China Accused Of 'Genocide' Over Uighur Treatment

It's nice that some world leader has finally said this: over the weekend Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called China's actions against their Uighur ethnic minority "a kind of genocide." His comments come a day after Turkey's Trade and Interior Minister called for his countrymen to boycott Chinese-made goods in protest of their treatment of the Uighurs. So far Beijing hasn't replied to either comment.

While protests between Uighurs and Han Chinese in Xinjiang province turned bloody last week, with officially 184 people killed in the fighting, Xinjiang's Uighur community says that the protests were just the end result of decades of oppression from Beijing. Since having their briefly independent homeland of East Turkestan absorbed by China in 1949, Uighurs claim that they have been an oppressed minority and that in the past two decades, as China's become more powerful, the oppression has gotten far worse. Uighurs, who are Muslim and speak a Turkish dialect, say that their mosques are regularly closed, their leaders arrested for non-existent crimes, and the use of their language suppressed. In recent years, Beijing has aggressively promoted the immigration of ethnic Han Chinese into Xinjiang - another attempt, Uighurs say, to stamp out their culture.

It would be tempting to be skeptical of the Uighur claims, if China wasn't accused of using exactly the same gameplan just to the south of Xinjiang in Tibet, where the Dalai Lama has long accused the Chinese government of all the same activities. China fears that both regions could make bids for independence from Beijing.

Meanwhile back in Urumqi (Xinjiang’s capital) China tried to close the city’s mosques last Friday (the holy day in the Muslim week), finally allowing one to briefly open for prayers after a large group gathered outside. Once prayers were over, according to the BBC, Chinese riot police beat a group of Uighur protesters who were asking for the release of relatives swept up in mass arrests earlier in the week.