I'm Going to Forgive Myself. Just This Once. But No More.

Just this once, I'm going to forgive myself. But no more.

I'm forgiving myself for not looking for a car window brush and scraper. I needed one today, and from now on, in fact. because the one I had was buried deep in the trunk of the car that got rear-ended last August. We couldn't reach back far enough to get it.

I wondered whether the one I bought was made in China. Because if it was, it probably isn't made by native Chinese. It might easily have been made by Uighurs.

Uighurs, as in people who live in very western China, in the Xijiang (used to be known as Sinkaing) Province. They aren't Chinese, at least not really. Their name for their homeland is East Turkistan.

That's because they're originally Turkic peoples from quite a distance west. Their presence dates from the days of the Silk Road, which was the major route by which Asian and European peoples could trade; something like a thousand years ago, maybe more. I saw a few members of their group on a Zoom conference today (put on by the Free Speech Project, out of Georgetown University), and they sure don't look Chinese.

Xijiang's supposed to be an autonomous region--one that makes its own decisions but gets protection from the central government; kind of having one's cake and eating it, too. But that's mostly because many of the Uighurs, who make up about half of Xinjiang's population (11 million or so out of about 23) are very secular Muslims. They worship, in other words, but they're not doctrinaire.

Nonetheless, China doesn't like that. It likes its people educated but subservient, a trick you can only pull off by shows of force (see Tiannanmen Square, 1989). So it's embarked on a one-way devastation of the entire Uighur culture, through several avenues of pure hell. The goal is to wipe out any significant vestige of Uighur presence, reduce what it calls "radicalization," and call the whole thing Chinese and be done with it.

To do that, they've done the following, at least so far, according to the Uighur Human Rights Project, which has had to find out what's happened in the same way some people pull teeth:

• Shipped thousands of people to forced labor camps, some in the eastern part of China, where they make goods to be sold everywhere else, including the United States, such as for Nike and Amazon;
• Put cameras on every significant street corner of major cities, so that nobody, I mean nobody, can do anything in public without being surveilled;
• Brought in native Chinese (about eight million so far) to replace those shipped out so that eventually, they will comprise the major percentage of people living there;
• Propagandized the schools to take out mention of Uighur successes, Uighur language, and notice of culture;
• Punishment for political and/or religious offenses, including torture and execution;
• Punishment dolled out to relatives if someone escapes to the West and describes the abuse;
• Harassment and intimidation of Uighurs within the United States;
• Sudden disappearances;
• Gang rapes and forced viewings of it; and
• Compulsory unpaid labor for infrastructure, such as work on oil and gas lines to supply for the native Chinese in the east.

The term for all this is genocide. The particulars are called crimes against humanity. So what are we doing about this? Not nearly enough. You know, of course, who ran the show until six days ago.

That monster was quoted in John Bolton's book as actually favoring the construction of more Uighur forced labor camps--concentration camps, actually. In fact, he did so twice.

Nonetheless, the Uighur Human Rights Policy Act was passed by Congress in 2018, and renewed in 2020  (Thomas Massie, the one of the flakiest members of the House, from Kentucky, was the only member of either House to oppose it.). 45 signed it into law.

What a great guy, huh? And outgoing, don't-let-the-door-hit-you Secretary of State, the obsequious, gooey and excessively religiously afflicted (but only for Christians and Israel) Mike Pompeo, said when he, on the very last day of this mistake of an administration, finally called what China was doing "genocide," added that the administration exposed Chinese atrocities against Uighurs.

No, said Georgetown professor James Millward: that was a lie (Stunned?); journalists had done that work. Why did Pompeo wait so long to say anything about this at all? I'm guessing for future political advantages, since it's been rumored that he has his eye on the White House. He can blame red tape, for instance, instead of growing a conscience about it. His last-minute declaration can answer some future reporter's question and dismiss it quickly. But he also has 45's signature on the bill, which makes the White House, through the Director of National Intelligence, submit a classified report to Congress for gross violations of human rights abuses and details the scope of detention facilities and forced labor camps.

It's supposed to do so once a year. When was the bill signed? June 2020. Sorry, ran out of time, I guess. I never saw any notice of a report, did you? Pompeo couldn't care less. He kicked that can down the road.

More is obviously at work. "A loose cannon careens to port then starboard on a rudderless ship," wrote Millward in a tweet, condemning "eleventh hour gestures they opposed for years." All part of "bluster, incoherence, petulance with absolute failure to do meaningful things." In other words: same old, same old.

So it was for appearances only, a flashy tokenism done for political points. Meanwhile, Uighurs are twisting slowly in the wind, victims of nothing more than being who they are. I like to think I'm fairly well-read, but I haven't seen the kinds of protests, organized or otherwise, by Uighurs to match that of Hong Kong lately. Because if there would have been, the Chinese sure would have let us know it, instead of hiding the suppression it's now committing. But 24-7 surveillance kind of promotes that.

In other words, the Uighurs have done next to nothing to transmit that they've become, somehow, "radicalized," when in fact the Chinese just don't like it that they're Muslim and obey some other guidelines besides the ones they put out there. Kind of like some other former leader who simply, with a stroke of his pen, shut down migrants from seven countries he believed to be terrorist sites, when in fact he's just encouraged, promoted, and justified domestic terrorism right here in the U.S. for himself. 

It's now been reversed. We have plenty of terrorist issues ourselves. Our Capitol's just been attacked by 800 idiots who believe an enormous lie.

So when I got back from a different store, I checked the car brush/scraper. "Made in the USA" it proudly boasted.

Look, I don't care if it was made in Greenland. Just not China, okay? Because if it says that, now I know who probably made it. No doubt plenty of my clothes were made by them, too, so I beg the Uighurs' forgiveness. 

I'll start over and boycott what I can. I ask you to do the same. Start looking at labels before you buy. If Amazon is that involved, it ought to be ashamed of itself. It doesn't have to do that. It can go wherever it likes and shut down whoever it likes. Nike, too. Let's wise up. In the meantime, I can order from other sources.

The new problem is this: I just read something else that says, justifiably, that any significant movement on climate change reform has to go through China. That means that we can only nudge the Chinese gently on the Uighurs. We can't make them look too much like the ogres they are. There's a bigger picture, the biggest of all. If we bake because the ozone layer's gone, so will they.

I don't want to encourage more monsters. Too many people here have, far too much, encouraged one who lives here. Sadly, dangerously, that's still happening. Autocrats are on the march. They must be resisted at every turn.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark