Chinese people who know nothing about the region's history, culture or civilization have started working there as tourist guides. In this way, China is able to keep control of the information imparted to those tourists who do visit the region, and in this way prevent the Muslims of East Turkestan from having their voices heard.
Muslims who make a living from agriculture have been
made to pay higher taxes under new laws passed by Red China. In some regions,
farmers are made to sell their produce to the state for half the normal
price, whereas higher prices are paid to Chinese farmers. Some lands belonging
to Muslim farmers are compulsorily purchased, and these people are then
obliged to join the ranks of the unemployed and the poor. The unpaid compulsory
service that the Muslims of East Turkestan are compelled to provide also
makes life even harder for the already impoverished farmers. Under this
unjust system, Muslim Uighurs in East Turkestan are forced to work on
the job given them by the Communist Party without pay for a month, or
a month and a half, every year. Yet the Chinese, in flagrant violation
of the period set out in the relevant law, make the local population (and
the farmers in particular) work unpaid for five or six months a year.
The Turkish farmers spend most of their time working like slaves on their
own land, and live in poverty in the midst of great wealth.73
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THE MUSLIM POPULATION IS CONDEMNED TO POVERTY WHILE MANY CHINESE LIVE IN PLENTY
There is a huge difference in living standards in those areas of East Turkestan inhabited by Chinese settlers and those where the Uighur Turks form the majority. Urumchi (above), for instance, the capital, with its large numbers of Chinese, looks just like a modern city, while Kashgar, with its mainly Muslim population (left) suffers from lack of infrastructure and poverty caused by the exploitation of its natural resources. Most of the people have great difficulties making ends meet, and transportation is by horse and cart over earth tracks. The basic reason for this is the continuing cruelty inflicted by the Chinese government on the people of East Turkestan for more than half a century. The people have had all their economic, political and legal rights taken away from them, and are forced to live within the parameters set out for them by the Communist Party. Few Muslims live in Urumchi, with its luxury hotels, shopping centers, plazas and motorways, and those who do run small restaurants or work as cleaners or janitors etc. The people have no right to invest or engage in commerce, and are therefore restricted to certain kinds of jobs. This shows that the people of East Turkestan, the cradle of a deep-rooted civilization which enjoys rich natural resources, are treated as second-class citizens in their own land.
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CHINA'S NUCLEAR TEST FIELD: EAST TURKESTAN
 Akit, 12.10.00 NUCLEAR VICTIMS |
Despite the opposition of a great many international organizations, China has carried out a number of nuclear tests in the Lop Nor district of East Turkestan since 1961. These tests lead to major destruction of the natural environment in the region, and severe damage to its ecological balance endangering human life, polluting drinking water and food supplies. As a result, thousands of animals have perished and a large number of people have died, and there has been a huge increase in the number of babies born with deformities.
 Egitim Bilim Dergisi, 11.00 THE HUMAN TRAGEDY IN EAST TURKESTAN According to official figures, 210,000 people have been slaughtered as a result of atom and thermo-nuclear bomb tests. Independent observers put the figure at 250,000.  Akit, 12.10.00 EAST TURKESTAN, ANOTHER WORD FOR GENOCIDE Communist China has slaughtered 210,000 innocent people in nuclear tests alone. |
Although the number of victims of the nuclear tests in East Turkestan has not been officially revealed, it is estimated that some 210,000 people have died from radioactive fallout. Radioactive fallout also gives rise to cancer, and a 10 percent rise in the number of incidents of cancer has been recorded.74 In a 1993 report, released by the Registry of the People's Hospital of Urumchi, no more than a handful of fatal incidents of cancer were recorded in the 1960s, but this has risen to dozens by the 1970s. A later hospital report stated that new reports of cancer in this hospital number at least 70 a day out of an average 1,500 daily visits.75 Even worse is the fact that poor medical aid is provided for the region in which cancer and other diseases caused by radioactive pollution are rife.
With their deeds and great cruelty, Mao and his followers are actually an example of the mentality that has rejected the existence of God down the ages. From this point of view, Mao's practices bear similarities to the polytheists of Mecca who expelled the companions of the Prophet because of their belief, Nimrod who threw the Prophet Abraham, peace be upon him, into the flames because he rejected the idols of the community in which he lived, and Pharaoh who killed the children of the People of Israel because they refused to accept his divinity and, instead, remained loyal to the Prophet Moses, peace be upon him.
The common feature of all these God-denying despots was that they regarded the true religion and those who lived by it as their greatest enemies. That enmity then turns into terrible anger and hatred, and they try to turn the believers from the true path by means of unbelievable torture and oppression. Yet they forget one thing: God is the Lord of all, and that the victory belongs to God and those who believe in Him. That is a law of God, and will apply in the same way in the future as it did in the past. By the will of God, believers will "certainly be given victory." (Qur'an, 37:172)
25. The Independent, October 20, 1988
26. Micheal Hoffman, "World Forgets Beijing's Uighur Victims,"
Mainichi Daily News, June 29, 2000
27. Killing By Quota, Killing for Profit: Executions and
Transplants in China, Laogai Research Foundation, www.laogai.org/reports (emphasis
added)
28. Killing by Quota, Killing for Profit: Executions anda
Transplants in China, Laogai Research Foundation, www.laogai.org/reports (emphasis
added)
29. Angus Roxburgh, "How Russia Faced Its Dark Past," BBC
News Online news.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2821281.stm
(emphasis added)
30. Undisguised Killing: Public Executions in China, Laogai
Research Foundation Special Report, www.laogai.org/reports/killing.htm (emphasis
added)
31. Undisguised Killing: Public Executions in China, Laogai
Research Foundation Special Report, www.laogai.org/reports/killing.htm
32. Myriam Marquez, "Let's See Beijing's Butchers Are Really
Good Sports," Orlando Sentinel, July 16, 2001
33. Gross Violations of Human Rights in the Xinjiang Uighur
Autonomous Region, Amnesty International Report, April 1, 1999
34. Gross Violations of Human Rights in the Xinjiang Uighur
Autonomous Region, Amnesty International Report, April 1, 1999 (emphasis added)
35. Gross Violations of Human Rights in the Xinjiang Uighur
Autonomous Region, Amnesty International Report, April 1, 1999 (emphasis added)
36. Gross Violations of Human Rights in the Xinjiang Uighur
Autonomous Region, Amnesty International Report, April 1, 1999 (emphasis added)
37. Dogu Turkistan 1999 Insan Haklari Ihlalleri Raporu
(East Turkestan 1999 Human Rights Violations Report), www.doguTurkestan.net/ih/rapor99.html
38. Dogu Turkistan 1999 Insan Haklari Ihlalleri Raporu
(East Turkestan 1999 Human Rights Violations Report), www.doguTurkestan.net/ih/rapor99.html
39. Nova Magazine, April 1997
40. John Chan, "Prisoners Die in Chinese
Mines: An Indictment of 'Reform Through Labour'," WSWS (World Socialist Website),
June 20, 2001
41. Libération, January 28, 1997
42. John Chan, "Prisoners Die in Chinese Mines: An Indictment
of 'Reform Through Labour'," WSWS (World Socialist Website), June 20, 2001
43. Libération, January 28, 1997
44. Harry Wu, in La Voix du Tibet, 04.1997
45. Harry Wu, "China's Gulag Suppressing Dissent Through
Laogai," Harvard International Review, Winter 1997/1998 (emphasis added)
46. Jean Pasqualini, "Beijing's Old Trick," Laogai Research
Foundation, www.laogai.org/commentary.htm
47. Jean Pasqualini, "Beijing's Old Trick," Laogai Research
Foundation, www.laogai.org/commentary.htm
48. Testimony of Harry Wu On Organ Trafficking By Chinese
Communist Government, Laogai Research Foundation, www.laogai.org/testimony
49. Testimony of Harry Wu On Organ Trafficking By Chinese
Communist Government, Laogai Research Foundation, www.laogai.org/testimony
50. Testimony of Harry Wu On Organ Trafficking By Chinese
Communist Government, Laogai Research Foundation, www.laogai.org/testimony
51. Steven Mufson, "Chinese Doctor Tells of Organ Removals
After Executions," The Washington Post, June 27, 2001
52. Steven Mufson, "Chinese Doctor Tells of Organ Removals
After Executions," The Washington Post, June 27, 2001
53. Ivo Dawnay, "Defector Reveals the Horror of China's
One-Child Law," Sunday Telegraph, June 14, 1998 (emphasis added)
54. Oliver August, "Chinese Kill Baby to Enforce Birth
Rule," The Times, August 24, 2000 (emphasis added)
55. "China Curbs Births in the West, But Wants More People
to Move There," Agence France Presse, August 18, 2000
56. Yeni Asya, Turkey, February 3, 2001 (emphasis added)
57. "Chinese Policy, Human Rights Abuses and The Consequences,"
East Turkestan Information, A Publication of the Eastern Turkestan Union in
Europe, www.caccp.org/et/etiu1.html
58. Yeni Asya, Turkey, February 3, 2001
59. The Trend, Hong Kong, October 1992
60. James D. Seymour, Richard Anderson, New Ghosts Old
Ghosts- Prisons and Labor Reform Camps in China, M. E. Sharpe, 1998, pp. 45-70
61. Dr. Paul George, "Islamic Unrest In The Xinjiang Autonomous
Region," Commentary No. 73, Spring 1998 (emphasis added)
