The latest wave of protests sweeping through China were sparked by the deaths of at least ten people in a fire in a high-rise apartment block in Ürümchi, Xinjiang. Residents were apparently prevented from leaving the building due to the enforcement of ethnically targeted zero-COVID regulations. The region is home to 12 million ethnic Uyghurs, a minority group in China. Yet, when Uyghur activist Abduweli Ayup tweeted about the protests, he noted that there had been no signs of Uyghurs’ participation, and Uyghur-dominant cities remained silent. The impact of years of systematic strategies of Chinese state terror against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims means that those communities have remained deathly quiet in the aftermath of the fire. Meanwhile, Han residents of Xinjiang – the regional stronghold for the Communist party – have confidently come out in force to protest against the hated policy. Every Uyghur knows that criticism of party policy by a Turkic Muslim will result in being detained and abused in the state’s internment camps or prisons or else coerced into forced labour. In the context of street demonstration, they face a “shoot-to-kill” policy. FULL ARTICLE
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