What is happening to the Uyghurs inside China is a blatant act of cultural genocide and a human tragedy. It is neither the first of its kind in history nor perhaps even the worst of the human tragedies that have occurred thus far in the twenty-first century. However, it is a tragedy of global proportions that begs for a global response. In concluding this book’s account of how this tragedy has unfolded through a combination of colonialism and ‘counterterrorism,’ which together have amounted to a full-out state-led war on the Uyghurs, I will try to answer three critical questions about its future trajectory: 1) what is the logical conclusion of the Uyghur cultural genocide? 2) what are the implications of this tragedy for the future of GWOT? and 3) what can be done to stop this tragedy from getting any worse?
It is first important to speculate about the PRC’s own endgame in carrying out acts of cultural genocide against the Uyghurs. There are a variety of motivations for what the state is doing in the region. It demonstrates the power of the Party to resolve complex problems, in this instance the perceived problem of alleged ‘terrorism,’ effectively and forcefully, also sending a cautionary message to other dissenting actors throughout China. It asserts the territorial integrity of PRC sovereignty, and it may even serve as an example for a new state conception of ethnic identity. However, I believe that the primary driver of this state-led cultural genocide is the settler colonization of the Uyghur homeland. The PRC wants, once and for all, to integrate the Uyghur homeland into a more homogeneous, Han-centric state, leaving it open for unfettered re-development.
Arguably, this had been the goal of the Party in the region since at least the late 1990s, but especially since the early 2000s, and it had poured billions of dollars into the region’s development for this purpose. In the face of this development, which was accompanied by assimilationist policies, Han in-migration, and an ever-increasing securitization, many Uyghurs responded with sporadic resistance, sometimes violently. As this resistance became increasingly violent in 2013–2015, the state had decided it needed to take drastic measures to completely neutralize the population so that it could go about its work of developing the region unfettered as an integral part of China.
While the motivation has never been about eradicating a perceived ‘terrorist threat’ in the region, the narrative that a ‘terrorist threat’ within the Uyghur population existed has been and continues to be central to implementing cultural genocide. The characterization of the region’s violence as emerging from an irrational ‘extremist’ and international ‘terrorist threat’ had helped to justify a continually violent and biopolitical response from the state to any and all Uyghur resistance. Thus, it should be kept in mind that many implementing and supporting the cultural genocide in the Uyghur homeland today fully believe that it is a response to an existential ‘terrorist threat’ posed by an ‘extremist’ virus that has infected the Uyghur culture and people. That said, the state’s endgame and its true motivations have little to nothing to do with ‘terrorism.’ The goal is to strip this region of its Uyghur characteristics so that it can be developed as part of a larger and unified concept of Chinese society.
In this context, it is very difficult to imagine an accommodationist way out of the present situation that would appeal to both Uyghurs and the PRC. Contemplating the elevation of Uyghurs in shared governance, as had been the case during the coalition government that briefly ruled the region in the late 1940s, or even the allowance of the cultural and religious liberties of the 1980s seem almost unimaginable in the present context. Likewise, it is highly unlikely that the state will suddenly release all of the Uyghurs presently in mass internment camps or in prisons on political charges, as it would unleash a very angry population with even less to lose than in 2014–2015 when violence in the region was at its peak. Recent reports do suggest that the situation has begun to soften in the region since the summer of 2019, but this should not be confused with accommodation or an abandonment of cultural genocide.
In August 2019, international journalists were shown some closed camps and were allowed to interview a few hand-picked released ‘graduates’ from the camps, but they also saw that other camps still exist and that the ‘graduates’ with whom they spoke were visibly terrified to misspeak.1 By early 2020, reports suggested that in addition to camp closings, there has been efforts to minimize the presence of obvious securitization in urban areas. According to one account, many of the checkpoints in urban centers had been dismantled, some convenience police stations had been closed, and more Uyghur men were present on the street.2 However, these reports also suggested that surveillance remained very active, that nobody on the street would willingly engage in a discussion of the camps, and bearded men and headscarves were virtually non-existent.
