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| Persecution of Uyghur in China, Imran Khan’s silence his real image | | | Ankush Verma
The systematic repression of China’s ethnic, Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang Autonomous Region has caused little angst to Imran Khan, the fiercest ‘defender’ of Muslims in India Kashmir.
He always speaks about Kashmir and accuses Indian government of making Kashmir a militarized zone. He often accuses Prime Minister Narender Modi of unleashing atrocities against Muslims to tarnish India’s Image at the international platforms. He also criticised French President Emmanuel Macron for “encouraging Islamophobia and also criticised the publication of a cartoon of Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) by French magazine Charlie Hebdo as an act of blasphemy.
He also wrote a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking that this platform should ban Islamophobic content. To prove himself as a true Muslim and sympathise with the Muslims across the world, he called on the world Muslim leaders to counter Islamophobia in non-Muslim countries. Khan has also made it clear that he will never recognize the state of Israel until Palestinians receive a just settlement. But ironically, Imran khan has maintained silence on China’s proved atrocities against Uyghur Muslims.
China has arbitrarily detained more than a million Muslims in Xinjiang region. To which China called re-education camps are just one part of the government’s crackdown on Uyghurs. In the camps detainees are treated as prisoners, with cameras and microphones monitoring their every move and utterance. They were tortured and subjected to sleep deprivation during interrogations. Women are raped repeatedly; children are forcefully separated from their parents and are sent to the state-run orphanage. The guards of the camps burned prayer mats, beads and religious books that they’d confiscated from Uighur homes. China has demolished a lot of mosques in various parts of the country and has also destroyed their burial grounds to eradicate their ethnic group’s identity. But Pakistan has not shown any concern over any of these matters over the years. Ironically, in an interview to the Foreign Policy magazine he stated “One main reason is that the scale of what is going on in China-and frankly, I don’t know much about it, I just occasionally read about it-is nothing compared to what is happening in Kashmir”. But government documents leaked by New York Times revealed that the clampdown against Muslims in Xinjiang has been massive. Strikingly, this also did not open the eyes of Imran Khan. Imran Khan’s silence over this grim issue projects his real image to the world. For Imran Khan economic consideration is the major factor to keep a blind eye on China’s crackdown on Uyghurs. China is Pakistan’s one of the largest trading partners and investors which stops Imran Khan from speaking out. Prime Minister Imran Khan has himself said, China has aided Pakistan when it has been at “rock bottom”, so Islamabad will not publicly shame Beijing on its Uighur track record. He even publicly stated “we are really grateful to the Chinese government, and we decided that whatever issues we will have with China, we will deal with them privately”.
China has invested more than $50 billion as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that has upgraded infrastructure, power and transport links connecting Xinjiang to Pakistan’s newly refurbished Gwadar port. China has also offered steadfast diplomatic support to Pakistan during its frequent bouts of unrest with India.
Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US in an interview said that “Pakistan sees China as its principal supporter against India and is unwilling to say or do anything that disrupts ties with Beijing”. Imran Khan’s government treats reports of widespread human rights violations of Uyghurs by China with scepticism, choosing to dismiss them as American propaganda in the Sino-US power struggle. It has completely controlled the public discourse on this issue and instead stated that it is an internal matter of Pakistan. On the other hand, Pakistan is also silent because it considers that speaking against China will draw global attention to their own shabby human rights record. Silence on Uighurs has cost Pakistan credibility on the Kashmir issue. Khan has previously argued that the scale of the two issues is different. But this argument will not be enough if Paki-stan wants to be perceived as a genuine champion of Mu¬s¬lims’ and human rights when speaking on Kash¬mir. Given that the audience for pleas for Kash¬miri rights is in the West, and not China, Pakistan should react against human rights violations by China. Keeping a blind over atrocities of Uyghur Muslims in China will tarnish his image as a true Muslim. |
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