A Victim of Lies and Poison

By Zhong Cheng

Raphael Lemkin， the Polish- Jewish lawyer who coined the word “genocide” and initiated the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide， the first human rights treaty adopted by the UN to prevent the recurrence of the atrocities of World War II， would turn in his grave to see “genocide” being bandied around so crassly to drum up Sinophobia.

Any misuse of the word “genocide” is an insult to the victims of atrocities like the Armenian massacres during World War I， the Holocaust during World War II， and the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. The U.S. use of “genocide” to describe the life of the Uygur people in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in China seems less motivated by compassion or concern for the protection of human rights than geopolitics.

Xinjiang has been the victim of lies， false rumors and poison spewed by a few politicians in the U.S. over the years， the socalled Xinjiang issue being a strategic conspiracy to disrupt China from within and contain it. Washington is alarmed by Chinas potential to outcompete the U.S. and its true intention is to undermine Chinas security and stability and stop it from growing stronger.

Strategic conspiracy

Right after the Cold War ended， the U.S. started to use Xinjiang as a leverage to contain China by supporting separatist and terrorist forces. The neoconservative forces in the U.S. pivoted from the Soviet Union to try to contain Chinas influence in Central Asia. U.S. intelligence agencies supported Pan-Turkism， which seeks to unify all Turkic people and create a “Turkic belt” from the Mediterranean to Xinjiang. The U.S. agenda was to weaken Russia and China and maintain a unipolar world.

A number of anti-China institutions and extremist groups emerged over the years， including the separatist “World Uygur Congress” and the “East Turkistan Islamic Movement” （ETIM）， a UN-listed terror group， seeking the creation of an“East Turkistan” state or “independence” of Xinjiang.

Since 2004， the National Endowment for Democracy （NED）， a private organization funded largely by the U.S. Congress， has funneled $8.76 million to Uygur diaspora groups campaigning against government policies in Xinjiang. These have caused the rapid spread of radical ideas in the region with terrorists entering from other countries and terrorist organizations attacking Chinese nationals. Between 1997 and 2014， the ETIM frequently carried out terrorist attacks， killing more than 1，000 civilians.