This softening of the complete police state that had been in place since 2017, if it continues, likely reflects a new normal, where the same pressures of coercion exist on the indigenous population, but are better hidden from view and more palatable to tourists. In this sense, it may be that the arbitrary internment of substantial percentages of the population is gradually being replaced with a system where the continued threat of ‘re-education’ and imprisonment is now the means of control and pacification. Those who have refused to submit to the whitewashing of their culture and either willful assimilation or self-marginalization likely will remain incarcerated indefinitely. Meanwhile, those allowed to live outside have implicitly agreed to the terms of the state with regards to the colonization of their homeland and the destruction of their culture. If they begin to show signs of resistance to the state’s plans for the region, it is most likely that they will join those who remain interned or imprisoned. Under such a regime of control, which can possibly continue indefinitely, there is no reason to believe that efforts at cultural genocide will cease, and there is little that can stop it, short of a complete purge of PRC state leadership and a mea-culpa to the Uyghur people.
Given the actions that the state is presently taking and the experience of past settler colonies, one can envision what the outcome of this cultural genocide might look like. The region would no longer be termed the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, but merely Xinjiang, and it would be overwhelmingly Han in its demographics. Traditionally Uyghur cities like Kashgar would become primarily populated by Han and completely indistinguishable from generic Chinese urban spaces elsewhere in China, being virtually cleansed of any signs of Uyghur historical habitation except where retained for tourism purposes. A greatly depleted and traumatized Uyghur population would survive, but it would be marginalized in its own homeland, detached from its history, culture, and language. Perhaps, they would be relegated to depressed communities in unhospitable conditions that are tied to low wage labor in adjacent ‘satellite factories,’ or maybe they would ultimately be quarantined on ‘reservations.’ While token members of the group might succeed through education and perseverance to rise up enough to enter the Han-dominant middle-class and even elite, this would be accomplished only by fully assimilating into Han culture. The remainder would become part of an ethnically profiled underclass. Such an endgame is imaginable and possible, but it would also likely require many more years of the status quo involving further state violence and a concerted effort to silence outside critics.
Unfortunately for the Uyghurs inside China, there is little they can do in the present context to resist such outcomes. However, Uyghurs outside China may be able to complicate PRC designs on the erasure of their culture and identity. The Uyghur diaspora around the world has grown significantly since 2009, and a broader segment of these exiles has become politically motivated as most have family members who have been either interned or imprisoned. They now provide the only viable sources of Uyghur resistance to the cultural genocide taking place in their homeland. It is also for this reason that they have been targeted for harassment by the PRC despite their location outside China’s borders.3 However, depending upon where they are located, the Chinese state may not be able to silence them entirely.
The largest segments of this diaspora, in the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, have mostly been neutralized given that their host states are already significantly dependent economically on the PRC, on which they border. However, there is also a significant ethnic Kazakh population from China in Kazakhstan, which has been very vocal in publicizing information about the situation in the Uyghur homeland, creating an organization called Ata-Jurt dedicated to this purpose. Ata-Jurt has helped get stories out to the international media from former internees, mostly Kazakhstan citizens, who were interned when visiting China. While Kazakhstan authorities arrested the leader of Ata-Jurt and forced him to step down in an attempt to silence the group, it continues to operate given that it has support from Kazakh nationalists in the country who prevent the government from closing it down entirely. As activists on the border with the Uyghur region, Ata Jurt may continue to be a critical source of information about what is happening to Uyghurs and Kazakhs in China, keeping the issue in the international spotlight. Furthermore, it may even be successful in forcing the Kazakhstan government to express more concern over the issue with neighboring China.
