For Ziba Murat, the agony of awaiting any news about her mother remains relentless, despite the passing of time. Gulshan Abbas, a retired doctor in her native Xinjiang region of northwestern China, vanished on September 10, 2018. 

“We have no information on why she’s detained or how she’s doing. We have not made significant progress, but we may know her possible location,” Ms. Murat, who was living in America, told The New York Sun. “People are too afraid even to say her name, referring to her only as ‘she’ or ‘your daughter’s grandma.’”

Still, Ms. Murat cannot understand why anyone would target her mother, whom she depicts as a “gentle woman” who became a medical professional with the noble goal of helping others in need.

Sadly, her chilling story is hardly an anomaly. The Uyghurs — a Turkic people in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region — have for years been intensely persecuted, imprisoned and disappeared by the Chinese Communist Party. Precise figures remain elusive, but reports indicate that upwards of 3 million Uyghurs have been forcibly confined in internment camps since 2017.

Dismissed by Beijing as “vocational training centers,” these facilities are widely condemned as cultural and religious suppression instruments. The extent of the ongoing human rights crisis in the vast autonomous region in northwest China, known as Xinjiang or East Turkestan, to the Uyghur community. 

“In addition to the 1.8 million or more Uyghurs held in the camps, 3 million or more Uyghurs subject to forced labor, and the systematic attempts to erase the next generation of Uyghurs through forced abortions and forced sterilization, the CCP is attacking Uyghur families at the root,” a Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute, Olivia Enos, told the Sun.

“Children are separated from their parents when their mothers and fathers are sent to the camps or sent to other parts of China to labor. They are also subject to forced indoctrination through so-called live-in kindergartens where dreams of their future are being replaced with required loyalty to the CCP.” 

Minister for foreign affairs and security for the East Turkistan government in exile, Salih Hudayar, asserted that, in addition to the slave-like condition in camps and the forced sterilization of women, “some 4 million Uyghur babies have been forcibly aborted since 1989.”

For years, harrowing testimony from refugees and damning reports from human rights organizations have consistently exposed a pattern of abuses on a vast scale in the region. Some in the international community, including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, have unequivocally condemned the severe human rights abuses in Xinjiang as crimes against humanity.

A more severe assessment has been made by more than 15 countries, including America, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and France, which have formally labeled these atrocities as genocide. 

While much of the West has taken a firm and vocal stance against the Beijing-led horrors targeting the Muslim minority, none of the countries condemning such actions are from the Muslim world. On the contrary, many such countries have actively defended China against accusations of Muslim-minority abuse. 

“Leaders in the Middle East have calculated that defending the Muslim minority is not worth the risk of losing Chinese economic, political, and military assistance,” an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Haisam Hassanein, told the Sun. “For them, China is too big to challenge.”

China is home to about 22 million Muslims, making up 1.6 percent of the population, with Uyghurs being the most prominent. Despite a history of Islamic presence since the 7th century and recognition of the Uyghur identity as distinct from the Han majority, tensions have persisted due to Uyghur separatism and resistance against Chinese rule, culminating in ethnic riots in 2009. Since then, China has intensified restrictions on Uyghurs. 

However, the international heat started to mount in the summer of 2019 when America and several countries, most of them European, signed a letter to the UN’s Human Rights Council conveying concern about the “large-scale places of detention, as well as widespread surveillance and restrictions.”

Not only did ambassadors from 37 countries, including many notable Muslim Arab and African nations including Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Algeria and UAE, decline to support the calls for a probe, but actively went against it — issuing their own joint letter in support of China’s horrendous policies toward the Uyghur community. 

Earlier that same year, Turkey differentiated itself from the pack when it issued a statement criticizing China’s human rights violations against the Uyghurs. Nonetheless, President Erdogan later visited the region and declared that those in Xinjiang were “living happily.” Adding to the gut punch, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation went on to pass a resolution lauding Beijing for “providing care to its Muslim citizens” and has remained unconcerned about Uyghur’s suffering ever since. 

A 20-something Uyghur based in Virginia, Arfat Erkin, who dropped out of university studies in America after his family at home disappeared and he could no longer afford the tuition, told The New York Sun that the persecution continues, but it has been driven deeper underground in recent years as Beijing seeks to push back against western-led criticism of its “reeducation camps.”

What the government has been doing “is shutting down the camps and moving” Uyghurs “into prisons or forced labor detainment and trying to legalize and justify what they are doing, he explained. They’ve resorted to criminal charges,” he says. “Some people — like my cousin — were released from the camps, only to be detained and taken to prison a little later.”

Mr. Erkin heard secondhand that his mother, a mathematics teacher, was released after a year in a camp in 2019 due to severely deteriorating health. Yet relatives warned him that he could not have any contact with her out of fear for her safety. His father, a much-loved journalist and producer, was jailed in March 2018. Mr. Erkin has not heard from him since. 

“The charges against him and sentence length keep changing. The CCP told the U.N. that he was sentenced to 19 years and ten months under a vague charge of ‘disrupting ethnic harmony,’” he lamented. “But I think it was retaliation for my advocacy.”

