Though hundreds of Muslims in Indonesia were protesting outside the embassy of China in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, on Friday against the illegal confinement of Muslim ethnic Uighur minority in the detention centres at China’s far western Xinjiang region yet no such demonstrations or protests were reported from Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Pakistan does not find any problem with these detention centres, which are meant for political indoctrination of Uighur Muslims and to force them to give up their own faith. Pakistan even trivialized the issue by stating that these centres are being sensationalized by foreign media. Mohammad Faisal, spokesman for Pakistan’s ministry of foreign affairs, told reporters at a weekly press briefing in Islamabad on Thursday “Some faction of foreign media are trying to sensationalise the matter by spreading false information”.
According to one estimate around 1 million ethnic Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region are kept in the detention centre where they are subjected to intense political indoctrination and abuse and they are also pressurized to give up their religion. Though United Nation has already called China to immediately release the detainees, who are kept in these detention centres on the pretext of countering terrorism yet the deafening silence of Muslim countries like Pakistan seems more worried some. China claims that these centres are created as vocational centers and the trainees work voluntarily. The country has rejected accusation of any mistreatment and denies any mass internment of the inmates. But China worries that Uighurs, who speak Turkic language, have gone to places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and Iraq to fight for terrorists. Therefore, China has directly attacking on the religious faith and the Muslims are forced to give up their religion. The ‘Islamophobia’ has entrenched to such a level among the ruling class of China that even travelling of any Muslim to other countries is seen with suspicion and such people are put in the detention centres.
Surprisingly, Pakistan often raise the issues in defense of Islam and Muslims but its silence over the issue of Uighur Muslims in China clearly shows that Pakistan is least concern about Muslims and Islam, especially when it affects the interest of Pakistan. It clearly shows that the economic interest of the nation is more important than anything to do for the hapless Muslims, who are facing worst kind of persecution in China. Recently, Pakistan has to sell the luxuary cars and buffalos of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to put some money in coffers of the Pakistan Government that clearly reveals the kind of economic turmoil the country is going through presently. The major developmental projects of cash-strapped Pakistan is financed by China. The most recent one is the $75 billion development project ‘China-Pakistan Economic Corridor’ to reconstruct the Silk Road linking China to all corners of Asia, is considered as the project that will bring prosperity to Pakistan. Therefore, overlooking the plight of the Uighur Muslims in China is being defended by Pakistan.
Even most of the Muslim nations do not utter a single word against the detention centre created for Muslim minority by China. “Cold, hard interests will always carry the day” in international relations, said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the Washington-based Wilson Center. He added “The Muslim world’s deafening silence about China’s treatment of Muslims can be attributed to its strong interest in maintaining close relations with the world’s next superpower”.
Mushahid Hussain, chairman of Pakistan’s Senate Foreign Affairs Committee also commented that the economic relations of Pakistan and China refrains the former to comment anything on the internal matter of the latter. “Given the relationship of Pakistan with China, and in the Muslim world in particular, the Chinese narrative is apparently being accepted across the board as the one that is correct,” Hussain said.
