It’s not so much that it’s a separate copy of the U.S.’s motivations for the War on Terror but that it’s literally descended from the so-called Global War on Terror which had its basic framework spearheaded by the U.S. People forget this because of how bad the warmongering propaganda has gotten, but in the 2000s China was seen as an ally of the U.S. in defense of international law and trade against “terrorism.” Jiang Zemin and George W Bush were always talking about a bilateral and cooperative strategy against “terrorists.”

People also forget that Bush-era policy against “terrorism” was framed in these multilateralist and legalist terms. HW Bush after all was the one who began talking about the New World Order to be established after the fall of the Soviet Union, based on an international law guaranteed by the U.S. as the top cop. This was the premise of the U.S.‘s invasion of Afghanistan, because the country’s leadership refused to adhere to U.S.-enforced international legal norms of criminal law and hand over al Qaeda. This is why the invasion of Afghanistan was not seen as nearly big of an issue as the invasion of Iraq was, because most countries’ leadership saw it as legal and justified—including China.

On the official level, this was not framed as against Islam even if W Bush invoked a struggle of civilization. The Bush administration loved to talk about working with Muslim leadership, the “Islam is a religion of peace” phrase that conservatives whine about was partially popularized by the Bush admin. There was this idea of cooperating with Muslims against the “terrorists,” and you could even find some neoconservatives talking about the fact that the “terrorism” of “radical Islam” speaking in terms of absolute quantity hurt far more Muslims than Christians.

China’s policy in Xinjiang is pretty much continuous with the War on Terror policies of other states in Central Asia. The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region basically operates as one of these states. And they all operate along a spectrum of enforcing a public conformity that rejects more or less non-secular and non-nationally specific expressions of Islam, like long beards. Uzbekistan is much, much more hostile to outwards expression of non-nationalist religious identity than XUAR. But they’re still along the same, War on Terror-derived continuum. China’s policy in Xinjiang nowadays is pretty much a more developmentalist and less forceful version of their approach in cracking down on the 2009 Urumqi Riots. And that crackdown was framed directly in the language of international “terrorism,” the need for rule of law, and multilateralism that the Americans had promoted in the Global War on Terror.

Tian Shan 天山 (also known as Tengri Tagh or Tengir-Too) is a large system of mountain ranges in Western China and Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan)

Tian Shan is considered sacred in Tengrism, a religion originating in the Eurasian steppes. It was the prevailing religion of ancient nomadic groups like the Göktürks, Xianbei, Xiongnu, Mongolic peoples, and the Huns. As well as the state religion of several medieval states, such as the Turkic Khaganates and the Mongol Empire.

A portrait of Mao In Tajik Autonomous County Tashkorgan, China.

China forces Uyghurs to show video proof they are not fasting during Ramadan

Cubic fluorite crystals from Xinjiang, China

My last visit home to Kumul, Xinjiang, was in June 2016, when I was just a Uyghur youth studying abroad. I did not know it would be my last trip home, my last meal with my grandparents, the last hug from my father and the last time I felt I belonged.

Later that year, the Chinese government under Xi Jinping began a campaign of mass arbitrary detention of up to a million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Chinese authorities detained people in political reeducation camps, officially called “vocational education and training centers,” and in prisons without due process.

Since 2016, my organization and others, have documented torture, forced disappearances, mass surveillance, cultural and religious persecution, separation of families and forced labor.

In August 2022, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights released a landmark report finding that these abuses “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity” and urged the Chinese government to take “prompt steps to release all individuals arbitrarily deprived of their liberty” in the region

Three years on, the Chinese government continues to deny the report’s findings and recommendations as “illegal and void.” It has also doubled down on propaganda by trying to cultivate a sense of “normalcy” in the region.

However, as U.N. High Commissioner Volker Turk said last year, “many problematic laws and policies remain in place” in Xinjiang.

An estimated half-million people who received long prison sentences remain in custody, including many prominent Uyghur intellectuals, cultural figures and religious leaders.

Many Uyghurs abroad, myself included, still have little to no contact with family members. Some don’t even know if their loved ones taken into custody or forcibly disappeared by Chinese authorities are still alive.

Since the early days of the crackdown, friends and relatives deleted me from their WeChat and stopped answering my phone calls. Because I live abroad, I became a “threat” to their security.

I lost contact with the last person on my WeChat — my father, Memet Yaqup, a businessman and former civil servant — in June 2018.