The Uyghur diaspora in Turkey, while still smaller than in Central Asia, has grown substantially since 2012, but their advocacy capacities are limited by the fact that many of them have only tenuous residency status in the country. Furthermore, Turkey’s increasingly close economic ties to the PRC hamper their ability to be vocal, and China’s increased disinformation about its treatment of Uyghurs for Turkish audiences at least partially mitigates the efforts of the country’s Uyghurs to gain public support for their cause from the larger citizenry.4 Nonetheless, Uyghur exiles in Turkey, especially those with citizenship, retain strong political capital within the country, especially among nationalists and Pan-Turkists, which makes it difficult for the government to completely silence them. As such, this diaspora could play a critical role in maintaining attention to the Uyghur plight, especially within the Muslim world.
The diaspora in the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia is much smaller, but it has been particularly active in keeping the situation of the Uyghurs on the agenda of liberal democracies and in the western media. While they have also received threats from PRC officials, it is more difficult for China to use intimidation to silence Uyghurs living in these countries. In the current context, this community’s activism has expanded significantly, including among Uyghur youth who have grown up in the US and Europe and have become savvy about how to mobilize people in the west. While this movement is largely de-centralized, it has the power, not only to bring significant public attention to the fate of the Uyghurs, but to help spur more grassroots advocacy movements that can assert pressure on the PRC.
The most unpredictable part of the Uyghur diaspora is the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), which still exists and now has more fighters than ever in its decade-long history. However, much mystery still surrounds this group, especially regarding its sources of funding and its patrons. Furthermore, recent video statements from the group suggest that TIP in Syria and TIP in Afghanistan have developed into two completely different groups, albeit apparently still identifying with each other. This may mean that they actually represent two different power sources among Uyghur militant religious nationalists in exile with completely separate patrons and goals.
In an August 2019 video statement, Abdul Häq, who still identifies as the group’s Emir, notes that his group has now completely moved from Waziristan to Afghanistan, most likely to Badakhshan and closer to the Chinese border than ever before.5 In the video, Häq addresses the present situation in the Uyghur homeland, stating that those seeking political solutions to what is happening to Uyghurs through protests and advocacy are misguided. Instead, he says that the only way to fight China’s aggression towards Uyghurs is through armed struggle. Interestingly, he also mentions that the group has abandoned the generic black flag of jihad and has returned to the blue kök bayraq of Häsän Mäkhsum and the First ETR, suggesting that it may be adopting a stronger nationalist orientation that is less associated with global jihadism. It has also changed the logo of its video production company Islam Awazi by removing the black flag of jihad from it, clearly delineating its videos from those of TIP in Syria. This last video message from Abdul Häq and the change of its flag seems to suggest that the group may be reviving Häsän Mäkhsum’s more nationalist vision for an insurgency inside China. However, it is difficult to believe that any group could achieve such a feat today when the Uyghur region is under complete lockdown and ethnic Uyghurs elsewhere in China can be easily tracked. Furthermore, the capacity of this group in Afghanistan is likely meager at best, and has a long history of issuing threats against the PRC without carrying out any actions. Thus, its future and its capacity to influence the situation are questionable.
The future of TIP in Syria likewise remains uncertain at this time. It has a new website, produces a weekly news segment that provides its own interpretation of world events, and appears to be one of the few groups still fighting Russia and the Assad regime in the country’s last opposition stronghold of Idlib. Its videos now identity itself separately as Turkistan Islam Partisi Sham Shûbisi (Turkistan Islamic Party Sham Branch), continuing to use its black flag and its old video logo, clearly distinguishing itself from Abdul Häq’s group in Afghanistan. While this group has far more resources than the group in Afghanistan, its allegiances and patrons are unknown, as are its patrons’ attitudes towards China. Finally, it is unclear if TIP in Syria will ultimately be destroyed during the opposition’s last stand against the Assad regime in Idlib, if its members will eventually flee to Turkey, or if its present patrons will use them in another proxy war elsewhere in the world.