62. Eastern Turkestan Information Bulletin, Munich, December
1993
63. Michael Dillon, "China Goes West: Laudable Development?
Ethnic Provocation?" December 6, 2000, www.cacaianalyst.org (emphasis added)
64. Michael Dillon, "China Goes West: Laudable Development?
Ethnic Provocation?" December 6, 2000, www.cacaianalyst.org (emphasis added)
65. Ulrich Schmid, "Peking's Campaign to Destroy Uigur
Culture," June 9, 2001
66. Der Spiegel, August 16, 1993 (emphasis added)
67. Dogu Turkistan 1999 Insan Haklari Ihlalleri Raporu
(East Turkestan 1999 Human Rights Violations Report), www.doguturkistan.net/ih/rapor99.html
68. Foreign Broadcast Information Service, April 20, 1989
69. The Wall Street Journal, October 21, 1994
70. Der Spiegel, No 33, 1993
71. Der Spiegel, November 7, 1993
72. The Wall Street Journal, October 21, 1994
73. Yeni Forum, Turkey, April 16-30, 1988
74. Yeni Hayat, Almaty, January 21, 1995
75. "Chinese Policy, Human Rights Abuses and The Consequences,"
East Turkestan Information, A Publication of the Eastern Turkestan Union in
Europe, www.caccp.org/et/etiu1.html
COMMUNIST CHINA'S CONTROL OVER EAST TURKESTAN
God does not love corruption.
(Qur'an, 2:205)
COMMUNIST CHINA'S CONTROL
OVER
EAST TURKESTAN
As we have seen, there are many economic reasons why East Turkestan is very important to China. That country's interest in east Turkestan goes back thousands of years and the region has frequently been occupied by China, either fully or in part.
 Mao saluting his army after the communists had captured Beijing. |
The latest Chinese occupation, that is still in existence today, began in the middle of the 1700s. The civil conflicts in East Turkestan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries not only damaged popular unity, but also weakened the state itself. At the same time, the Manchus came to power in China and the Manchu dynasty began. Throughout their rule, East Turkestan was run by centrally appointed governors and bureaucrats. In 1911 the Manchu Empire was overthrown and replaced by the Chinese Republic under Sun Yat Sen, the leader of the Kuomintang party, and East Turkestan was totally enslaved.
The cruelty inflicted on the people of East Turkestan by the Kuomintang regime led to a popular uprising and a declaration of independence in 1931. Up until then, the Muslims of East Turkestan, aware of the political realities of the time, avoided any initiatives aimed at securing independence. It was not only China that had its sights set on the region, but Soviet Russia was also waiting for a chance to take it over. The people of East Turkestan were aware of this (and of the sufferings the Russians had inflicted on the Muslims of West Turkestan) and for this reason preferred to accept the status quo rather than fall into communist hands. However, the 1931 move towards independence left the Muslims facing the very threat they had feared. China was able to put the movement down only with help from Soviet Russia, and a large part of the region came under Soviet control.
That interesting outcome was the result of a number of developments: China realized that it would be unable to quell the East Turkestan uprising on its own, and signed a secret agreement with Soviet Russia. As a result it acquired weapons and troops from the Russians. Despite this move, however, it still proved impossible to put the uprising down. In 1933, the Red Army invaded East Turkestan by land and defeated the Muslim forces. Following a number of battles in 1934-1937, East Turkestan found itself under de facto Soviet rule. The savagery and oppression inflicted on the peoples of the Soviet republics were now visited on the Muslims of East Turkestan. The Red Army carried out mass killings, tore down mosques, and even raped women.
With the outbreak of the Second World War, the Russians withdrew their forces from East Turkestan. As the nationalist Chinese government was defeated by Mao's communist guerillas in various regions of the country, it fled to Formosa (Taiwan). China fell to the communists, and East Turkestan with it.
Within the course of that process, the people of East Turkestan once more made a bid for independence, and the independent Republic of East Turkestan was declared in 1944, though it only lasted until Mao took control of China in 1949.
THE "RED" AGE IN EAST TURKESTAN
 The communists slaughtered thousands of innocent people during their take-over in China. |
The first communist government in the world came to power in Russia.
The Muslims of East Turkestan closely followed the developments in West
Turkestan (Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Turkmen and Tajik) territories under
Soviet domination, with which they shared common borders and historical,
religious, ethnic and cultural links. In particular, those such as the
late Isa Yusuf Alptekin (who served in West Turkestan and witnessed the
communist Russian oppression at first hand), warned both the Chinese government
and the Muslims of East Turkestan against the communist menace. It was
a common communist tactic to pay lip service to such concepts as equality,
social justice and the freedoms of nations until they came to power, at
which time things change. Equality would be replaced by the orders of
the Politbureau, social justice by exploitation, and freedoms by expulsions,
torture, labor camps, and mass executions.
Indeed, those same developments were
experienced in East Turkestan. At the 7th Congress in 1945, before coming
to power, Mao declared that when the communists did come to power, they
would allow different ethnic groups to determine their own futures and
establish their own administrations.23 As soon as they
came to power, however, they ignored those promises and declared: "For
two thousand years Xinjiang has been an inalienable part of an indivisible
China; therefore, there would be no sense in dividing China into federated
republics; this is a demand hostile to history and socialism…"24
Cruelty and oppression followed. First, the leaders of the Republic of East Turkestan were killed in a mysterious plane crash on their way to a meeting with Chairman Mao. Later, the Red Chinese government, which regarded East Turkestan as part of its own territory (and was unwilling to let it go) set about a ruthless slaughter of the Muslim population. The first war was waged against the Muslims' beliefs. Schools providing religious instruction were closed, religious leaders were arrested, and the majority of them were killed. Portraits of Mao and Communist Party flags were hung up in mosques, and Muslims were ordered to show them due respect. Some Muslims were arrested and executed on the pretext of being pan-Turkish, others of being pan-Islamic. Another aspect of the repression was forced exile. Many Muslims who were forced off their lands died en route because of the weather conditions. Between 1949 and 1952, 2.8 million East Turkestan Muslims were killed by various means. The figure was 3.5 million between 1952 and 1957, 6.7 million between 1958 and 1960, and 13.3 million between 1961 and 1965.
