A persecuted Kazakh Muslim describes how atheist Chinese officials sought to brainwash him into repudiating his Islamic faith
Why are Muslim and Buddhist countries allies of an atheist China that murders their co-religionists? Key Muslim-majority countries allied with China include Pakistan, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. Yet Chinese persecution of its Uighur Muslim population in Xinjiang is disgraceful and extreme.
Key Buddhist-majority countries allied with China include Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. But China’s persecutions of Tibetan Buddhists is second only to its persecution of Muslims.
The Chinese government also persecutes its millions of Christians, both Catholics and Protestants. The Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, autocratic president of a country that is majority-Catholic, is striving to ally his country with China despite domestic opposition.
The dictum that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is justifiable when a nation‘s existence is at stake, but that isn’t the case for any of these states — just their autocratic regimes.
The short answer to the question “Why?” is that the corrupt autocratic rulers of these China-allied states couldn’t care less for the well-being of their fellow Muslims, Buddhists, or Christians — or that they are allying their nations with a spiritual enemy. The autocrats care only for the loans and bribes that come their way from a wealthier, powerful China. The Chinese-provided military hardware and spyware will help them hold down their citizenry just as the Chinese leadership does to its.
Pakistan’s alliance with China is especially notorious. Many Pakistanis have Uighur wives who cannot join them because they are in Chinese prisons or “re-education” camps which seek to make them repudiate Islam in favor of Xi Jinping Thought.
Muslims are detained for “re-education” by China‘s government and made to eat pork and drink alcohol, former detainees report. Last month, a US commission on China described the re-education camps as “the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.” Recently, even the once-tolerated Hui Muslims — not just the Uighurs of Xinjiang — have come under Chinese repression:
Throughout Ningxia, Islamic decor and Arabic signs are being taken off the streets. They only went up a decade ago, when the authorities were highlighting the Hui ethnic minority culture to lure tourists. Driving south from Yinchuan along the dusty plains of the Yellow River, the roadside is now littered with onion domes – green, gold and white – freshly removed from market buildings, hotels and parks….Descended from Arab and Central Asian Silk Road traders, there are more than 10 million Hui in China. Most of them speak Mandarin, live in peace with the majority Han population, and even look much the same as them – apart from the white caps and headscarves worn by the more traditional Hui.
The sacred Jokhang Temple in Tibet, which Chinese authorities burned down and suppressed reports of what they had done
For an even longer period of time, the Chinese authorities have been trying to destroy the Buddhist religion in Tibet. CNN reported in 2013,
Ignoring both religious freedom and the outcry of the Tibetan people, the Chinese authorities [began] demolishing the ancient capital of Lhasa, including one of the most important Buddhist sites of the city, Tibet’s holiest Jokhang Temple.
So why are Muslim Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey allied with China? And why do these three nations look the other way as close China-ally Myanmar practices rape, murder, and genocide on Myanmar’s Rohinga Muslims?
Broadcasting Board of Governors — which supervises Voice of America and other US-government broadcasting outlets abroad — please take note.
Click here to go to the previous issue of Founders Broadsheet (“NAFTA deadline looms, President flips on ZTE, Congress mulls defense”)
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