However, the survival of either of these groups is also not a necessity for the persistence of a Uyghur militant response to what is happening in the Uyghur homeland. I have spoken with several Uyghurs who had gained combat experience in Syria and still hope to use that experience against the Chinese state. They have told me that they are just waiting for somebody to organize a group with a viable plan to attack China. When I asked one such former fighter if he was afraid of dying in an attempt to fight against a state as strong as China, he said that his entire family in the homeland had already disappeared into camps or prisons, and he had nothing left to live for anyway. I assume the numbers of people like him are not insignificant, and it would not be surprising to see them create new militant groups in the coming years. Although such fighters would unlikely find their way back into China under the present circumstances, they could do damage to Chinese interests abroad, which are increasingly widespread around the world. However, the real question is whether that would do anything to help the Uyghurs suffering inside China. In fact, it may only make things worse by providing proof for the PRC of the imminence of the alleged ‘terrorist threat’ posed by Uyghurs, hence only justifying its cultural genocide in the name of ‘counterterrorism.’
Although the full realization of China’s settler colonialization of the Uyghur homeland appears to be the direction in which the present crisis is headed, it is important to note that the Uyghur people are extremely resilient. In fact, that is part of the reason that the Chinese state has gone to such lengths to break their spirit as a people. They have not faced a systematic cultural genocide before, but I am also not entirely convinced that they cannot weather even the extreme situation they face today. Given the recent mobilization of Uyghurs and Kazakhs in exile around the current situation in the Uyghur homeland, these exiles may indeed serve as a deterrence to at least China’s most extreme designs on the region. Thus, while the present prognosis for the future trajectory of the cultural genocide in the Uyghur homeland is very grim, there is still some hope that its impact can be mitigated and its violent erasure of Uyghur culture can be stemmed.
One of the arguments that this book has made consistently is that the Uyghur cultural genocide, while not a response to a real or perceived ‘terrorist threat’ within the Uyghur population, has been facilitated and expedited by the narrative that such a threat exists. However, it is reasonable to ask the counterfactual question of whether the state’s complete dismantling of Uyghur identity would be happening now whether or not GWOT had ever been declared. After all, the cultural genocide perpetrated against the Uyghurs today is more about China’s colonization of the Uyghur homeland than it is about ‘terrorism.’ While this is true, I don’t think the situation could have so readily escalated to genocidal extremes without China framing Uyghurs as a ‘terrorist threat’ and Uyghur culture as having been infected by ‘extremism.’ These assertions about the alleged ‘terrorist threat’ posed by the Uyghurs have greatly assisted the PRC in deflecting international criticism of its actions and has helped inform how it could carry out cultural genocide with impunity.
In October 2019, the UN General Assembly considered a non-binding statement presented by the UK and supported by 23 states condemning the PRC’s actions in the Uyghur homeland as gross violations of human rights.6 In an immediate response, 54 countries backed a statement presented by Belarus that applauded the PRC’s human rights record, noting that its actions in its Uyghur region were an appropriate and even humane approach to combating a dangerous Islamic ‘extremist’ and ‘terrorist’ threat.7 I doubt that many, if any, of the UN representatives from these 54 countries believed that this was true. They were defending China for a myriad of other self-interested reasons. However, they would have had much more difficulty doing so if it had not been for the GWOT narrative and its implicit assumption that the fight against ‘terrorism’ justifies the suspension of human rights.
Additionally, the biopolitical nature of GWOT’s logic has been influential in the ways that the PRC has carried out this cultural genocide. By asserting that it faces a ‘terrorist threat’ from within the Uyghur population, the logic of GWOT has allowed the Chinese state to target this entire ethnic group as suspected ‘terrorists,’ for whom rights are justifiably suspended. Furthermore, by using the logic of GWOT to locate the foundations of the threat in the vaguely defined ideology of religious ‘extremism,’ the Chinese state has enjoyed the ability to target and criminalize Uyghur culture itself, especially its religious aspects, as allegedly having been infected by ‘extremist’ influences.
This has led the state down an explicitly genocidal path rather than encouraging a more gradualist approach to settler colonization, which could eventually overwhelm and marginalize Uyghurs by a market driven in-migration of Han settlers. This had been the direction of China’s engagement of the Uyghurs and their homeland in the late 1990s and early 2000s and could have remained so if the PRC had not been seduced by GWOT’s logic of dehumanization and cultural/ethnic profiling, which lends itself almost inherently to genocidal strategies. Thus, while the PRC would likely have sought to colonize the Uyghur homeland regardless of the presence of GWOT, it is difficult to imagine that this could have taken place so rapidly and so violently without the benefit of the narrative that GWOT created around the label of ‘terrorism.’
In this context, one could say that the crisis facing Uyghurs inside China today is a prime example of the mutations that GWOT has gone through over time and space. GWOT has never really been about ‘terrorism.’ It has always been about finding a justification for the pursuance of other interests. Over the course of the war’s history, it has justified regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it has been used countless times as a means to delegitimize and violently suppress domestic opposition in a variety of countries, whether in civil wars such as Syria and Yemen or in authoritarian regimes such as those in Russia, Central Asia, Ethiopia, and Egypt. Almost two decades into this amorphous war, it appears that the narrative of GWOT is now evolving into a tried and tested tool for new efforts at settler colonization, ethnic cleansing, and cultural genocide. This was the case with the Rohingya in Myanmar; it is the case with the Uyghurs in China; and it may be evolving into the case for Kashmiris in India. This observation alone should be enough to realize that this loosely defined and persistent war must come to a conclusion.
The only way to end the war is for the international community to reimagine the concept of ‘terrorism’ itself. This would require adopting an internationally recognized and objective definition of how ‘terrorism’ should be defined and how it should be identified. Doing so would neutralize the term’s instrumental use and would establish rules of engagement for future wars involving non-state militant actors. In my opinion, the working definition employed in this book, that which was proposed by Boaz Garnor at GWOT’s commencement in 2002, is the perfect place to begin discussions of what such a definition should look like. It is certainly possible that forging an international consensus on what constitutes ‘terrorism’ proves to be impossible in today’s world, but not addressing this issue almost guarantees that it will be a ‘forever war’ that will continue to fuel human atrocities.
While ending GWOT could go a long way towards preventing future tragedies like that facing Uyghurs today, it will unfortunately have little impact on the cultural genocide presently underway in the Uyghur homeland. Stemming the tide of this cultural genocide will require concerted and persistent pressure on the PRC. Unfortunately, most states have thus far been either unwilling to criticize China publicly about its treatment of the Uyghurs or ineffective in getting acknowledgment of the criticisms that they have aired publicly. This is mostly due to the international economic power that the PRC presently projects around the world. It is noteworthy, for example, that no Muslim country has made an official statement of concern about what is happening to Uyghurs inside China. Even Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, whose citizens and co-ethnics have been documented as being sent to camps, have been silent. While Turkish officials have made some critical statements about the issue, the government has not taken any substantive or official diplomatic actions to back up these statements. Furthermore, the UN and its member states have been unsuccessful in starting a serious discussion on the issue as the above-mentioned votes in the UN General Assembly indicate. This is particularly true given that the PRC has become increasingly adept at UN processes, using them to prevent sustained criticism of Chinese policies and actions.
The only states that have spoken out about the situation of the Uyghurs in China have been liberal democracies. The US, many European states, Australia, Japan, and several other liberal democracies have all voiced substantial concern about the situation ongoing in the Uyghur homeland. Unfortunately, these states have also proven ineffective in applying any pressure on China regarding this issue for multiple reasons. First, these countries’ involvement in the early period of GWOT was also riddled with human rights abuses related to ‘counterterrorism’ practices. This is particularly true of the US about whom China can easily engage in ‘whataboutisms’ regarding the treatment of suspected terrorists and extremists: Guantanamo Bay Detention Center was also an extra-legal internment camp; the National Security Agency also engaged in invasive surveillance of ethnically profiled communities; killing suspected ‘terrorists’ by drones is less humane than ‘re-education,’ and so on. In this context, the US and its allies in GWOT are left with little moral authority to criticize China’s extreme approach to eradicating alleged ‘terrorism’ because they have also justified reprehensible behavior in the name of ‘counterterrorism’ and set the precedent for doing so. Secondly, the soft power of the US and Europe, particularly in the developing world, is waning and becoming eclipsed by that of China and its economic power. As a result, the liberal democracies no longer have the ability to isolate China from either the global economy or from international political legitimacy. Finally, liberal democracies do not want to use the only leverage they do have over China, which is economic engagement, since disengagement could be equally damaging for both parties.
Given this situation, one should not expect that other states will be able or willing to pressure China to change its course of actions in the Uyghur homeland unless they are pushed to do so by their citizens. Thus, the only real action that can put significant pressure on China at the moment must come from the grassroots, and it must target the PRC in the only way that can create real leverage, economically. There is a precedent for such action in the anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s. Citizens from around the world engaged in concerted advocacy to boycott the South African government for its apartheid policies, forcing universities and pension funds to divest from South African companies and pressuring international companies to stop their operations in the country. While a complete boycott of Chinese goods is difficult to mobilize in today’s global economy, which is largely built around Chinese production, an attempt to do so may begin to have results. Likewise, an effort to get major funds and institutional investors to divest from Chinese stocks could have an impact, especially if it is a worldwide movement. Such efforts can also target international businesses working in China and especially those with operations in the Uyghur homeland or whose supply chains employ coerced Uyghur laborers. Finally, such a grassroots movement needs to alert people to the fact that action on this issue is not only about the fate of Uyghurs. It is also about the precedent the Uyghur cultural genocide sets for their own fate in a world where the values of human rights, privacy, and diversity are under siege.
One of the reasons that the Uyghurs’ situation in China has garnered so much attention from international journalists and academics is that those paying attention to the Uyghur cultural genocide can see omens of their own future as well as of the future of the world as a whole. In part, this is because it is happening in China, the second largest economy in the world and a state that is gaining power and influence globally. However, the cautionary tale told by the fate of the Uyghurs is about more than a rising China that is authoritarian, disrespectful of human rights, and capable of human atrocities. It is also about a post-liberal world where the power of the state is increasingly absolute; where universal values are losing their currency; where personal privacy has become a commodity; and where intolerance to difference is on the rise. While this does not mean that we will all soon be living the ‘Orwellian’ nightmare being experienced by the Uyghurs, it does suggest that the same forces that have inspired and facilitated the Uyghur cultural genocide have the potential to impact our lives. One could frame these forces as three emerging global trends that have facilitated China’s actions against Uyghurs and that should be very disturbing to those who value diversity, human rights, and privacy.
The most imminent of these trends is that towards a ‘post-privacy world.’ The technology involved in the Uyghur cultural genocide is founded on big data collection and analysis, which has become a ubiquitous part of people’s lives around the world whether we are aware of it or not. The IJOP, which has served as the means for identifying those Uyghurs who must be ‘re-educated’ and culturally cleansed in internment camps or quarantined in prisons, runs on the same principals of ‘surveillance capitalism’ as those adopted by the companies driving the high-tech economy everywhere now, including Google, Facebook, and so on.8 In fact, such companies, with which people around the world engage on a daily basis when they participate in social media or search the internet, collaborate with the same Chinese companies that have built the infrastructure for the Uyghurs’ repression. In this context, most states in the world today, especially in partnership with powerful private technology companies, already have the capacity to replicate what China is presently doing to the Uyghurs. Those who do not have such capacity as of yet are quickly gaining it by buying the needed technology from Chinese companies or getting it provided free of charge through development programs lauding the convenience of ‘Smart Cities.’ In this context, the Uyghurs will likely not be the last people to experience state-led violence and genocide fueled by big data.