   Oppression, slaughter and torture are integral parts of the communist regime. Scenes of this savagery against the Muslims of East Turkestan are also frequently witnessed in China itself. |
As the Muslims were being systematically exterminated, Chinese were brought
in to replace them in an attempt to prevent Muslims' rightful claims to
their own land. Another method employed by the Mao regime, which wanted
to turn East Turkestan into a province of China, was "family planning"
by means of forced abortions. This communist brutality, which is still
going on today, will be considered in more detail in subsequent chapters
of this book.
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Prominent Names In East Turkestan's
Struggle For Freedom
The beginning of the twentieth century was a time when national and spiritual feelings in East Turkestan began to stir. This "national awakening" of the Uighur Turks came about thanks to Abdulqadir Damulla, who began his activities following a trip to Muslim countries such as Turkey, Egypt and Syria. One of the most important needs of the time was for the people to be made aware of their sacred values and historical heritage. Damulla opened a school called the Matla'ul Hidayat, and began to teach the young people of East Turkestan about their history, as well as helping to raise the popular consciousness by means of the books he published. Following Damulla, the struggle in East Turkestan was taken on by the "the Three Masters," Isa Yusuf Alptekin, Muhammed Emin Bugra, and Mesud Sabri Baykuzu. Baykuzu's struggle ended with his arrest by the communist Chinese administration in 1951 (and he was killed by lethal injection the following year). Alptekin and Bugra continued the struggle until the very end of their lives.
Alptekin served as the secretary of the East Turkestan Provincial Government, itself subordinate to China, and spent his whole life speaking about the rightful claims of East Turkestan on international platforms and trying to free the Muslims. He started working at the Chinese Consulate in West Turkestan at the age of 26. This was a time when the Soviet oppression of the Turkish Muslims of West Turkestan was at its height, and saw the start of Alptekin's struggle as he witnessed communist mentality and practice first hand. Throughout his time in West Turkestan, he established contacts with people who supported independence for East Turkestan (but had to carry out his activities in secret). One of the subjects Alptekin was most concerned with was protecting the people from communism. He even made contacts within the Chinese government in the belief that this would enable him to operate more effectively against communism. He also represented his country at the Chinese parliament between 1936 and 1945. When the communists first seized Beijing and then marched towards East Turkestan, Alptekin was forced to abandon his country. In 1954 he settled in Istanbul and began to work from there. He traveled to many countries in order to tell the world about the suffering in East Turkestan, and to host conferences, attend panels, and give speeches at universities. Muhammed Emin Bugra's name went down in the history of the East Turkestan struggle with his extensive work Dogu Turkistan Tarihi (The History of East Turkestan). He personally served in the 1931 independence movement, and was instrumental in freeing such cities as Hotan and Yarkent from Chinese occupation. He served as a minister in the East Turkestan state established in 1944, and sought asylum in India shortly before the Chinese invasion. From there he moved to Turkey, and carried on the fight from there. The lifelong struggle waged with honor by these patriots is still going on today. There are currently some 20 associations and organizations active on East Turkestan's behalf in the international arena. These all work together under the umbrella of the East Turkestan National Council (ETNC), and are working to have the voice of the people of East Turkestan heard by the outside world. |
23. Lydia Holubnchy, The East Turkic Review, No 4, 1960, Munich,
p. 94
24. Ziya Samedi, Kommunizim Tugi, Almaty, March 18, 1979
EAST TURKESTAN: A CROSSROAD OF CIVILIZATIONS
God does not love corruption.
(Qur'an, 2:205)
EAST TURKESTAN: A CROSSROAD OF CIVILIZATIONS
The 2,200 years of Turkestan history have played host to some of the most important civilizations in the world. The area is a wide expanse of territory, stretching from the Caspian Sea and the southern part of the Ural Mountains in the west, Siberia in the north, Iran, Afghanistan and Tibet in the south, and China and Mongolia to the east.
Today, the part of Turkestan that includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan is known as West Turkestan, and the area that has been under Chinese captivity for the last two centuries is known as East Turkestan. The geographical and strategic importance of Turkestan is obvious from the great interest shown in the area by Russia and China, the two regional superpowers. Russia and China have both played very important roles in Turkestan history, which is why it is divided into two parts today.
Behind those two countries' refusal to give the region up, no matter what cost, is its strategic position and its rich underground resources. For Russia, the Turkish states in the west, and for China, East Turkestan, are important reserves of raw materials.
Following the Bolshevik Revolution, Russia set up a powerful control mechanism in West Turkestan where states consisting of different Turkish tribes were set up. The area was given the name "Soviet Central Asia," in place of the name Turkestan by which the land had been known for hundreds of years.
The intention was to do away with the Turks' shared national consciousness.
The most important element of Russia's policy in the region was to eliminate
Islam entirely. Throughout this period, a number of sanctions were employed
in an attempt to destroy the Turks' national cultures; mosques and places
offering religious instruction were closed down and religion was entirely
divorced from social life. Crimean Turks were rounded up and exiled to
Siberia in the course of a single night, and Russians were brought in
to occupy their homes and lands. Furthermore, artificial ethnic conflicts
were incited between the nations of Central Asia. Another of the Soviet
regime's measures aimed at assimilating the Turks was to develop a second
language alongside the mother tongues of the Muslims of the Caucasus and
Central Asia. It is for this reason that Russian is now preferred to Turkish
as a means of communication between the communities in question.
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East Turkestan suffered similar oppression to that experienced in West
Turkestan, but in an even more violent form. In the middle of the 1700s,
East Turkestan was invaded by the Chinese. The political changes that
occurred in the region (and the world as a whole) prevented the desire
of the people of East Turkestan for independence from being translated
into reality. China-a country with a total land area of some 10 million
square kilometers-tried to exterminate the people of East Turkestan (also
a giant nation of 2 million square kilometers) by its policies of oppression
and isolation.
Just like the Russians in West Turkestan, the Chinese also changed the
region's name. The new name they used was the "Uighur Autonomous Region
of Sinkiang." They then began to implement the same kinds of policies
used by other imperialist nations. A ruthless war was waged against the
local people's beliefs, customs, and religious practices. Ethnic discrimination
became rife, demands for independence were ferociously suppressed, defenseless
people were exiled from their land, and Chinese settlers were brought
in to replace them. The brutality known as "Chinese torture" and cruelty
soon became reality.
Before going into the details of the oppression, (of which most people are very unaware), we will review East Turkestan's historical, geo-strategic and geo-political position.
EAST TURKESTAN: THE CRADLE OF TURKISH-ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION
The history of the lands of Turkestan goes back to the third century B.C. (the Gokturk and Hun period). The area has been the Turkish homeland since very early in history, and Islamic territory for a thousand years. Although no state or khanate bearing the name of Turkestan was ever established, the area in question, which makes up a large part of Central Asia, has always been called by that name because it has been a Turkish settlement area since very ancient times. Researchers describe East Turkestan in particular as one of the first centers of civilization and, as an area where, due to its geo-strategic position, Western and Eastern cultures intermingled.
