I mean, putting people in prison camps based on ethnic and religious profiling is completely fucked, and implying the reactionary seperatist movement is entirely or even primarily the result of C.I.A. meddling and that religious and ethnic based repression and internment camps were the only solution is ignorant, racist, islamophobic and anti-materialist.

Like, duh the C.I.A. supports the Uighur seperatist movement, they’re a reactionary separatist movement on the Chinese side of a China/NATO-puppet-state border, what’s not to love, but the movement would have almost certainly existed whether or not the CIA was involved. There has been a Uighur seperatist movement in Xinjiang longer that there has been a CIA, for most of its history its been a lot less violent than it was in the last two decades and the violence in the last two decades is at least as much a result of the CPC’s atrocious mishandling as it was of any CIA meddling.

The CPC’s handling of Uighur seperatism in this millenium has been reminiscent in its racism, escalation, and brutality of Bush’s inestimably worse war on terror that the CPC repeatedly tried to equate it with. Instead of firing and imprisoning people based on outwards religious and expression like wearing a burqa, a turban, or even too long of a beard, here are some recommendations from a 2002 paper by Chien-peng Chung, a political science professor at Lingnan University whose main research interest at the time was the Xinjiang situation.

The government’s call to develop the west has accelerated migration by Han Chinese into Xinjiang, thereby exacerbating tensions. In 1949, the region was almost 80 percent Uighur; today, that figure has dropped to 45-50 percent. Many Uighurs do not speak Mandarin Chinese, which is usually the prerequisite for any good-paying job or government position, and few are as well educated as the immi grants. As a result, the Han dominate commerce in Xinjiang’s urban areas and are frequently seen by the locals as having the region’s best jobs in the government, the Communist Party, and the military. The Han also usually live in newer neighborhoods and go to informally segregated schools.

Rather than allowing the flow of immigration into Xinjiang to remain unchecked, the Chinese regime should regulate it so that immigrants do not compete unnecessarily with the locals for jobs, schools, or state services. Beijing should encourage public-sector corporations, oil companies, and government agencies to increase their hiring of ethnic minorities. Quotas for Uighur admission into colleges and government positions should also be expanded and enforced. The government must also allocate funds fairly among Han and Uighur neighborhoods. Cleaning up the area around China’s nuclear test site at Lop Nor in the Taklimakan Desert, where soil and groundwater pollution are causing birth defects and health problems among the local inhabitants, would be another important step.

Furthermore, as guaranteed in the Chinese constitution, the government must uphold religious freedom. Muslim Uighurs who openly practice their faith complain of harassment by the authori ties. The government must respect Muslim customs and allow the free functioning of mosques and religious schools, interfering only if they are found to be educating or harboring militants. Political changes are required as well: less gerrymandering in favor of Han Chinese among Xinjiang’s administrative units, more proportionate ethnic representation in party and government structures, and more devolution of power from Beijing to the region. Hunting down terrorists is only a partial solution to the violence in Xinjiang. Unless China listens to the Uighurs and treats them better, its troubled western region is unlikely to be calmed any time soon.

Basically, he’s saying that the reason the seperatist movement is turning violent again is that Uighur people’s material conditions were getting worse, and if those material conditions improved the seperatist movement would both lose supporters and get less violent.

What the CPC ended up doing instead of confronting the material needs was level increasingly severe punishments against increasingly more avenues of religious and ethno-cultural expression and using the :shocked-pikachu: increasingly escalating terrorist violence resulting from this radicalising people to justify increasingly harsher measures.

It’s racist, islamophobic, reactionary and anti-materialist to imply that targetting people based on their expression of the Islamic faith and Uighur cultural identity was the only possible way to disempower and deradicalise the Uighur seperatist movement.