Throughout the Winter Olympics in China, mouthpieces for the U.S. empire, including big-time sportscasters, have been cranking up the volume on denunciations of China’s persecution of the Uyghur people, a mostly Muslim minority concentrated in the Xinjiang region in northwest China. That self-righteous indignation pushed the U.S. to the top of the heap in global competition for the most ridiculous claim to be a “force for justice” for minorities and Muslims, and the leader of the “free world.”
Even as human rights groups routinely apply a double standard to enemies of, and allies of the U.S., the oppression of Uyghur people by the Chinese regime is credibly documented and is a crime against humanity. Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang are subject to mass arbitrary detention in what are essentially concentration camps. People are in jail for such things as sending an Islamic religious recording to a family member or for downloading e-books in the Uyghur language. A pervasive system of mass surveillance and controls on movement combined with arbitrary arrest and enforced disappearance create a generalized state of terror. And children are taken from their families and sent to schools where “education” parallels how Native American children in the U.S. and Canada were torn from their families and sent to schools that forced them to adopt the English language and European-American culture (see the article on this in the revcom.us American Crime series).
When China was a socialist country under the leadership of Mao Zedong (from 1949 to 1976), principles and policies were in effect to provide special resources to regions like Xinjiang and Tibet where historically oppressed minorities lived. At the beginning of the socialist transformation of China, Mao wrote, “All through the ages, the reactionary rulers, chiefly from the Han nationality, sowed feelings of estrangement among our various nationalities and bullied the minority peoples. Even among the working people it is not easy to eliminate the resultant influences in a short time.” And he emphasized the importance of combatting Han chauvinism (which is roughly comparable to white supremacy in the U.S.) in achieving the core objectives of China’s socialist revolution.
Since the restoration of capitalism after Mao’s death in 1976, and with the emergence of China as a capitalist-imperialist power, the exact opposite orientation and policies have been in effect. And the Uyghur people are subject to massive repression by China’s current rulers.
Clip: "Free Yourself from the GTF!"
The U.S. Targeted, Terrorized, Tortured and Killed Muslims After the 9/11 Attacks
The non-stop propaganda during the Olympics aimed at China for persecuting minority Muslims comes from a country that enslaved Black people, is built on genocide, and viciously exploits, demonizes, criminalizes, jails, and wantonly murders minorities—Black, Brown and Native people—in broad daylight.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. launched a global “war on terror” that had a major element of demonizing, torturing, and killing Muslims throughout the world. Muslims, including many with no or only the most tangential connection to the attacks, were kidnapped and subjected to the most horrific and obscene torture at places like “Abu Ghraib” and Guantanamo (see “America’s Torture Chamber: 20 Years of Guantanamo... It Must Be Closed NOW!”).
Within the U.S., xenophobia against Muslims was whipped up, and people were programmed to report “suspicious activity” to the FBI simply on the basis of prejudice against Muslims. Muslim children were bullied and terrorized in schools. The NYPD placed Muslim communities in New York and New Jersey under surveillance without pretense of due process, with the objective of systematically monitoring and infiltrating every aspect of the daily lives of Muslims as they shopped, prayed or went to work, creating a climate of suspicion and fear (see Hassan v. City of New York, Center for Constitutional Rights). This was coupled with massive detention of Muslims. Over a thousand Muslims in New Jersey, for example, were detained, often spending months in solitary confinement on “holds” that amounted to guilty until proven innocent.
…And Its Favorite Allies Around the World Target, Terrorize, Torture and Kill Muslims and Oppressed Nationalities
The operatives and idiots who profess outrage at the treatment of the Uyghur people seem to be able to ignore the fact that the U.S. backs, arms, and financially enables Israel to lock down two million Palestinian people—predominantly Muslims—in the massive outdoor prison called Gaza and subjects Palestinians throughout Israel and the territories it seized in wars and illegally occupies to humiliation, genocidal “relocation,” constant terror and frenzied and furious assaults on their very existence as a people.
And where is the outrage among the mouthpieces for the U.S. rulers that on August 5, 2019, India, ruled by pro-U.S. Hindu fundamentalist fascists, imposed draconian martial law on the majority Muslim state of Kashmir. Every home was turned into a jail with a statewide curfew. Over 500 Kashmiri politicians were jailed and thousands more arrested in one swoop. Any spontaneous protest was crushed with an iron fist, and people were beaten, maimed, jailed and killed mercilessly. Young boys, 10 to 13 years old, were kidnapped and abducted from families in night raids by Indian forces, and held in jails without charges. Kashmiri jails are full, the children are now taken to jails of other states. The aim is to eliminate Muslims from Kashmir, perform an ethnic cleansing, and change its demographics forever. (See “Kashmir Dying ” ) India also completely shut down the internet in Kashmir for five months, as well as barring all foreign journalists.
These documented crimes against humanity are at least as egregious as those China is charged with in relation to the Uyghur people. But you don’t hear shit about them from the rulers of the U.S. and their propaganda mouthpieces because they are carried out… by the U.S. itself or its allies.
Coming from the rulers of the U.S. and those whose mouths serve as channels for the outlook of those rulers, expressions of outrage over the repression of a Muslim minority in China are nothing more than “gold medal” hypocrisy.