These lands, which have been home to great empires all through history, became an indispensable part of the Islamic world after the Turks converted to Islam during the reign of Caliph Abd al-malik Marwan (b. 646/647-d. 705). The years between 751-1216 A.D. in particular, after Satuk Bughra Khan (---/d. 955-6) had accepted Islam, are known as the golden age of East Turkestan. Throughout that period, students from all over the world came to study at the renowned religious schools and educational institutions of Turkestan. Statesmen and scientists who would help shape the world were also trained there. The Turks who migrated from the region to all corners of the world carried Islam with them to many different countries.
Prominent Islamic scholars such
as Ibn Sina (above), Mahmud al-Kashgari (side) and Farabi (large
picture) were just a few of the important figures to emerge from
Turkestan. |
The Qarakhan, Ghazna, Khwarezm-Shah, Seljuq and Saidi tribes that were born in Turkestan set up states under the banner of Islam and provided outstanding examples of Turkish-Islamic culture, thus rendering a great service to human kind. Prominent statesmen such as Satuk Bughra Khan (---/d. 955-956), Seljuq Bey (---/d. 1007), Mahmud Ghaznavi (b. 998-d. 1030), Malik Shah (b. 1055-d. 1092), Timur (b. 1336-d. 1405), and Babur Shah (b. 1483-d. 1530) were among the great figures who emerged from those lands. Imam Bukhari, Imam Tirmidhi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Abu Nasr al-Farabi (Avennasar), Narshaki, Zamakhshari and Marginani, who enriched the libraries of Islam with their works, were among the great thinkers who forged the way for other scientists of the world. Furthermore, Makhmud al-Kashgari, author of the Diwan Lughat at-Turk, Yusuf Khass Khadjib, author of the Kutadgu Bilig, and Ahmad Yuknaki, the writer of the great Atabet'ul Haqayiq, also lived in Turkestan, the cradle of Turkish-Islamic civilization. Scholars such as these, of whom we have cited only a few, are sufficient to demonstrate the importance of East Turkestan to the Turkish and Islamic worlds.
Works such as the Kutadgu Bilig
and the Atabet'ul Haqayiq are considered as important to world history
as they are to that of the Turkish-Islamic world. |
EAST TURKESTAN IS NOT PART OF CHINA
One of the claims made by China in order to conceal its human rights violations and repression in East Turkestan is that the area "forms part of Chinese territory," for which reason events in East Turkestan "need to be considered a domestic Chinese affair." However, historical sources disprove that claim. First and foremost is the Great Wall of China, built by the Chinese to prevent attacks on them by other nations. This was the first time that China had put up an official border between itself and the peoples living around it. East Turkestan falls outside that border.5 Moreover, many sources describe the Jade Gate (so called because of the many jade stones found there), as being at China's westernmost border. One of these sources that describes the gate as opening into East Turkestan is actually a Chinese book, the New China Atlas, published in Shanghai in 1939.6
The region between the Great Wall of China and the Caspian Sea, Siberia and Iran, and the borders of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir and Tibet has been known as Turkestan in not only the earliest Islamic records, but also in old Iranian and Indian accounts. This is also accepted by a great many Western historians. Nikita Bichurin, one of the earliest known Turcologists, has supported that historical truth in these terms: "A nation lives between the Caspian Sea and the Koh-i Nur Mountains. They speak Turkish and believe in Islam. They introduce themselves as Turkish and describe their country as Turkestan."7 Because these lands were given the name of "Xinjiang" or "Sinkiang" (meaning "new borders") following their occupation by China does not change that historical reality.
Over the 2,000 or so years, between 206 B.C. and 1759 A.D., East Turkestan was able to maintain its independence for more than 1,800 years. During the periods when it was linked to the Turkish Hun and Gokturk khanates, local administration lay entirely in the hands of the people of East Turkestan. Between 751 and 1216 it was totally independent. During those periods China periodically occupied East Turkestan in order to win control of the Silk Road. Yet these occupations were always short-lived, and China was never able to establish hegemony over East Turkestan in the true sense of the word. In the 2,200-year history of East Turkestan, (if we take into account the occupation that started in 1934 and which is still continuing today) a little more than 570 years have been spent under Chinese occupation.8
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There are also geographic facts that disprove the claim that East Turkestan is part of China. The make-up of the population of East Turkestan (its language, religion, ethnic origins, plus its national and spiritual heritage) all reveal a picture of total independence from China. Panku, the great historian of the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. -- 220 A.D.), expresses this fact:
As for clothing, costume, food and language, the barbarians [Uighurs] are entirely different from the Middle Kingdom… Mountains, valleys and the great desert separate them from us.9
That difference was preserved throughout history. Neither was there any assimilation, even during the periods under Chinese occupation. Today, 54 percent of East Turkestan's estimated population of 17 million are Muslims, including 47 percent of the Uighurs and 7 percent of the Kazakhs. (This figure is from statistics issued by China in 1997, and is not accepted as reliable by international organizations because of China's biased attitude toward this issue). The Uighurs, who make up a large part of the Muslim population, bear no ethnic, religious or linguistic similarity to the Chinese. The Uighur alphabet consists of Arabic letters, they are all Muslim, and they have been living by Turkish customs and beliefs for more than 1,000 years.
 Throughout history, the Silk Road that passed through East Turkestan played an important role in the Chinese economy. Behind present-day China's wish to maintain its rule over East Turkestan lies the strategic importance of the area. |
ll of these historical, geographical and sociological facts make it clear that East Turkestan is not part of China, but rather a separate region that China has sought to assimilate. Even under the harshest and most difficult conditions, the people of East Turkestan never accepted Chinese rule, and frequently sought to regain their independence, at times even resorting to armed struggle. For example, when East Turkestan fell under Manchu rule between 1759 and 1862, the Muslim people rose up and rebelled against the Chinese more than 40 times.
Why is China so determined to maintain its position on East Turkestan in the face of all the facts? This should be discussed before turning to the long years of Chinese oppression.
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Periods
of East Turkestan Independence
Periods of Chinese Occupation of East Turkestan
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WHY DOES CHINA REFUSE TO GIVE EAST TURKESTAN UP?
A basic knowledge of geography makes it easy to understand the Chinese view on East Turkestan. Two important obstacles to communications exist between China and the West: the first is the 5,000-kilometer Taklamakan Desert, and the second is the Great Wall of China that stretches along the entire length of the China border.
East Turkestan is the only Chinese territory beyond the desert and the Great Wall, thus making it China's window to the West. The political effect of its location (and its geographical and strategic advantages) make East Turkestan indispensable to China. That is one reason why, instead of withdrawing from East Turkestan, China is trying to impose their occupation on the local population by means of force and violence. On the one hand, it takes away the peoples' freedoms, including those of receiving news and communications, by closing East Turkestan off and keeping the region as far from the world's awareness as possible.
 East Turkestan is known as the Kuwait of the twenty-first century, because it possesses rich underground mineral reserves. This fact makes the region indispensable for China. |
These lands, which form the westernmost point of Chinese territory, were
used by the Chinese as a buffer zone against the Soviet threat during
the Cold War. These lands are thus of great interest to China for its
own security and that of the other countries in the region. Even if Russia
no longer poses a threat to China, China still maintains its land and
air forces in the region, and also keeps a large part of its nuclear arsenal
there. Another important reason for the continuing presence of China's
forces in East Turkestan is to maintain the necessary control over the
local Muslim population.
