- Response to groundless allegations
By: Azeem Khan
The Uighur community living in Pakistan is also called Ex-Chinese Pakistani Community. They have ancestral roots in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China, so there is no difference if you call them the Uighur Pakistani community or the Ex-Chinese Communit: both refer to the same community, who are citizens of but are also historically descendants of Chinese Xinjiang-based Uighurs who migrated to Pakistan.
In reality the Ex-Chinese Pakistani Community has contributed a lot to build strong people-to-people relationship between China and Pakistan, and after opening of the Karakuram Highway they become the practical bridge between the two nations because the Ex-Chinese Uighur Pakistani community has full capability to represent both the nations.
The Ex-Chinese Association was practically established in 2007, with the aim of working for the wellbeing of the Uighur Chinese community, living in Pakistan almost from last two generations, and the sole purpose to establish the association was to bring our community under one umbrella to provide the educational facilities to every Uighur community member to make them better contributors for the future wellbeing of their families, and also to facilitate the deserving families.
Yhe Ex-Chinese Association demands from the Pakistani authorities to investigate the allegations against the activities of Ex-Chinese Association to dismantle all the baseless disinformation propaganda once for all
In the early days, we were struggling with the financial hurdles to create a better future for each community member equally. Our weak financial conditions and lack of resources often put us in a situation where we were not able to provide assistance equally to all the deserving families. So our association asked the Chinese Embassy for assistance. Fortunately, embassies have always been supportive to overseas Chinese. The Chinese Embassy in Islamabad agreed to help to provide tuition to our children and donated goods in winter, such as rice, oil, blankets, etc to our needy families, just as the Chinese Embassy provided wheelchairs, medical equipment and other goods to our Pakistani brothers and sisters.
Because of the ethnic affiliation to China and most importantly our ancestral roots in Xinjiang, as second generation Uighur Chinese Pakistanis living in Pakistan, we are facing a huge Western propaganda campaign which is usually groundless. We are hearing many negatively motivated news about China in which the basic thrust of the story is different from the content they are presenting in the story. And it seems that some foreign forces are building an anti-China narrative in every part of the world where western supremacy has been challenged due to strong Chinese presence, especially after President Xi Jingpeng’s historic initiative of ‘Win-win for all through Belt and Road development’.
In the current international scenario, Western powers’ insecure attitude towards global supremacy is only due to China’s stable advancement towards the centrestage of the world, openly reflecting that the world is going through a transitional period and some forces which are actually the beneficiaries of the old system are assuming that China threatens their historic global supremacy, and are trying to rescue their own interest.
Especially in Pakistan, we are experiencing the last many months that there are many western attempts to prove that China is doing something suspicious. Nowadays in their visible desperation they are presenting a very negative picture of China, and to provide support to their allegations and to create bigger impact on Pakistani nation they are currently taking help from the people in Pakistan who don’t have good reputation and in past tried to create many fake stories about China-Pakistan relations.
Here we are talking about Mr Umer of Rawalpindi and also part of the Uighur Pakistani community. Unfortunately he is very badly influenced by the Uighur separatist movement of Rabia Kadeer. He is practical the liaison of Rabia Kadeer in Pakistan. Even in the past, he also tried to establish his office in Afghanistan. During his visit to Afghanistan, in a recorded phone call to the Turkey-based Uighur news channel, he admitted his affiliation with Kadeer. He also admitted that he visited Afghanistan on her advice to influence the local Uighur community. This conversation is available in a recorded form on the social media page of the Turkish Uighur news agency.
But now he has crossed all the limits by putting allegations not only on China but also on Pakistan by accusing it of being a Chinese puppet state and colony. He openly accused Beijing and the Chinese Embassy by spreading many baseless propaganda stories. In his recent allegations, he accused the Ex-Chinese Association for collection of data of Uighur Pakistani residents on behalf of the Embassy. He provided the Association’s internal membership form as his evidence. He further said that China is collecting data for forceful extradition of Ex-Chinese Uighur Pakistanis to China. Umer and his family always enjoyed the benefits of the Ex-Chinese Association as his children receive free education from the ex-Chinese community school and his family receives yearly assistance from the Association.
Even these allegations are childish in its nature but the western forces are ready to publish these kind of allegations by creating huge headlines and facilitating fake journalist like Zuha Siddiqui (Twitter ID @SiddiquiZuha) to write anti-China and anti-Pakistan articles, sitting a thousand miles away from Pakistan.
But this time they made very big mistake by following every baseless allegations of Umer, and by publishing it on 20 June with the help of a fake journalist like Zuha Siddiqui.
Now the Ex-Chinese Association and the whole Ex Chinese Uighur Pakistani community takes this article as a charge sheet against Umer and demands from the Pakistani authorities to investigate the allegations against the activities of Ex-Chinese Association to dismantle all the baseless disinformation propaganda once for all.
We openly and strongly demand that there should be a mechanism to expose the reality of any allegation which comes through western or other baseless propaganda tools against China-Pakistan strong relations, and any one who tries to affect these long standing strong relations with baseless propaganda tools should be punished severely to discourage the future possible attempts.
We strongly condemn any attempt to slander the Chinese Embassy and China, and to undermine China-Pakistan strong relations and reaffirm our commitment to expose the culprits like Umer, who are facilitating anti Pakistan-China forces to destabilize our region. We will not let it go unattended this time.
PAKISTAN-CHINA FRIENDSHIP ZINDABAD.
The writer is General Secretary of the Ex-Chinese Association of Pakistan