Geopolitics
Governance/Geopolitics
Reeling under Khashoggi fiasco, Saudi crown in image makeover tour defends China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims

Just Earth News | @justearthnews | 24 Feb 2019, 07:59 am Print

Reeling under Khashoggi fiasco, Saudi crown in image makeover tour defends China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims

UNI

Meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping much to the annoyance of his Western allies, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is apparently on an image makeover tour following the global condemnation of the killing of a dissident Saudi journalist in their own consulate in Istanbul, has defended China’s use of internment camps for Uighur Muslims during his recent China visit.

During the tour he also cemented a $10 billion deal for a refining and petrochemical complex in China on Friday,

"China has the right to carry out anti-terrorism and de-extremisation work for its national security,” said the 39-year-old Prince on Chinese state television.

As he faces criticism from Western countries over the brutal murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Mohammed bin Salman is forming new alliances in the east.

Mohammed bin Salman, colloquially known as MBS, wrapped his controversial Asia tour in China, another country accused of authoritarianism, after his visit of Pakistan and India in the wake of the Pulwama attack in India where 40 soldiers were killed in a sucide bombing by Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM).

Uighur history

China's mountaneous western Xinjiang region has a long history of discord between China's authorities and the indigenous Uighur ethnic minority.

The Chinese government blames Uighur militants of waging a violent campaign for an independent state by plotting bombings, sabotage and civic unrest.

Since the 9/11 attacks in the US, China has increasingly portrayed its Uighur separatists as auxiliaries of al-Qaeda, saying they have received training in Afghanistan although little evidence has been produced in support of these claims.

More than 20 Uighurs were captured by the US military after its Afghan invasion. They were imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for years without being charged with any offence and most have now been resettled elsewhere.

Communist China has detained over 1 million Uighur Muslims in concentration camps, where they are undergoing what China calls "re-education programs", against their radicalisation.

People in Xinjiang are living in one of the most heavily-policed and oppressive states in the world, said reports.

They are watched by tens of thousands of facial recognition cameras, and surveillance apps on their phones, media reports said.

An estimated 2 million of them are locked in internment camps where people are physically and psychologically abused, and allegedly being forced to study communist doctrine in the camps, according to reports.

“The training will turn them from ‘nomads’ into skilled marvels,” the official Xinjiang Daily reported in November last year. “Education and training will make them into ‘modern people,’ useful to society.”

However,  a report from the Human Rights Watch organization said: “The Chinese government has long carried out repressive policies against the Turkic Muslim peoples in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwest China. These efforts have been dramatically scaled up since late 2016, when Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo relocated from the Tibet Autonomous Region to assume leadership of Xinjiang.”

A trillion-dollar reason

But there's another reason why Beijing wants to clamp down on Uighurs in Xinjiang: The region is home to some of the most important elements of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China's massive trade project that aims to connect the country with new infrastructure across central Asia to Europe – the Silk Road Economic Belt.

China has 5,000 years of spiritual culture, but for the last 60 years it has been ruled by the CCP which forcibly imposed atheism.

Silent spectator

Saudi Arabia is the capital of the Muslim world, traditional centres such as Jiddah, Mecca, and Medina are the cradle of Islam.

Uighur groups had pinned their hopes on Mohammed bin Salman to use his official visit to pressure China on the issue of the concentration camps, as Saudi Arabia has traditionally been a defender of the rights of Muslims worldwide.

But under the leadership of the young crown prince, the country’s leadership has become more pragmatic in its pursuit of foreign policy interests.

Muslim leaders have so far not broached the issue with China, which has in recent years become an important trading partner with the Middle East.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the first to condemn Beijing, had once accused China of "genocide" but has since established closer diplomatic and economic relations with Beijing.

Imran Khan, prime minister of Pakistan, where Prince Salman has just visited, said he “did not know” much about the conditions of the Uighurs.

(Writing by Suryodoy Mandal)