However, geo-strategic concerns are not the only reason for China's interest in controlling East Turkestan. As noted, the region also possesses considerable natural resources, and the land is very productive. East Turkestan, known as the Kuwait of the twenty-first century, is of particular interest for its oil, natural gas, uranium, coal, gold and silver mines, and is one of China's most important sources of these resources. Authorities on the subject say that by 2005 East Turkestan will be China's second most important center of oil and natural gas production. The Tarim Basin in the middle of East Turkestan in particular is thought to have considerable petrol reserves. That basin is therefore known as the "Sea of Hope," and is estimated to have potential oil reserves of more than 10.7 billion tons.10 Research carried out by geologists has revealed a 300-million tons of oil and a 220-billion cubic-meters of natural gas capacity.11
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China's dependence on East Turkestan for energy is not restricted to the oil beds in the Tarim Basin. East Turkestan will also be the natural route for any pipeline from the Central Asian Turkish states, which will in turn be of vital importance to Chinese industry. The best way for China to insure its transportation system is effective and secure is to keep East Turkestan under its control.
 All of East Turkestan's underground resources are exploited by China. The Muslim people are unable to enjoy their share of the revenues from them. |
The region's rich natural gas, coal, and copper deposits also make it indispensable for the Chinese economy. Of the 148 different minerals extracted in all of Red China, 118 come from East Turkestan (this is 85 percent of China's mineral production). Among these, coal, with its high quality and energy content, is especially important. The coal reserves in East Turkestan are estimated at some 2 trillion tons, half of China's total coal reserves. One study at the end of 2000 revealed that China's richest copper mines were in East Turkestan. It is a known fact that China's other regions possess little copper, and that which exists is insufficient to meet the country's needs. The rich copper deposits in East Turkestan make the region even more important in Chinese eyes.12
Alongside these mines, the fact that East Turkestan is one of China's largest producers of cotton is another reason why China regards the area as important. The Red Chinese administration is unwilling to hand over the production of cotton, the raw material of the Chinese textile industry, to the Muslim Uighurs, and constantly develops new strategies to maintain control over the region. The aim behind these strategies, which we shall be examining in detail in later chapters, is not to allow East Turkestan to develop, but to make it dependent on Beijing.
East Turkestan's gold, oil and
other minerals are transferred to China, and the use of these natural
resources is totally under the control of the communist Chinese
government. |
RED CHINA'S FEAR OF ISLAM
In the preceding section we saw how East Turkestan is of great strategic and economic importance for China. Yet the frequent arrests of devout Muslims in East Turkestan, not allowing them to live in accordance with their religion, and the pressure put on their religious leaders, make it clear that there is more to their policy of oppression. First and foremost, it means that Red China is greatly concerned by the presence of Islam in East Turkestan.
Although the roots of the Chinese
attacks on Islam and Muslims go far back in history, these policies were
changed into a systematic policy of oppression, and even genocide, with
the establishment of the communist regime. When Mao founded the People's
Republic of China in 1949, all manifestations of Islam were made targets.
This hostility towards Islam began with the closure of mosques, religious
schools and other institutions providing religious education. The situation
worsened after portraits of Chairman Mao were hung in the now empty places
of worship (and Muslims were forced to show their respect for such images).
Some 29,000 mosques were closed during that period.13
The following stage consisted of the arrest of religious leaders on groundless
and baseless charges and accusations. Some of these were condemned to
death, and more than 54,000 religious figures were condemned to work in
the most terrible conditions in Chinese labor camps.14
 Radikal, 24.4.01, As their sources of wealth such as oil, gold and uranium are plundered by Beijing, the Uighurs are also imprisoned in their own land. Unemployment and low levels of education are rife. Eighty percent of the population live below the poverty line. Tiny Uighur babies can at least look to the future with hope if their families have fled abroad, to such places as Turkey. |
Throughout that period, physical and mental torture was inflicted on men of faith. Some Muslims were rounded up into public squares and made to confess the so-called "divinity" of Chairman Mao. The people were forced to carry out practices in flagrant violation of Islamic ideas, such as cremation of the dead. The closed mosques were used as military depots and barracks, or as places of entertainment (such as theatres and cinemas). All forms of public worship, including Friday and other prayers, were prohibited and heavy taxes were imposed on those Muslims who continued to pray in the few remaining mosques. The communist administration confiscated the alms given for the maintenance and restoration of the mosques and all the property belonging to religious leaders. Studying and teaching the Qur'an were completely banned. Religious works were seized from peoples' homes. Writings in Arabic were burned, including a large number of historical handwritten texts.15
With Mao's seizure of power, the oppression of
the people of East Turkestan has turned into a systematic campaign
of genocide. Mao forced the Muslim people to conform to communist
ideology. One of the first steps to achieving this is the way that
mosques and masjids all over East Turkestan were covered with portraits
of Mao. |
Modern Chinese oppression of the Muslims in East Turkestan is felt most heavily in the field of religion. As in all communist regimes, hostility to religion is part of the official state policy of Red China. A document called "The Basic Viewpoint and Policy on [the] Religious Question During Our Country's Socialist Period," circulated internally through party channels throughout China in 1982 by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, openly states that fact:
In human history, religion will ultimately disappear...
All religious organizations in China will bow their heads to the leadership
of the party and the government … The true aim of religious schools
is to produce professional religious officials who support the party administration
and the socialist system … These religious officials must remain loyal
to the party's policy on religion … The fundamental purpose of
religious bodies is to play an important role in spreading the country's
political influence.16
One of the important indications
of the communist regime's hostility to religion is the way that
many mosques have been closed down and used for storage since the
earliest days of the regime. The picture to the side shows a ruined
mosque in Hotan. |
A speech by Ali Jing Jiang, a member of the People's Republic of China Islamic Community, at the 5th meeting of the Islamic Society of North America in the USA on September 1, 1986, shows just how fully the Red Chinese administration has put into effect the decisions set out in that declaration. In his speech, Ali Jing Jiang stated that in China it is legally forbidden to give any religious education, either at home or at school, to minors under the age of 18. Although some religious schools have been opened as the result of pressure from Islamic countries, there are more Marxist, Leninist and Maoist ideas taught in them than Islam. Jiang expressed that all the teachers in such schools are communists and atheists and young people are being raised with no knowledge of religion. In other schools, he said, religion is taught as if it were something that needed to be forgotten, a primitive belief belonging to the lowest levels of Chinese society. That situation has rapidly begun to distance young people from religious belief. He also added that the government keeps a tight rein on Muslims' activities and that the communists are using Islam merely as a tool with which to improve relations with Muslim nations.17
THEY HAD US FEED
PIGS IN THE MOSQUES!... The Chinese cruelty in East Turkestan is never ending. Chinese officials often halt the construction and repair of mosques, ban Muslims from engaging in communal worship, and force them to carry out practices in flagrant violation of Islamic ideas. |
The anti-religious pronunciations of the Chinese Communist Party are not new. The Qur'an reveals that the deniers who opposed the Prophet Noah, peace be upon him, attempted to belittle the believers with the words, "…We do not see you as anything but a human being like ourselves. We do not see anyone following you but the lowest of us, unthinkingly…" (Qur'an, 11:27). In another verse, God describes how deniers believe themselves to be terribly clever:
When they are told, "Believe in the way that the people believe," they say, "What! Are we to believe in the way that fools believe?" No indeed! They are the fools, but they do not know it. (Qur'an, 2:13)
The Chinese Communist Party's attempts to portray religious devotion as "a primitive belief belonging to the very lowest levels of Chinese society," is an example of this foolishness.
