East Turkestan

Savagery Hidden by the Communist Chinese Government

Then we consider ideologies that in the twentieth century spread misery throughout the world, communism comes at the top of this list. Based on the ideas of two German philosophers, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, this belief system was implemented by cruel leaders such as Lenin, Stalin and Mao, and led to the worst slaughter and killing in the history of the world.

No matter how much we agree that communism collapsed as a regime with the breakup of the Soviet Union, communist ideology and practice in fact still continue, whether openly or in secret. The Muslim Turks of East Turkestan still live under the oppression of Maoist Red China. The human rights violations in East Turkestan are such that they cannot be ignored.

Chinese Cruelty in East Turkestan

The Muslim Turks of East Turkestan, known as the Uighurs, have lived under Chinese domination for about 250 years. The Chinese gave this Islamic territory the name "Xinjiang," or "conquered land," and called it their own. Following the 1949 takeover of China by the communists, led by Mao, the oppression in East Turkestan rose to even greater heights than before. The communist regime turned to the physical elimination of the Muslims, a group which refused to be assimilated.

The number of Muslims killed was truly staggering. Between 1949 and 1952, 2.8 million people were either killed outright by the Chinese army or else died of starvation in a famine engineered by the regime. Between 1952 and 1957, over 3.5 million people died, then 6.7 million between 1958 and 1960, and then between 1961 and 1965, an almost inconceivable 13.3 million.

Those Uighurs who managed to survive were subjected to torture and oppression. The late East Turkestan leader Isa Yusuf Alptekin, who spent many years in exile, described this in his books Dogu Turkistan Davasi (The East Turkestan Affair) and Unutulan Vatan Dogu Turkistan (East Turkestan: The Forgotten Land). According to these volumes, the oppression of the people of East Turkestan was no different from that of the Muslims in Bosnia, or the Albanian majority in Kosovo by the Serbs. The "punishments" meted out by the Chinese courts in the country are exceedingly ruthless and savage. These include burying people alive, beating people almost to death and then stripping them and leaving them to die in the snow, and tying oxen to people's legs in order to literally tear them apart limb-from-limb.

Assimilation Practices Aimed at the Wholesale Destruction of a Culture

Ever since 1949, the communist regime has set about eliminating the Muslim population, and has systematically moved Chinese immigrants into the region. The effects of this campaign, initiated by the Chinese government in 1953, are particularly striking. In 1953, fully 75 percent of the population was Muslim, and just 6 percent Chinese. By 1982, the ratio had changed to 53 percent Muslim and 40 percent Chinese. The 1990 census, which reported a population of 40 percent Muslim to 53 percent Chinese, began to lay bare the full dimensions of ethnic cleansing in the region.

Currently, the Uighurs are being made to stay in the villages, and Chinese are being installed in the cities. Thus, some cities now have populations which are as much as 80 percent Chinese. The aim is to establish a Chinese majority in the cities. The Chinese government's policy encouraging intermarriage between the local people and the Chinese is another part of this assimilation policy.

The Chinese administration has also used the Muslims of East Turkestan in nuclear tests. These tests began on Oct. 16, 1964, and as a result, people in the region have developed deadly illnesses, and some 20,000 handicapped children have been born. The number of Muslims who have lost their lives as a result of the tests is known to be in the area of 210,000. Thousands of others contracted cancer or were left crippled.

From 1964 to the present, China has detonated approximately 50 atomic and hydrogen bombs in East Turkestan. Swedish experts measured the effect of tremors set off by a 1984 underground test as registering 6.8 on the Richter scale.

CHINESE GOVERNMENT'S ABUSE OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN EAST TURKISTAN

The Real Reason for the Cruelty: Hatred of Islam

The one critical reason behind China's oppression of the people of East Turkestan is that they are Muslims, because communist China sees Islam as the biggest obstacle to its tightening its grip over the region.

Chinese intolerance resorts to all possible methods of oppression in order to turn the people from their religion, and went through its most fanatical period during the communist dictator Mao's Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. Mosques were torn down, mass worship was banned, Qur'anic courses were shuttered, and the Chinese moving into the area harassed the Muslim population however they could. Schools were used to spread atheist propaganda. All available means of communication were marshaled in a concerted effort to turn people away from their religion. People were banned from learning about their faith, and religious leaders were prohibited from teaching about it. However, in the face of all this oppression, the people still held fast to Islam.21

One of the methods of intimidation and pressure still used today shows itself in the schools. University education in the region is given in Chinese, and Muslims allowed to study in these universities make up only 20 percent of the student body. Economic difficulties are another barrier keeping the level of education low among the Muslim population. Schools that teach in Chinese enjoy advanced facilities, but Uighur schools lack such advantages. So-called religious education in schools is built upon a pillar of atheism.