In 2022, the U.N. Human Rights Council voted down a Western-led motion to even debate alleged human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region. This marked a significant victory for China, marking only the second time a motion has been rejected in the council’s history. The decision is a setback for accountability efforts, Western moral authority on human rights, and the U.N.’s credibility. Countries like Qatar, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, and Pakistan opposed the motion, with some citing concerns about alienating China.

According to experts, the decision to ignore — or condone — the abuses comes down to one fundamental reason: economic interests such as the Belt and Road Initiative are far more important than religion and ideology. These nations know how sensitive Beijing is to criticism and don’t want to upset the Communist Party leadership. 

Mr. Hassanein pointed out that the Arab silence is motivated by some other additional factors. In his words, the first is a fear of political Islam – which intensified in the wake of the 2011 uprisings that empowered Islamists and “coincided with a spike in Jihadist terrorism.”

“Since then, Arab leaders became uncomfortable with conflicts built on religious ideology, and this explains why they are sympathetic toward Beijing’s claim that the Uyghur crackdown is a counterterrorism campaign,” Mr. Hassanein explained. “Second, (there is) wariness of separatist movements. China claims the Uyghur issue is a Western conspiracy to create ethnic minority divisions within its borders. Arab states tend to view Kurdish and other minority issues as Western fueled attempts to create internal strife and separatism – and that’s why Arab leaders okay Beijing suppressing any such movements within its borders.”

Yet, for many observers, the hypocrisy is glaring. 

After a man tore up a copy of the Quran outside a mosque in Stockholm last June, the likes of Iran, Iraq and Turkey issued strong statements of rebuke, and Morocco even recalled its Ambassador in outrage. That same month, Palestinian President Abbas even met with Xi Jinping and championed his genocidal campaign, criticizing the West as “interfering” in China’s domestic affairs. Mr. Abbas said nothing of the tens of thousands of mosques decimated or damaged in Xinjiang.

Further, when it comes to the plight of the Rohingya Muslims in Buddhist-majority Burma or the fate of the Gazans, the condemnation from the Islamic world is fervent. Even the Vatican, which is typically very vocal about human rights issues and atrocities directed at minorities, has not made any public statements about the Uyghur situation in China. 

“The silence of Muslim-majority countries on the Uyghur Genocide can be seen as both hypocritical and unsurprising. Many observers view the silence as hypocritical because these countries often position themselves as defenders of Muslim rights and values on the global stage,” Executive Director at the Center for Uyghur Studies, Abdulhakim Idris, said. “This double standard suggests that economic and political interests are being prioritized over religious solidarity and human rights, revealing a contradiction in their stated values versus their actions.”                                 

But despite the searing silence from many pockets of the planet, both the Trump and Biden administrations have continued to defend the beleaguered minority. In early August, American Customs and Border Protection prohibited imports from five Chinese companies and a manufacturing company alleged to have exploited forced labor from the Uyghur community, bringing to 73 the number of banned companies under the banner of the 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. 

Mr. Erkin also cautioned that the CCP has attempted to turn Xinjiang into a “Bollywood Disneyland” tourist attraction of sorts, with people planted to dance in the streets and promote the sensibility of fun and games while millions languish out of sight. Nevertheless, experts insist that more could — and should — be done. 

“The U.S. government (must) commit itself to even stronger enforcement of the UFLPA, sanction additional individuals in entities in China responsible for the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity and extend expedited forms of refugee resettlement through the Priority-2 refugee program for Uyghurs,” Ms. Enos said. “The U.S. government should urge the release of every Uyghur for the CCP’s brutal political reeducation camps and ultimately call for their closure in every meeting with Chinese counterparts.” 

In addition, the FDD’s Mr. Hassanein stressed that Washington and other Western capitals could “increase Arab and Muslim country’s awareness of what’s happening in Xinjiang.”

“Their Arabic media channels directed at Arab audiences could raise awareness of this issue and dispel Chinese government claims that the issue is happening because of terrorists,” he surmised. From the purview of Turkistan’s exile, Mr. Hudayar said the genocide designation by America and much of the West remains “largely symbolic.” 

“The international community’s failure to hold Chinese officials accountable at the International Criminal Court, especially in contrast to its stance on Ukraine, highlights a troubling double standard,” he pointed out. “The U.S. holds significant diplomatic and economic leverage that can influence Muslim-majority countries to take a stand against China’s atrocities in East Turkistan. Although economic ties with China often deter these nations from speaking out, the U.S. can use economic incentives, diplomatic pressure, and coalition-building to encourage a shift in their positions.”

In the meantime, the crisis grinds on in the shadows. 

“I’ve been warned that I should be quiet and accept the guidance of the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr. Erkin said. “But I cannot let this happen and say nothing.”

And Ms. Murat, a young mother, says she will not — cannot — give up her fight. 

“Recently, the European Union raised (my mother’s) case during their human rights conversation in China and also a few special rapporteurs at the U.N. sent an official joint statement to the Chinese government, asking for more information on the case,” she added. “I am continuing to work closely with the members of the U.S. Congress and U.N. human rights office and working groups to continue to keep the spotlight on her case. It will be six years in September since they took her hostage. I will not stop until we bring her home.”