While the Communist Party uses such propaganda methods, it also at the same time steps up its oppression of Muslims. Following the initiatives demanding independence in the 1990s, (the Baren uprising, the Gulja uprising) the oppression of Muslims was stepped up even further. The way these uprisings spread to the whole of East Turkestan, and the fact that Turks in public posts also supported the demands for independence, greatly alarmed Red China. It initiated another ruthless campaign against those Muslims who had backed independence movements. Hundreds of thousands of people were detained, thousands executed and tens of thousands were sent to labor camps. Michael Winchester, one of the rare journalists able to enter the region and send out a secret report about the oppression of Muslims, had this to say in an article titled "Inside Story China: Beijing vs. Islam":
Since then they have closed down unregistered mosques; forbidden the use of loud-speakers outside registered ones; banned Quranic classes for children and youths; prohibited foreign money for religious purposes; tightened exit requirements; imposed an age restriction on haj pilgrims; outlawed unauthorized religious publications; and cracked down on Communist party members visiting mosques.18
 
 China constantly increases its oppression of the Muslims of East Turkestan. Young Muslims, religious figures, intellectuals, and even children are detained on meaningless pretexts and usually executed without their families being informed. |
One Turkestan resident interviewed by Winchester (who refused to give his real name) said that since he worked in a state office he was never able to go to the mosque, and that he would be sacked if he were to be seen doing so. The reason was the increased Chinese hostility to Islam which began at the end of the 1980s. A 1997 article in the official East Turkestan newspaper, the Xinjiang Daily, set out what party members' view of religion should be:
Those party members firmly believe in religion and
who refuse to change their ways after education should be given a certain
period to make corrections, be persuaded to withdraw from the party or
dismissed from the party according to the seriousness of their case. In
recent years, 98 religious party members have been dealt with.19
   Despite all the difficulties and tortures they are subjected to, the people of East Turkestan persevere by living their religion and performing their religious obligations. |
In East Turkestan, those who are caught praying or studying the Qur'an are punished, particularly if they are aged under 18, because Chinese law explicitly prohibits minors from studying the Qur'an. In 1999, for example, five 12-year-olds were arrested for reading the Qur'an. When one of them fled from the police station, his family were arrested and tortured by the police (and told that they would not be released until he gave himself up).20 That incident is just one of the many frequently encountered in East Turkestan. Thousands of people have been detained and tortured simply for living in accordance with their religion, or for teaching other people who want to do so. The accusations made against religious figures who have been detained are particularly noteworthy. For instance, on October 28, 1999, Memet Eli, the imam of the Oybagh Mosque in Hotan, was arrested and heavily fined for teaching religion contrary to the Communist Party policy. This is how his "crimes" were set out in the indictment:
During his duty as an Imam, Memet Ali did not study, teach and implement Communist Party's regulations on religion. He pretended he did not see the instructions of department of religious supervision. When related departments organized study and educational activities for religious personals, he did not attend… He allowed people with unclear identity to stay at the Mosque…21
  The Chinese Communist Party banned the teaching of the Qur'an. |
Other articles, as well as "failure to give instruction in communist teachings" (under which six other imams in Hotan were arrested on similar pretexts) are striking examples of the oppression faced by Muslims in Red China:
They said in their prayers: "God rescue your Muslim
believers from the oppression of atheists." They did not stop people when
they came to pray from other neighborhoods. They exceeded the 20 minutes
time limit for Friday prayer and teachings. They failed to inform the
authorities of people who came to get religious education."22
Mao's
Hatred of ReIigion
Like other communist dictators, Mao also denied the existence of God and tried to prevent the people from believing in Him. He had terrible tortures inflicted on many who believed in God, wanted to live by his will or tried to defend his beliefs, and resorted to all kinds of oppression in an effort to turn people away from God. Another side to Mao is the way that he presented himself to the Chinese people as a divine being. This common feature of atheist
dictators was revealed in the Qur'an. The verses describe
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Pharaoh
as saying
5. Owen Lattimore, Studies in Frontier History,
London, 1962, p. 59
6. New China Atlas, Shanghai, 1939, p. 51. Also see Herman Albert,
Historical and Commercial Atlas of China, Harvard University Press, 1935
7. Opisanie Cuntariy I vostoçnogo Turkestan v drevhem I nineþnem
sostaynaniy, Prevedono s Kitaykogo, Petersburg, 1829, Vol I, pp. 10-11, cited
in Alaeddin Yalcinkaya, Somurgecilik ve Panislamizm Isiginda Turkestan (Turkestan
In the Light of Imperialism and Panislamism), Timas Yayinlari, 1997, Istanbul,
p. 28
8. Isa Yusuf Alptekin, Unutulan Vatan Dogu Turkistan (The Forgotten
Land East Turkestan), Seha Yayincilik, Istanbul, 1999, p. 91
9. Pan Ku, The Account of Hsing-nu, Han-Shu, 91, Sect. 2 p.
32 a-b
10. China Daily, April 26, 1999
11. China Daily, January 4, 1999
12. "China's Largest Copper Reserve Found in Xinjiang," www.uyghuramerican.org/economy/chinaonlineoct62000.html
13. The Los Angeles Times, December 1, 1983
14. The Los Angeles Times, December 1, 1983
15. Yusuf Han, Sotsiyalistik Kazakhstan, Almaty, January 14,
1976, cited in "Chinese Policy, Human Rights Abuses and The Consequences," East
Turkestan Information, A Publication of the Eastern Turkestan Union in Europe,
www.caccp.org/et/etiu1.html
16. The People's Republic of China: Document 19: The Basic
Viewpoint on the Religious Question During Our Country's Socialist Period: Issued
by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on 31 March 1982
17. Radio Free Europe/RL, 01.09.1986
18. Michael Winchester, "Inside Story China: Beijing vs. Islam,"
Asiaweek, October 24, 1997
19. Amnesty International Report, April 4, 1999
20. "Uyghur Boys Were Arrested, Parents Were Tortured," East
Turkestan Information Center, October 30, 1999
21. "Imam Was Punished For Refusing to Teach Communist Doctrines
in Mosque," East Turkestan Information Center, November 19, 1999 (emphasis added)
22. "Islam Treated Same As Falun Gong," East Turkestan Information
Center, November 19, 1999
CHINA: A STATE OF FEAR
God does not love corruption.
(Qur'an, 2:205)
CHINA: A STATE OF FEAR
When the Communist Party came to power in 1949, China rapidly turned into a state that spread terror throughout the world. Its policies based on violence and pressure have continued unabated since those early days. Communist ideology's unfeeling and ruthless conduct towards people and its materialist views that turn relationships between people into purely mechanical intercourse, has led to a ruthless and cruel government instead of a compassionate and just one.
In the communist China established by Mao Tse Tung the belief that order and stability can only be maintained by means of fear and violence prevails. As a result, the state tightly controls all aspects of individuals' lives and ruthlessly punishes anyone it deems appropriate. It is not just citizens who commit serious crimes in China that are punished. The Chinese state even arrested women who sent newspaper cuttings to their husbands abroad, accusing them of disclosing Chinese state secrets.1 It can accuse someone who gave what would appear to be a perfectly harmless quote to a foreign journalist of committing treason and send him to a labor camp. It is perfectly understandable that under conditions such as these fear and insecurity should prevail instead of peace, security, and stability. In the same way that it is not possible to talk about feelings such as love, self sacrifice and compassion in such a social structure, so it is also out of the question to speak of democracy and human rights. Chinese citizens are unable to criticize freely mistakes by the government or freely express their thoughts, and as a result they are unable to effectively push for change or renewal. The fate of those who try is usually a sufficient deterrent.