The fact that the alphabet has been changed four times in the space of 30 years is another part of the assimilation policy aimed at local Muslims. Despite the Cultural Revolution, Mao left the Chinese script unchanged, but changed the Uighur alphabet from Roman letters to Russian-type Cyrillic. After that alphabet had been used for a while, the system went back to the Roman. Then, however, it changed over to Arabic script in order to block any cultural bridges from being established with Turkey. The difficulty in simply understanding each other faced by generations whose alphabets have been switched around so many times is all too clear.

Communist China's Anti-Islamic Role in the Far East

The savage oppression of Muslim Uighur Turks in East Turkestan continues unabated today. Chinese officials round up young Uighur Turks who have committed no offense, just because they see them as potential enemies of the regime. To escape this persecution, young people flee to the mountains or the deserts.

Since 1996, tens of thousands of Uighur Turks have been held in camps where it is known that many of them are subjected to severe torture. As one international human rights organization detailed in an official report, suspects are tried in mass hearings and either sentenced to hard labor or executed by firing squads in public squares. Courts operate under orders from the Communist Party. Perhaps more terrible yet, pregnant women are taken from their homes and forcibly sterilized under unhygienic conditions, and children born outside the government's quotas are killed, their families' wishes in the matter swept aside and unlistened to.

The events of February 1997 summed up this Chinese persecution. On the Night of Power (Lailat-ul Qadr) during Ramadan, which occurred on Feb. 4, more than 30 women who had gone to a mosque to celebrate this important night for Muslims, were burst in on while they were reading the Qur'an, beaten by members of the Chinese militia and then dragged to security headquarters. Local residents went to the headquarters and asked for the women's release. In response, the bodies of three women who had been tortured to death were hurled in front of them, and fighting broke out between the outraged locals and the Chinese. Some 200 East Turkestan natives lost their lives between Feb. 4 and 7, and more than 3,500 ended up imprisoned in camps. On the morning of Feb. 8, people who had gathered in mosques were blocked by security forces from carrying out their prayers. Fighting broke out again, and as a result the number of people detained, which had been 58,000 in April-May 1996, suddenly shot up above 70,000. Up to 100 young people were publicly executed, and 5,000 Uighur Turks were stripped naked and put on public display in groups of 50.

Despite all this, it is noteworthy that the people of East Turkestan still do not receive the support from the West that they expect.

The United Nations' official definition of genocide fits exactly the situation in Chinese-occupied East Turkestan. Despite this, the people of East Turkestan are unable to benefit from U.N. protection. All their applications to the U.N. are rejected. Twenty-five million East Turkestan Muslims are still suffering under Chinese oppression, and the world closes its eyes or turns away from this cruelty. There are thousands of political prisoners, and many have "disappeared" in prison. The torturing of detainees has become a routine matter.

In order to bring an end to this persecution in East Turkestan, the world must first of all be told in no uncertain terms what is taking place there, and then international sanctions must be applied to make China feel the heat. China is engaged in a massacre behind closed doors, and the oppressed people of East Turkestan lack any means of making their voices heard. The people of the world have to act in unison on this vital matter.

The cruelty inflicted by communist China on the Uighur Turks of East Turkestan is still continuing today, and will do so as long as the Darwinist-materialist philosophy underlying it is not vanquished on the scientific front. It is not enough to read about these inhumane policies in newspapers, look at the pictures of these desperate, helpless people, and sigh. Scientific and cultural steps must be taken to destroy the ideologies that this repression is based on, and every believer must take his place in the intellectual war.

It must not be forgotten that at the root of this savagery and persecution in East Turkestan lies the atheist philosophy of communist China. This inhuman war being waged against a defenseless people is the result of materialist and atheist communist thinking. The ruthless communist leaders of the twentieth century left a bloody ideology and millions of dead in their wake. East Turkestan is but one example. The only way of stopping this nightmare from ever harming mankind again is to wage a war of ideas against atheist ideologies such as communism. The removal of the fundamental bases of communist ideology will be the first step in putting an end to communist oppression.

As was stressed in the first chapter of this book, the fundamental basis of communism is Darwinism. Karl Marx, the founder of communism, dedicated his Das Kapital to Darwin, a figure whom he greatly admired. In his book Ever Since Darwin, the world-famous Marxist-evolutionist scientist Stephen Jay Gould writes:

…Marx and Darwin did correspond, and Marx held Darwin in very high regard… Darwin was, indeed, a gentle revolutionary.22

The communist Chinese leader Mao said in one address, "Chinese socialism is founded upon Darwin and the theory of evolution," thus clearly identifying the ultimate source of the violence he inflicted.23

These statements laying bare Marxism's roots show clearly that Darwinism is the ideology lying behind the ruthless cruelty practiced in past years in countries such as Russia and China, and which is today still inflicted on Chechens and the Muslims of East Turkestan. (For details of Darwinism's scientific and ideological collapse, see the appendix on the evolution deception.)