Albanian-Canadian historian and journalist Olsi Jazexhi believed in early 2019 that experiences about human rights violations within the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Area (Xinjiang) of Western China have been lies.
Accounts from individuals who had fled the realm in addition to experiences from human rights organisations have been portray an image of human rights abuses being perpetrated on a large scale. Muslim minorities in Xinjiang – the vast majority of whom are Turkic-speaking Uighurs – have been reportedly being disadvantaged of primary freedoms, their cultural and spiritual heritage was being destroyed and no less than 1 million of them had been interned in an unlimited community of detention camps.
The worldwide group had taken discover and the United Nations had raised its issues.
However Jazexhi was unconvinced.
“I used to be sure that the tales have been a scheme constructed by the US and the West to discredit China and divert consideration away from their very own human rights information relating to Muslims,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
The Chinese language authorities itself vehemently rejected the allegations, acknowledging the existence of the camps however describing them as vocational abilities coaching centres essential to fight alleged extremism.
To see the reality for himself, Jazexhi contacted the Chinese language embassy in Tirana about visiting Xinjiang. He was quickly invited to hitch a media tour for overseas journalists largely from Muslim international locations and in early August 2019, he was on a airplane sure for China.
“I went to defend the Chinese language authorities,” he recalled.
However he rapidly discovered that defending the Chinese language narrative was a much more tough job than he had anticipated.
Within the first few days in Xinjiang, he and different overseas journalists needed to sit by way of a collection of lectures given by Chinese language officers concerning the historical past of the area and its individuals.
“They have been portraying the indigenous individuals of Xinjiang as immigrants and Islam as a faith that was overseas to the area,” Jazexhi mentioned. “It was incorrect.”
His disillusion solely continued when he and different journalists have been taken by their Chinese language hosts to one of many so-called vocational coaching centres exterior the regional capital of Urumqi.
“They mentioned it was like a faculty but it surely was clearly a high-security web site within the center within the desert,” Jazexhi mentioned.
“Additionally they instructed us that the individuals staying there weren’t allowed to go away so it was clearly not a faculty however a jail and the individuals there weren’t college students however prisoners.”
As soon as they entered the location, Jazexhi had an opportunity to work together with a number of Uighurs and it rapidly grew to become clear they weren’t the “terrorists” or “extremists” Beijing had claimed.
“I used to be speaking to people who had been taken there for merely practising Islam by, for instance, coming into a spiritual marriage, praying in public or sporting a headband,” he mentioned.
“One in every of them instructed me that she was not Muslim and that she now believed in science and in Chinese language President Xi Jinping.”
Jazexhi confronted the accompanying Chinese language officers.
“I instructed them that what they have been doing was very mistaken,” Jazexhi mentioned.
The interactions led to a quarrel between Jazexhi and a few of the Chinese language hosts.
When he lastly left Xinjiang, he was deeply shocked.
He had thought he was going to show Western lies however he had as a substitute witnessed oppression on a large scale.
“What I noticed was an try and eradicate Islam from Xinjiang,” he mentioned.
‘Agenda of the West’
Since Jazexhi’s go to, the UN Human Rights Council has discovered that Chinese language restrictions and deprivations in Xinjiang might represent crimes in opposition to humanity.
The US authorities in addition to lawmakers in Australia, Canada, France and the UK have labelled the Chinese language therapy of Uighurs and different Turkic-speaking Muslims within the area a genocide. In the meantime, a number of international locations have imposed financial restrictions on items from Xinjiang in response to proof of compelled labour within the area.
Amid the criticism, Beijing has continued to rearrange visits – primarily for diplomats and journalists from Muslim international locations – to Xinjiang.
Chinese language media have reported about no less than 5 such media excursions going down in 2023, with Xinjiang visits additionally organized for overseas diplomats and Islamic students.
Moiz Farooq, who’s the manager editor of Each day Ittehad Media Group and Pakistan Financial Web, visited Xinjiang in the course of December as a part of a delegation of media representatives from Pakistan.
Very like Jazexhi in 2019, Farooq went to Xinjiang with the intent to look at for himself that the tales he had heard weren’t true.
“There may be a number of propaganda about Xinjiang on the market and I wished to witness it with my very own eyes,” Farooq instructed Al Jazeera.
Not like Jazexhi, Farooq left Xinjiang impressed by the area’s stage of improvement and warranted that the native Muslims have been largely dwelling a free and content material life.
“I used to be capable of discuss to as many alternative individuals as I wished at bazaars and eating places about their lifestyle and I, together with the remainder of the delegation, have been completely unrestricted,” he mentioned.