No matter how much the Western media cite the liberal reforms being carried out in the economy and the claim that China is turning to democracy, the Red Chinese government does not have the slightest intention of giving up its total control over the people. Those living in Chinese territory are the proof, and the peoples of both China and East Turkestan are now the major victims of these ruthless practices.
THE COMMUNIST PARTY OLIGARCHY
The People's Republic of China is a totalitarian regime. Its entire executive and legislative bodies are tied to one single administrative organ, the Chinese Communist Party. Nationally and locally, the major leaders in the police, the army, and civilian organizations are all the Communist Party administrators. Such people are often as influential after their retirement as they are while in office. Thanks to their powerful organization, the Communist Party controls just about all aspects of life. For this reason, it is difficult to deviate from communist ideology in political and social life. Each individual's thoughts, beliefs, and actions must be in line with communist ideology and the instructions of the party. Deviation, and even the possibility of deviation, can be heavily punished.
The British journalist John Mirsky, who has become an expert on China, describes that communist rule in the following terms:
… But to them [Communist Party], stability meant an order in which the elders and the Communist Party were incontestably in charge. Any threat to that would have to be met with what they wielded most effectively: force.2
The most striking example of this occurred during Mao's "Great Leap Forward" and the "Cultural Revolution" campaigns. Ruthless and cruel methods were resorted to in order to make the people submit to communism and translate communist ideology into daily life. Peasants were deliberately left to starve until they handed over their produce to communes and accepted the communist interpretation of production. Those who opposed communism at a time when that practice cost millions of lives were inevitably eliminated. During the Cultural Revolution, which was aimed at the educated and intellectual sections of society, all voices of opposition in China were silenced in the cruelest possible manner. The Cultural Revolution began with Mao's instruction that "There are still people at the highest levels of the state who have not fully turned to communism, and these need to be educated." This instruction became a campaign in which educated people were humiliated, beaten and tortured, and even killed for trivial justifications such as not wearing the uniform expected by Mao, or for being unable to learn communist marching songs by heart. Mao eventually got what he wanted, and communism finally completely entered peoples' minds. (For more detail on the savagery experienced during the Mao period, see Harun Yahya Communism in Ambush, Global Publishing, Istanbul, 2003).
Mao's Cultural Revolution led
to savagery, the like of which has seldom been seen anywhere before.
The revolution's particular targets were educated individuals and
intellectuals. The young people known as the Red Guards killed,
often by torture in full public view, people who failed to carry
Mao's Little Red Book with them or who had not learned communist
anthems by heart. In that period walls were covered with the copies
of the Red Book to ensure that people read its content. |
This regime of oppression, which has lasted since Mao first established
it in 1949 until the present day, has been maintained by virtue of the
wide-reaching organization of the Communist Party. In such an environment,
where there is almost one plain-clothed police officer for every five
to ten people, and where everyone has come to be an informer on everyone
else, the Communist Party has maintained its authority with force and
violence. That is why right from the start a ruthless police force and
army were established. The People's Armed Police (PAP) and the People's
Liberation Army (PLA), attached to the State and Public Security Ministry,
assumed this responsibility. Ever since the day it was set up the PLA
has operated as the armed wing of the Communist Party, and is today the
largest army in the world, with 6 million members.
 During the Cultural Revolution, tens of thousands of teachers, politicians and artists were tortured and killed by the Red Guards. Often good public servants were destroyed in the process. This First Party secretary is just one of the thousands of people to have insulting placards hung around their necks and be publicly humiliated. |
THE IDEOLOGY OF SAVAGERY IN COMMUNIST CHINA
In the following chapters of this book, we shall be considering examples of the repression and torture inflicted on the Muslims of East Turkestan. We shall also be looking at the Chinese administration's oppression of its own people. We will show that ruthlessness is a normal policy tool, and cruelty is regarded as nothing out of the ordinary. In societies where the existence of God is denied, where people believe that they have no other responsibility than to themselves, and where there is no belief in the hereafter, selfishness, ruthlessness and cruelty take the place of love, compassion, forgiveness, and sympathy.
The surest way of putting an end to the cruelty and torture is for people of good conscience to explain religious morality as part of their duty of enjoining good and forbidding evil, and invite others to learn about the teachings of God. In one verse of the Qur'an, God has also revealed that "Let there be a community among you who call to the good, and enjoin the right, and forbid the wrong. They are the ones who have success." (Qur'an, 3: 104). In carrying out that important duty, one important stage of the war of ideas is the total exposure of all aspects of anti-religious ideologies and the destruction of their very foundations in order that proper morality may come to replace them. In the case of East Turkestan and China, that ideology is communism.
According to communist ideology, matter is all that exists and all events, historical, economic and sociological included, are nothing but reflections of different forms of matter. This view holds that everything is in a constant process of change and development. The force behind the change is conflict. The entire universe, including human history, has developed as a result of conflict, which has, in turn, led to human progress. (see Communism in Ambush by Harun Yahya, Global Publishing, Istanbul, 2003)
Maintaining that conflict is the key to development is a step in the direction of endless bloodshed. Followers of such ideologies will be in constant conflict, oppress each other and spill one another's blood (all in the name of progress). Human feelings upheld by religion (such as love, respect, sacrifice and sharing) disappear entirely, together with any possibility of peace and security. In fact, communist philosophy teaches that virtues such as these actually hold a society back. Mao, who brought this philosophy to China, left behind him some 60 million dead, tens of millions of people who had suffered torture, and a ruthless society.
However, the real contradictions and opposites that exist do not justify savagery and slaughter. Opposites exist everywhere: Day and night, dark and light, hot and cold, good and bad. Yet these have been created to emphasize the beauty of the world and to allow moral virtues such as tolerance, peace and forgiveness to emerge. The same thing applies to the world of ideas. The fact that people think or believe differently is no reason for them to ruthlessly slaughter each other. God commands people to behave with kindness, even to their enemies, and to speak good words to people. All contradictions can be resolved in an atmosphere of peace and toleration by people who possess the reason and good conscience that Qur'anic morality brings with it.
Communism relies on force and
violence for its survival. Conflict and war are intrinsic elements
of communism. |
Communism, however, maintains the exact opposite. In fact, when conflict,
which is one of the most important components of communism, joined forces
with Darwinist thought, which regards human beings as a species of animal,
the result was the deaths of millions of people and the ruining of many
more lives. That is why the policies of Mao and his followers were not
changed by the sufferings they caused their people, whom they regarded
as just a herd of animals.
 |
The Darwinist world view which caused Mao to regard those who opposed communism as animals is emphasized in the book China and Charles Darwin by James Reeve Pusey, a historian from Harvard University:
Mao Tse-Tung in an angry moment (as late as 1964) swore that "all demons shall be annihilated." He dehumanized his enemies, partly in traditional hyberbole, partly in Social Darwinian "realism." Like the Anarchists, he saw reactionaries as evolutionary throwbacks, who deserved extinction. The people's enemies were non-people, and they did not deserve to be treated as people.3
Mao's own words confirmed those of Pusey. One of the slogans of the founder of Red China at that time was "The basis of Chinese socialism rests on Darwin and the theory of evolution."4
The Muslims of East Turkestan came to be one of those societies that Mao, inspired by the Darwinist World view, thought had no right to "be treated as human." The reason was because the beliefs of the people of East Turkestan led them to fiercely oppose communism. However, their rightful protest was put down with utter ruthlessness and as a result millions of its children have been killed by the communist regime. East Turkestan is still living under this repression. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims have been tortured in Chinese prisons, cast out of their homes, and obliged to leave their land.
