iLook China

Recently in the Western media, China has been accused of throwing hundreds of thousands of Islamic Uyghurs in prison camps and reprograming them, but the media is leaving out most of the story?

In Xinjiang, the conflict between Islamic terrorists and China has been going on since 1960, for 58 years. The Islamic terrorists China’s fighting claim the area where they live was invaded by China and they want to be free but history tells another story.

The area known as Xinjiang was a protectorate of China as early as 60 BC (during the Han dynasty, when it was part of the Protectorate of the Western Regions) and during the Tang dynasty (when it was part of the Protectorate General to Pacify the West), although there were a number of periods of independence from China.

During the 18th century, the Qing Dynasty created the province of Xinjiang. In 1955, the Chinese Communist Party made Xinjiang an autonomous region.

However, bloody incidents in 1966 and 1967 occurred as Chinese and Soviet forces clashed along the border. The Soviets trained anti-Chinese guerillas and urged the Uyghurs to revolt, praising their national liberation struggle. On 30 January 1967, guerilla attacks were reportedly made in Xinjiang by a Soviet-based Turkestan refugee army. In 1969, Chinese and Soviet forces clashed along the Xinjiang-Soviet border.

The Soviets and Chinese stopped fighting but the Uyghurs never stopped.

Now, CNN claims, “thousands of Uyghur Muslims are currently being detained in Chinese ‘political education’ camps.

“One recent news report put the number of Uyghurs confined at 120,000 in ‘overcrowded and squalid’ conditions in just one prefecture in southern Xinjiang.”

Not to be outdone, I also found a self-proclaimed internet news site called supchina.com that claimed, “China’s Re-education Camps for a Million Muslims: What Everyone Needs to Know.”

It’s amazing how fast numbers can grow without any valid evidence.

Even with a Google search, I couldn’t find out who supchina.com is or who funds it.  The only information that appeared from the Google search came from that site. This alleged news site wasn’t listed on Wiki.  That’s why I think supchina.com is an internet propaganda site probably funded by the Uyghurs China has been fighting for almost 60 years.

Then there was this from Foreign Policy.com and Magazine, “Islamic Leaders Have Nothing to Say About China’s Internment Camps for Muslims. Hundreds of thousands of Uighur have been detained without trial in China’s western region of Xinjiang.

“As the Chinese authorities continue a brutal crackdown in Xinjiang, the northwest region of China that’s home to the Uighur, Islam has been one of the main targets.”

What about across the border from Xinjiang in Afghanistan?

That’s right; America’s war in Afghanistan is next door where the United States and some of its allies have been fighting Islamic terrorist groups in Afghanistan since 2001.

Maybe the U.S. is fighting some of the same people the Chinese are fighting.

Seventeen years after 2001, the BBC reports, “Afghanistan conflict: Civilian deaths hit record high, says UN.”  And the Military Times reported recently, “The U.S. is bolstering its military presence in Afghanistan, more than 16 years after the war started. Is anyone paying attention?”

In addition, “Yet today, on Afghan soil, the United States is maintaining a system of arrests and detention as part of its ongoing military and intelligence operations that violates international human rights law and international humanitarian law (the laws of war).”

But when China does the same thing, on the other side of the border, the U.S. media calls it brutal.

What about ISIS behind bars in Europe?

The Washington Post reports, “Hundreds of Europeans who joined the ‘caliphate’ are now back home and incarcerated. The new challenge: Keeping prisons from becoming recruitment centers for future terrorists. … A few months before his killing rampage, convicted robber and prison inmate Benjamin Herman had a jailhouse conversion of a sort. A white suburban teen and a nominal Catholic when he was first incarcerated, he emerged in late May as an avowed Islamist who would murder three people within hours of gaining freedom on a work-release program.

“Never have so many people been arrested on charges related to terrorism, and never have we seen so many of these guys in prison together,” said Thomas Renard, a Belgian terrorism expert and researcher at the Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations in Brussels. “In bringing them together, we are facilitating their ability to recruit. And that is something that will stay with us for a long time.”

After reading that last paragraph, it seems to me, the Chinese are smarter and wiser because they are the ones doing the brainwashing/reprograming instead of the other way around.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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