“I noticed Muslims there who have been free to get pleasure from and practise their faith.”
Farooq doesn’t imagine that accounts and experiences from human rights organisations and UN organs detailing human rights abuses in Xinjiang are appropriate.
“It’s the agenda of the West to point out the worst of Xinjiang and I now know that the tales usually are not true as a result of I’ve seen how fortunately they [Muslims in Xinjiang] live,” he mentioned.
Naz Parveen is the director of the China Window Institute in Peshawar, Pakistan, and he or she was on the identical tour as Farooq. She too was impressed by the prosperity she noticed in Xinjiang.
Echoing Beijing’s characterisation of the scenario, Parveen believes that what have been termed human rights violations in Xinjiang will be extra precisely described as legislation enforcement operations focusing on non secular extremism.
For Parveen, the journey strengthened these views.
“We visited bazaars and mosques and we noticed individuals praying and being taught by imams,” she instructed Al Jazeera
“Wherever we went, we noticed that individuals have been dwelling a traditional life, a peaceable and content material life, so the horrible issues I had examine Xinjiang didn’t align with what I noticed.”
On one other tour of Xinjiang in September, Chinese language state broadcaster CGTN quoted columnist and Filipino politician Mussolini Sinsuat Lidasan praising Chinese language “anti-terrorism” measures in Xinjiang.
On the identical tour, Donovan Ralph Martin, who’s the editor of the Each day Scrum Information in Canada, was likewise quoted by CGTN as saying that “completely, there may be freedom of faith in Xinjiang, and anyone who doesn’t say that’s ignorant”.
Lidasan and Martin didn’t reply to Al Jazeera’s requests for interview.
Difficult the narrative
Since as early as 2020, Chinese language President Xi Jinping has referred to as for “telling the story of Xinjiang” and “confidently propagating the superb social stability of Xinjiang“.
Canadian-Uighur activist Rukiye Turdush sees the media excursions as integral to that mission.
“He desires to alter the narrative about Xinjiang,” she instructed Al Jazeera.
Henryk Szadziewski is a senior researcher on the NGO Uyghur Human Rights Undertaking. He says media excursions, like those in Xinjiang, are a standard tactic employed by international locations which have one thing to cover.
“The aim is to contradict the criticism of the human rights document by getting others to amplify your narrative which garners extra credibility,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
“In apply, in the event that they for instance wish to present you that Uighurs get pleasure from freedom of spiritual perception and expression, then they normally take you to Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar and the individuals that you simply communicate to have usually been closely chosen and are unable to problem the state’s model of Uighurs.”
The Pakistani delegation that Farooq and Parveen joined visited Id Kah Mosque.
By way of extra spontaneous encounters with Uighurs on such excursions, Turdush doesn’t connect a lot credibility to conclusions reached by overseas journalists primarily based on talks with Uighurs who’ve been dwelling in an setting of concern for years and been subjected to heavy surveillance in addition to state propaganda.
“Few Uighurs and different Turkic individuals in Xinjiang have a lot selection aside from to remain silent or echo Chinese language propaganda,” she mentioned.
Australian journalists on a media tour in September reported they spoke to a memento vendor who had not been offered by their tour guides. The seller mentioned that he had hung out at an internment camp however when the journalists began to ask extra questions, an individual instantly appeared and started to movie the seller’s solutions.
Even former UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet discovered her long-delayed go to rigorously choreographed. However her ultimate report, launched moments earlier than she left workplace, discovered China had most likely dedicated “crimes in opposition to humanity” in Xinjiang.
Nevertheless, lately, there have been indicators that a few of the safety measures in Xinjiang have been relaxed, based on Maya Wang, an affiliate Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
Detention camps have been closed down and police checkpoints have been eliminated.
As a substitute, an unlimited community of subtle facial-recognition safety cameras has reportedly been established all through the area, whereas individuals who have been beforehand detained in camps have been transferred into China’s opaque jail system.
On the similar time, info flowing out and in of Xinjiang stays tightly managed, whereas Xinjiang residents are punished for having unauthorised contact with individuals exterior China.
“The genocide remains to be occurring however it’s simply rather more covert now,” Turdush mentioned.
Regardless of the controversy surrounding the organised excursions, each Turdush and Jazexhi imagine that overseas journalists and officers ought to proceed to go to Xinjiang so long as they problem the narratives which might be introduced to them.
“They need to go,” Jazexhi mentioned.
“And they need to communicate the reality about what they see in Xinjiang and what they don’t see.”