However, the Uyghur cultural genocide has not been facilitated by technology alone. It also benefits from a more general trend towards a ‘post-rights world.’ Since the advent of GWOT, respect for human rights globally has been on a steady decline. This is partly because states around the world have used the alleged existential threat of ‘terrorism’ to advocate for the suspension of rights in the interest of security. Furthermore, the US, which had positioned itself as a global defender of human rights, was probably the worst offender of the global rights regime during GWOT’s first years. It forged alliances with dictatorial regimes to facilitate interrogations of alleged terrorists using torture, it ran a massive surveillance program of its own citizens in search of ‘terrorists’, and it carried out extra-judicial killings of alleged ‘terrorists’ via drone strikes. These actions taken by the alleged global ‘protector’ of human rights have contributed to a general global cynicism about the concept of universal human rights and a ‘rules-based international order’ more generally. However, the advent of a ‘post-rights world’ is also the product of shifting geopolitical power relations. As the US begins to acknowledge its waning hegemony in the world, it has also stepped back from its role in promoting the ideals of democracy and human rights globally, especially at the UN. At the same time, both China and Russia are seeking to play greater roles in defining global discourses on human rights to fill the vacuum left by an increasingly isolationist US. In this role, Russia and China both appear poised to weaken the international concepts of human rights, which they perceive as an encroachment on their sovereignty, and push for an International order, particularly through the UN, where human rights are seen as subjective and country dependent.
Finally, one could also argue that the Uyghur cultural genocide reflects a broader trend towards a world in which the racist logic of settler colonialism is re-emerging within the borders of nation-states, as intolerance of difference and parochial nationalism are on the rise. It is telling that the world has witnessed at least four different instances over the last few years where states have been assertive in settler colonial drives within their borders. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro has launched a campaign to reclaim and develop areas of the Amazon rainforest where indigenous populations previously had been given particular rights over this land and powers of autonomous self-governance within its territory. In India, Narendra Modi has re-asserted control over Kashmir, which had previously enjoyed autonomy as a disputed territory. In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, with the encouragement of Donald Trump, is reasserting his control over Palestinian lands, perhaps ending the possibilities for a two-state solution. And, in China, of course, the state appears to be in the process of carrying out cultural genocide in the Uyghur homeland, which it is actively settling and colonizing. Other, less violent signs of this trend are apparent in the rise of xenophobic and populist nationalist politics throughout western democracies, whether that is reflected in Trump’s rise in the US, Brexit in the UK, or the power of Victor Orban in Hungary.
In this context, the Uyghur cultural genocide may not be as exceptional as it seems, but is instead a symptom of a greater malaise in the world. Along these lines, historians may look back at the circumstances of the Uyghurs since 2017 as one of the most visible nails in the coffin of that briefly held ideal of a ‘rules-based international order’ that is meant to protect the principles of human rights, personal privacy, and the human dignity of all people in the world. This is not to say that the UN has ever been effective in implementing its intended rules-based system for the world, but in the past, one would have expected a more vigorous debate on the UN floor about the appropriateness of blatant crimes against humanity. What is notable about the Uyghur case is the deafening sound of silence from most of the world on the issue. Is this a sign that blatant and violent state-led cultural genocide can be expected to be a part of the new normal again throughout the world? Will we be soon looking back with fond nostalgia at the late twentieth century when the world seemed to at least hold up a façade of consensus on universal human rights, remorse for past atrocities, and protections for the disenfranchised and marginalized? If so, some will likely point to the decline of the US and the rise of China as the key event signaling this transformation of the world system. However, as this book tries to point out, the decline of our present imperfect ‘rules-based international order,’ of which the Uyghur cultural genocide is just one symptom, is much more aptly attributed to the processes that began with the declaration of the Global War on Terror.
These global trends and their ramifications should make apparent the urgency of action needed to stem the violent cultural genocide in the Uyghur homeland. If the people of the world do not speak out about what is happening to Uyghurs today and put pressure on the PRC to change its course, it will set a very dangerous precedent for states’ rights to implement mass repression and ethnically profiled population control on the basis of the sanctity of sovereignty. If what is happening to the Uyghurs today goes on unaddressed, many others may find themselves in similar situations in the future thinking they should have done something when ‘first they came for the Uyghurs …’