As Mao himself confessed, the
most important ideological support of the communist regime in China
is Darwin's theory of evolution. In his book China and Charles Darwin,
the Harvard University historian James Reeve Pusey describes the
great influence of Darwinism in China and how it prepared the intellectual
foundations of communism. |
1. A Remarkable Woman is Suppressed," The Guardian,
"March 15, 2000
2. Jonathan Mirsky, "Revolution's Dark Legacy," Asiaweek, Vol.
27, No. 2, January 19, 2001 (emphasis added)
3. James Reeve Pusey, China and Charles Darwin, p. 455 (emphasis
added)
4. M. Mehnert, Kampf um Mao's Erbe, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt,
1977 (emphasis added)
INTRODUCTION
God does not love corruption.
(Qur'an, 2:205)
INTRODUCTION
China entered the twentieth century as the remains of an empire fragmented and crushed under pressure from especially Britain, France, Germany, Japan and Russia. After imperial rule had been overthrown, no powerful central authority was established for decades. When the Communist Party came to power in 1949, China soon turned into a state of fear. That process cost the lives of tens of millions of people because of the repressive and totalitarian methods the communists used to enforce their bloody ideology. The Chinese Communist Party resorted to violence to remain in power, and implemented one of the most savage and ruthless form of communism ever, enforcing one single way of living and thinking for the entire Chinese people. Throughout that period, those who refused to abide by the rules of their communist leaders were ruthlessly exterminated.
It is commonly assumed that the savage implementation of communism has come to an end. People no longer receive food in return for vouchers, no longer are required to wear uniforms, nor suffer torture because they are unable to learn Mao's "Little Red Book" by heart. Yet communism, adapted by the regime to the new world order, is still alive and well in all its ruthlessness.
In the eyes of the Communist Party, people are of value only as long as they can produce, and are allowed to think only within boundaries set by the Communist Party. They can freely express only thoughts in harmony with the party. The labor camps that exist through China, the system that humiliates and exploits millions of people in those camps, the mass executions in full public view, the torture methods widely employed in the prisons and the sale of the internal organs of those condemned to death, all reveal the ugly face of the communist administration. Despite all this, however, for the last 20 years a number of media outlets have been spreading the propaganda that China is rapidly preceding down a liberal and democratic path. One important point is often ignored: The fact that China has moved to capitalist practices in the economic field and has opened its gates to foreign investors in a number of areas, does not mean that there has also been a change in the country's political structure and ideology. On the contrary, the inhuman practices still common demonstrate that nothing has changed in the mentality of the ruling Communist Party. This will be clarified with a great many examples in subsequent chapters of this book.
A major area of communist savagery is East Turkestan, home to the Muslim Uighur Turks. Located at the westernmost point of China, East Turkestan has been under occupation for the last two centuries or so, and for the last 50 years in particular has suffered great oppression from the despotic regime of the communist Chinese administration. As a result of Chinese propaganda, East Turkestan is known to the world as "Xinjiang," or "Sinkiang" meaning "new borders" in Chinese, and most people are very unaware of the human drama going on there. Yet East Turkestan, the majority of whose population are Muslims of Uighur origin, is the scene of violence and oppression by the communist Chinese administration, the like of which is found in no other region of China. Torture, executions, labor camps and religious oppression have long been features of daily life in East Turkestan.
 In recent years, there has been much talk about the increased freedom and liberalization in the economic arena in China. Yet the freedom is limited to specific areas, and the cruel and oppressive system in China has, in fact, not changed. |
Muslims are arrested, kept for months (or even years) in Chinese prisons, which are notorious for torture, solely because they want to live by their religion. Many of those who fight for freedom and democracy for Turkestan are executed. Moreover, China's assimilationist policies have prevented the majority Muslim population of East Turkestan from speaking their own language, living by their own culture, from going on the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), performing their daily ritual prayers and fasting, and even forbidden them to determine their family size. The help Muslims of East Turkestan expect of people of good conscience all over the world is very easy: The solution to bring an end to this communist oppression lies in the waging of an intellectual struggle and in the unification of the Turkish-Islamic world. Division and fragmentation is a contravention of the moral values of the Qur’an. Muslims must ally themselves together in the awareness that they are brothers and be united by abiding by Qur’anic moral values and the Sunnah of our Prophet (saas). The Turkish-Islamic region is one of the richest in the world in terms of underground resources and surface wealth. The Turkish-Islamic world is a significant force with a young and wide population. These riches and the region coming together under a just, loving, compassionate, democratic and honest authority will of course mean that the Turkish-Islamic world acquires great power. This force to be attained with the establishment of the Turkish-Islamic world will mean the salvation not just of our brothers in East Turkestan but also of the Islamic world and the world as a whole.
China has turned East Turkestan into a closed region by restricting all means of communication, preventing the true dimensions of their human drama from being heard by the outside world. Yet that is no excuse for forgetting and behaving as if nothing were going on. For this reason, it is most important that all possible means be taken to stop the silence that prevails in the whole world on the subject of East Turkestan. If the true dimension of the inhumanity going on behind closed doors is revealed, this will not only help the wronged people to have their voices heard, but will also attract the world's attention to bring justice to East Turkestan.
The aim of this book is both to identify the basic causes of this communist oppression that has been going on all over China for more than half a century, to make the voice of the wronged people of East Turkestan heard, and once again to reiterate the urgency of the foundation of the Turkish-Islamic Union. Initiatives taken to allow the Muslims of East Turkestan to enjoy peace and security can only succeed if the fundamental causes of their oppression are documented and the requisite efforts are made together..
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This work documents that the fundamental reason behind the oppression in East Turkestan is the materialist philosophy and communist ideology that dominate the Chinese state. The violence caused by materialist philosophy, which regards life as a fight for survival (and suggests that progress is only possible by means of conflict) can only be eliminated if people turn to, and live by, the morality God commands. God has commanded people to live by justice, tolerance, love, compassion, respect, sacrifice, sharing, self-denial, and forgiveness. God has made it clear that ethnic differences are no justification for conflict, and that people must respect each others' races, languages, and beliefs. The acceptance of that moral code world wide is the only way to secure peace and tolerance. An intellectual war must be waged against the materialist ideology that is the fundamental support behind those who have oppressed others. For this reason this is the most important area required for peace and justice to prevail.
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The first thing needing to be done in the present age is the immediate foundation of the Turkish-Islamic Union, together with determined intellectual opposition to all the oppression and injustice in the world and the acceleration of efforts to disseminate the moral values of the Qur’an, the true solution to all these problems. A new age will dawn with the spreading of the morality of the Qur'an, by the will of God, in which injustice and oppression will be replaced by peace, security, and justice. The Qur'an bears good tidings about that new age:
God has promised those of you who believe and do right
actions that He will make them successors in the land as He made those
before them successors, and will firmly establish for them their religion
with which He is pleased and give them, in place of their fear, security…
(Qur'an, 24:55)
The people of East Turkestan have been crushed by the repressive communist system for more than half a century. Muslims are prevented from living their religion, and are trying to survive under particularly difficult conditions.