NEW DELHI - The global war on terror has become an effective tool for China to legitimise its crackdown on Uyghurs and exploit the fears of the international community, claims Dolkun Isa, a leading voice of the ethnic group in his memoir.
Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress who has been presenting Uyghur human rights issues to various global forums, says his goal in writing “The China Freedom Trap: The Story of a Uyghur Fighting Chinese Hegemony with an INTERPOL Red Notice” is to “warn the world, expose the Chinese communist regime’s deep influence on the free world and its great and growing threat to global peace and democracy”.
“The Uyghurs, who’ve been forgotten by the world for centuries and today face the death of our nation, need you. The disappearance of the Uyghurs is the fading of a great civilisation, the eradication of a beautiful language, and the demise of a nation that has played a marked role in the history of humanity,” he writes.
“And this disappearance is only the beginning, a glimpse into the disaster the rest of humanity faces at the hands of China. The demise of democracy, justice and world peace built with the lives of millions of people await,” he adds.
Isa claims since 2014, China has spent a lot of money on trying to improve its international image. He also alleges a hidden Chinese hand inside the UN.
“This has been a major undertaking, involving bribing important officials of weaker countries; gaining the support of international organisations like the UN, SCO, WHO and INTERPOL; and fighting social media sentiment against China by spreading propaganda, bribing journalists to praise China and admonish human rights activists, and waging defamation campaigns on human rights organisations and their leaders that oppose China,” he writes.
“Until 2014, there were no ‘neutral’ Chinese representatives that spoke out against Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Falun Gong practitioners. Objection always came from the official Chinese representatives at the UN. Beginning in 2014, many of the so-called human rights organisations created by the Chinese regime started appearing in the UN.
“They began claiming that the peoples of East Turkistan, Tibet and Inner Mongolia lived happy and peaceful lives, that these regions were experiencing unprecedented developments, and that the Communist party was taking care of them, not persecuting them,” he further writes.
The book, published by Har-Anand Publications, is based on Isa’s personal experiences.
“It will tell you the interesting stories of a person who has faced great injustice in the free world, and who has become a victim of larger ideological struggles between freedom and violence, democracy, and dictatorship. What sets my story apart from those of activists like Nelson Mandela or Mahatma Gandhi is that it takes place entirely in the free world and centres of Western values,” he says.
Isa, who has also worked to mobilise the Uyghur diaspora community to collectively advocate for their rights, had an Interpol Red Notice issued against him in 1997. It was deleted 21 years later. This has led to his detention and deportation from many country borders.
In May 2018, his mother Ayhan Mehmet died in a concentration camp.
