From the Soviet Union to China, Bosnia to the Uyghurs, CJ Werleman traces a historic tendency that turns a blind eye to international crimes
The evidence for China’s genocide against the indigenous Uyghur people in Xinjiang – or what was independent East Turkestan in 1933 and 1944 respectively – is as damning as it is irrefutable.
There are troves of leaked Chinese Communist Party (CCP) documents; leaked videos; thousands of survivor testimonies, eyewitness accounts and words of those who have not heard from their missing loved ones in years; satellite imagery. Only a fool or someone in possession of sinister motives would deny what is the largest industrial-scale persecution of a religious or ethnic minority since the Holocaust.
And it is not as if China has made a secret of its intent to eradicate 13 million Uyghur people – having boasted of curtailing the pregnancies of Uyghur women, whom the CCP refer to as “Uyghur baby-making machines”, while not overlooking its ever-changing confessions of guilt. At first, the Chinese Government denied organising the mass detention of the ethnic minority in a network of concentration camps, before claiming that these facilities are used only for “counter-terrorism” measures. This later changed to “vocational training”.
China has been unable to explain why academics, lawyers, doctors, engineers and artists require “vocational training” under permanent forced detainment.
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Despite this mountain of evidence, however, a growing cadre of Uyghur genocide deniers has formed within left-wing circles – specifically bloggers and pundits who refer to themselves as ‘anti-imperialists’. Chinese and Russian state media outlets, such as the Global Times and Russia Today, amplify their anti-Uyghur conspiracy theories and attacks against pro-Uyghur activists.
“It’s important to say loudly: the ‘Uyghur genocide’ narrative is a hoax that has been fabricated as a major weapon in its New Cold War against China,” tweeted Asa Winstanley, a blogger for the pro-Palestinian publication Intifada, in support of his colleague Ali Abunimah’s article, which falsely claims that the Uyghur genocide is built entirely on the imagination of a single source – Adrian Zenz – whom he smears as a “far-right, anti-Semitic German Christian Zionist”.
Last week, the far-left blog The Grayzone – the founder and contributors of which appear regularly as guests on Russia Today to lay cover for Assad-Russia war crimes in Syria – falsely claimed that stories regarding forced Uyghur labour in Xinjiang are a propaganda campaign “brought to you by US Gov, NAT, arms industry to drive Cold War PR blitz”.
This was shared online by veteran journalist John Pilger, who tweeted: “The following piece is an impressive demolition of ‘the shabby propaganda campaign dressed up as academic inquiry’ into China’s treatment of the Uyghurs. Western media (BBC/Guardian) ‘plays a central role’ in a cynical campaign that is leading us to war.”
Pilger’s tweet was shared nearly 1,000 times, before being amplified by Chinese state media outlets and a number of Chinese embassies around the world.
It should be noted that Pilger routinely appears on Russian Today to deny and whitewash the Syrian dictator’s crimes against humanity.
A Recent History of Denialism
Last week, hundreds of Syrian activists, writers and intellectuals signed an open letter decrying “dehumanising propaganda and disinformation” with which Syrians are too often smeared in the name of left-wing or ‘anti-imperialist’ politics.
“Portraying themselves as ‘opponents’ of imperialism, these individuals routinely exhibit a highly selective attention to matters of ‘intervention’ and human rights violations; one which often aligns with the governments of Russia and China,” the letter stated.
Worse, genocide denialism is the continuation of genocide violence, given that conspiracy theories that vilify or cast suspicion on victims of genocide sabotage collective efforts to halt the violence, while also paving the way for a repeat of past horrors, thus constituting a form if “intergenerational injustice”.
Salih Hudayar, founder of East Turkestan Awakening, told Byline Times: “The denial of the genocide inflicts further psychological pain and humiliation upon us. Not only are we losing our family members and loved ones, but we are being denied their existence in many cases.”
Genocide denialism among the ‘anti-imperialist’ left pre-dates China’s atrocities in Xinjiang and Assad-Russia’s in Syria, however. Those in this camp also denied and downplayed genocide in Soviet Union in the 1950s); Mao’s China in the 1960s; Cambodia in the 1970s; and Bosnia in the 1990s.