Expert speakers at an international webinar expressed deep fears of further escalation of the ongoing process of what they termed as ‘cultural genocide’. The discussions were focused on China’s forcibly occupied colonies, namely Tibet, East Turkistan (Ch.: Xinjiang) and Southern Mongolia. China’s latest colony Hong Kong too was referred to by some speakers who regretted the brutal crushing of the democratic character of Hong Kong. This ‘Cultural Genocide’ the expert referred to is a process initiated and forcibly implemented by President Xi Jinping during the past ten years of his rule over China.
Speakers thought Xi was getting a license to rule China infinitely for as long as he decided and with as much unchallenged brutality at his command. There are serious fears that new generations of these colonies will undergo intensive brainwashing to produce new citizens of China who would keep looking like Tibetans, Uyghurs and Mongols. Still, their souls and minds would be of perfect communist Han cadres. However, experts see some hope in the ongoing resistance among Chinese citizens against the draconian immobilization of the citizens under Xi Jinping’s ‘Zero-Covid’ policy which has started exploding into mass protests against the Chinese communist government across China.
On Saturday, November 27th 2022, the Centre for Himalayan Asia Studies and Engagement (CHASE) and Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) jointly organized an international webinar on the subject “FATE OF CHINA’S COLONIES UNDER NEW XI JINPING”. The webinar was addressed by four prominent speakers from Tibet, East Turkistan (‘Xinjiang’), Italy and India. These experts were Dolkun Isa, the International President of the World Uyighur Congress (WUC). He works from Germany, but he participated in today’s webinar from Australia. Marco Respinti, who participated from Milano in Italy and is a well-known Italian journalist and Director-in-Charge of ‘Bitter Winter’, a daily newspaper focused on religious suppression and denial of human rights in China, is published in eight languages. Ms Lhadon Tethong is a prominent Tibetan activist and the Director of Tibet Action Centre. She participated from Boston, USA. And the fourth speaker was Tashi Dhundup, the President of Tibet’s only political party, viz. National Democratic Party of Tibet (NDPT). He joined in from Dharamshala. The webinar was moderated by Vijay Kranti, journalist, Tibetologist and Chairman of CHASE.
In their concluding remarks at the end of the webinar, all experts unanimously believed that now is the high and most opportune time when people of China’s colonies should join hands and make a common cause against Chinese colonialism. They also agreed to join hands with like-minded people and organizations worldwide to pressure governments to stop treating China exclusively on considerations of economic benefits. They should take note of China’s aggressive policy of replacing the established world order with one focused on only China’s economic and military interests.
According to Marco Respinti, “The bloody cult of personality that characterizes the old Maoist regime as a lucid ideological folly seems to rejuvenate Xi Jinping’s aim of sinicization of as much of the world as he can do through his Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). And unfortunately we don’t see any resistance to it at international levels. No one is showing or has the will to stop this process. It is sad that the democratic world has chosen to leave aside and ignore his policy of violence, persecution and battered human rights and is only aimed at making some economic benefits from China.”
Dolkun Isa, in his detailed analysis of how the situation of human rights has already severely deteriorated under Xi Jinping’s rule over the past ten years, regretted the world indifference, especially of the Muslim countries, towards the ruthless crushing of human rights of the Uyghur people. “More than 8000 (eight thousand) mosques in my country have been demolished by the Chinese communist regime. More than three million Uyghurs are languishing and being subjected to worst torture in the newly established concentration camps across my country by the Xi regime. And more than a million children have been snatched away by the Chinese Communist Party to be brainwashed behind the wall of residential communist schools. But still the world community is looking helplessly,” he said. He calls upon the world community to stop enriching the Chinese regime by buying cheap solar cells and cotton products grown and produced in ‘Xinjiang’ through forced bonded labour by the CCP.
Lhadon Tethong analyzed the commonality in the colonization, exploitation and denial of human rights in Tibet, Xinjiang and S. Mongolia by the Chinese regime over the past decades. “Things have gone from bad to worse during past ten years’ rule of Xi Jinping. And now with new boundless powers in the hands of Xi, he is bound to run amuck in all colonies of China due to absence of any accountability, either to the people of his own country or to the world community,” she said. Speaking about a complete and ruthless lockdown on any flow of information from her country Tibet, Lhadon noted, “During past few decades Tibet attracted wide world attention because despite the iron curtain some information could travel out through the international media and foreign visitors. But due to strict digital surveillance and locking out of Tibet, today’s world just does not know what is happening inside today’s Tibet. Unfortunately, the world media has been no relief to the deafening silence that prevails in Tibet today.”
Tashi Dhundup, the youthful President of NDPT, said that we could understand the fate of China’s colonies under a more powerful Xi Jinping only if we know what his policies have been towards these colonies of China in the past ten years of his regime. “Although the process of suppression, destruction and crushing of human rights has been in process since China occupied these countries, but the era of Xi is witnessing an unprecedented ‘Cultural Genocide’ in these colonized countries. In history the world used to talk of Tibet as the ‘Shangri-la’. But it was mainly during the past decade of Xi’s rule that Tibet has gained the dubious distinction of being the ‘Hell on Earth”, he said. He listed the campaigns of the destruction of a spiritual centre like Lharung Gar; demolition of Budhha and Maitreya’s massive statues; ban on the Tibetan language and forced imposition of Chinese language in Tibetan education; forcible taking away of a million Tibetan children to communist residential schools; forced marriages of Tibetan women to Han settlers; and mass DNA profiling of Tibetan people as examples which show that Xi’s dream about Tibet is complete genocide of Tibetan culture and identity. “But it only exposes the double speak of world leaders and governments that despite being aware of these Chinese atrocities in China’s colonies, the world leaders and world institutions are keeping quiet”, said Tashi.
In their concluding remarks, the expert had a common observation that after Xi’s victory at the just concluded Chinese Congress, the world governments and world leaders have once again started embracing him because of their economic greed. They regretted that Tibet and Hong Kong again fell off the world’s radar. “But the way Xi Jinping and the CCP have started a new phase of repression in Tibet, Xinjiang, S. Mongolia and Hong Kong in the recent past. It is a clear admission by both of them that the resistance against Chinese colonialism and determination to win back their independence have refused to die,” said Lhadon.
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