{"id":969,"date":"2020-06-30T14:13:36","date_gmt":"2020-06-30T14:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.azizisa.org\/en\/?p=969"},"modified":"2020-06-30T14:30:04","modified_gmt":"2020-06-30T14:30:04","slug":"we-must-not-forgot-xinjiang-and-the-horrors-being-committed-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azizisa.org\/en\/we-must-not-forgot-xinjiang-and-the-horrors-being-committed-there\/","title":{"rendered":"We must not forgot Xinjiang and the horrors being committed there"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

JULIET SAMUEL<\/span><\/a><\/strong>
The Telegraph <\/em>22 FEBRUARY 2020 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
People whose loved ones are being held in the Chinese Government\u2019s camps in Xinjiang join a protest in Kazakhstan<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One option on the cocktail list jumped out at me. It was called the \u201cXinjiang\u201d. For a while, I couldn\u2019t actually register the ingredients. All I could think of, when I saw the name of China\u2019s western-most province, was Beijing\u2019s imprisonment of more than 1 million of its people in \u201cre-education\u201d camps, where they are tortured, raped, forcibly used for medical testing and organ harvesting, and made to recite their \u201ccrimes\u201d and extoll the virtues of the Chinese Communist Party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to the menu. The \u201cXinjiang\u201d was a gin-based concoction with plum, ginger and cumin. A complementary dish, a \u201cUighur burger\u201d, consisted of pulled lamb in a soft, Chinese bun. \u201cThey are Muslim in Xinjiang, so they eat a lot of lamb,\u201d said the waitress.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n

I wanted to mention that that the Koran is now banned in Xinjiang and that prison inmates are forced to eat pork. To be fair, it was possible she already knew. Many Chinese restaurants abroad are started by the diaspora, who are often not huge fans of Xi Jinping\u2019s regime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I couldn\u2019t decide. Was the menu a grotesque, Potemkin-esque gloss on a region and a people being systematically subjugated? Or was it a small way of celebrating a culture that is being annihilated? Minus the gin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a fair number of Uighurs <\/a>in London trying to get their stories out. Some months ago I met one called Aziz Isa Elkun, a man possessed of a quiet, firm dignity, with family still trapped in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His sister was put in a camp for a year. Via Google Maps, he has discovered that his father\u2019s grave has been destroyed. And now, a BBC report has highlighted that the only time he has been able to see his mother in recent years was via a Chinese TV report aired in January, in which she gave a forced confession and condemned him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a sign of how our system is utterly failing to filter China\u2019s propaganda onslaught, the CGTN report was freely broadcast in this country, only afterwards prompting an Ofcom investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There used to be a time, some years ago, when it was barely possible to talk about China without mentioning \u201chuman rights record\u201d in the next breath. (Incidentally, the regime of repression used in Xinjiang was road-tested in Tibet.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But now, the name that should most rain down shame and ignominy on the Chinese Communist Party <\/a>is so anonymous that it\u2019s made into a cocktail. The party propaganda machine is doing its job magnificently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may not help, as you drive around in vain looking for passable lanes or, God forbid, wait for waters to recede from your living room, to know that the weather system behind the floods has a rather wonderful name. The likely culprit is a mega \u201catmospheric river\u201d<\/a> \u2013 a massive flow of vapour, low in the atmosphere \u2013 a US scientist has told the FT. The term, only categorised by the American Meteorological Society in 2017, is surely due some wider appreciation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An \u201catmospheric river\u201d is not, as you might imagine, a broad, misty watercourse dotted with herons and punts. It is defined, officially, as \u201ca long, narrow, and transient corridor of strong horizontal water vapour transport\u201d. Read the full article from the Telegraph<\/span><\/a>: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2020\/02\/22\/must-not-forgot-xinjiang-horrors-committed\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JULIET SAMUELThe Telegraph 22 FEBRUARY 2020 One option on the cocktail list jumped out at me. It was called the \u201cXinjiang\u201d. For a while, I couldn\u2019t actually register the ingredients. All I could think of, when I saw the name of China\u2019s western-most province, was Beijing\u2019s imprisonment of more than 1 million of its people<\/p>\n

Read more…<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":974,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-elkuns-campaign","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azizisa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azizisa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azizisa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azizisa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azizisa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=969"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.azizisa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":981,"href":"https:\/\/www.azizisa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions\/981"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azizisa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azizisa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azizisa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azizisa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}