The “Strike Hard” Campaign

02.04.2008 Is Peking really the place for the Olympic spirit? By Abu Bakr Rieger.

(globalia) Just a few months before the opening of the Olympic Games, the world is becoming aware of the tragic situation of China’s minorities. The idea of a peaceful Games seems distant, especially in view of the dramatic situation in Tibet. The message we are getting is simple: political resistance by minorities in China is not only subject to official defamation, it is downright dangerous. Even the Dalai Lama, who enjoys an almost cult status in Europe, was promptly designated a “Terrorist” by the Chinese government – a tactic which has been applied again and again to leading representatives of the minority living in East Turkestan, the Uighurs. “Peking is once again attempting to define the Uighurs as terrorists in the run-up to the Olympic Games,” says Asgar Can, Vice President of the Uighur World Congress. To do this, China refers to the staged-looking, violent actions of a small minority. China’s rhetorical interest in the official pronouncements of the “War Against Terror” is because of the numerous possibilities which the declaration of a state of emergency nowadays offers. It is on this basis that the State and its Party – which is always in the right – justifies the operation of new camps, persecution and torture. Many of these camps are occupied by Muslims. Now no-one can say they know nothing about this.

Indeed, the fate of the Uighurs, whose terrible situation has for decades barely been mentioned in the European public arena, is another shameful blight on the Chinese multi-racial state. No other ethnic group in the People’s Republic is exposed to such massive and arbitrary violence by its security forces. According to a report by the Society for Threatened Peoples, more than 700 politically justified death sentences have been handed down and carried out against Uighurs since the middle of the 1990s as part of what is known as the “Strike Hard” campaign. Only one Tibetan was condemned to death in Tibet during the same period. As in Tibet, the Chinese government is striving steadily to enlarge the influence of the Han Chinese by means of large-scale resettlement schemes. Muslim Uighurs can often only practise their beliefs on pain of death. According to the Society for Threatened Peoples’ report, mosques and Qur’an schools are being closed arbitrarily, religiously and culturally important writings and books are burned in public, the celebration of Muslim festivals is forbidden, and Imams are forced to attend Communist Party re-education courses.

The authoress Rebiya Kadeer is one of the few Uighurs known to the world’s public. In her bestseller, Die Himmelstürmerin (The Great Idealist), “China’s No. 1 Enemy of the State” tells of her life. Her relatives paid for her courageous criticism of the central Chinese state’s methods with prison and torture. No surprise then that the World Uighur Congress and Rebiya Kadeer support “a boycott of the Olympic Games, because the inhuman, anti-human-rights activities of the dictatorial Chinese government are contrary to the Olympic spirit of peace and peaceful coexistence.”

The Uighur human rights activists living in Germany are also denounced regularly as “terrorists” by China. Fortunately, however, despite considerable pressure from the government in Peking, the German security authorities do not share this malicious view. If you meet these Uighur asylum-recipients in Germany, then you will find the reports about the situation in the China confirmed by personal accounts that are hard to forget. Abduljelil Karakash of the East Turkestan Information Centre in Munich reports that conditions in East Turkestan have worsened since the recent events in Tibet. The oppressive activities that are already known have in fact intensified. The latest measures include, for example, the imprisonment of 3,000 young women solely for wearing headscarves.

Abduljelil has been struggling for years with minimal means to break the consensus on East Turkestan. It is no easy task, since reporting is strictly monitored, even in the event of humanitarian catastrophe. An earthquake in part of East Turkestan which killed large numbers of people received no mention at all in either Chinese or foreign media. Independent journalists are deterred from visiting East Turkestan and are told that an “acute risk of terror” exists there, and that the government cannot guarantee their safety.

Some Uighur organisations have even found refuge in the USA. As in Kosovo, the rules of an alleged geopolitical confrontation between the West and the Muslims do not apply here. China’s attitude towards “radical Islam” is in fact quite pragmatic and flexible when it comes to their geopolitical interests. The extreme Hizb ut-Tahrir in Central Asia – which is viewed by Peking as a geopolitical opponent to the USA – is ignored by China and is even said to be active in East Turkestan. China – behind the scenes at least – would also like to see the Western Allies fail in Afghanistan.

According to the Western line of argument, China should quietly continue to democratise as part of strengthening trade relations – on the side, so to speak. The obvious advantage of this approach is firstly that it does not cost anything. The drawback is that the persecuted minorities quite simply might not survive such a long-term strategy. The Middle Kingdom has until now been practising, unhindered, a new form of statism which could be defined as “authoritarian capitalism”. Authoritarian capitalism trusts in the power of the market alone, and has, in the words of the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, long ceased to need democracy to pursue its course.

Of course, the subject of a serious Olympic boycott is an awkward one, given the economic importance of China. The regions of Tibet and East Turkestan (Chinese: Xinjiang) are major sources of raw material to fuel the new superpower’s upturn. To the West, the territorial integrity of China, not the implosion of the state, continues to be the guarantee of the much-welcome upswing. The methods behind this upswing may be fascistic, but the prospects of profit have so far eclipsed any effective criticism. The Volkswagen Group, for instance, reported not only record sales in China in 2007, but also growing profits. Volkswagen is also one of the committed lead-sponsors of the Games, yet it shows no inclination to regret this morally dubious engagement. In its latest statement, the German Olympic Sports Confederation speaks about Tibet but ignores the situation of the Uighurs, and in the end supports Germany’s participation. Most politicians and sports functionaries do not mention the Uighurs or their representatives at all in their statements. That is no coincidence. To today’s Uighurs, Peking is the wrong place for the spirit of the Olympic Games.