Page 109 - The Winter of Islam and the Spring to Come

HARUN YAHYA (ADNAN OKTAR)
107

human rights violations in
RUSSIA
East Turkestan are such
KAZAKHSTAN
that they cannot be ignored. MONGOLIA

KIRGIZSTAN
Chinese Cruelty EAST TURKESTAN
TADJIKISTAN
in East Turkestan
CHINA
The Muslim Turks of
KASHMIR
East Turkestan, known as
PAKISTAN
the Uighurs, have lived NEPAL
under Chinese domination INDIA
BHUTAN
for about 250 years. The
BANGADESH
Chinese gave this Islamic
territory the name
"Xinjiang," or "conquered
land," and called it their
own. Following the 1949
takeover of China by the
communists, led by Mao, the oppression in East Turkestan rose to even
greater heights than before. The communist regime turned to the phys-
ical elimination of the Muslims, a group which refused to be assimi-
lated.
The number of Muslims killed was truly staggering. Between 1949
and 1952, 2.8 million people were either killed outright by the Chinese
army or else died of starvation in a famine engineered by the regime.
Between 1952 and 1957, over 3.5 million people died, then 6.7 million
between 1958 and 1960, and then between 1961 and 1965, an almost in-
conceivable 13.3 million.
Those Uighurs who managed to survive were subjected to torture
and oppression. The late East Turkestan leader Isa Yusuf Alptekin, who
spent many years in exile, described this in his books Dogu Turkistan
Davasi (The East Turkestan Affair) and Unutulan Vatan Dogu Turkistan
(East Turkestan: The Forgotten Land). According to these volumes, the
oppression of the people of East Turkestan was no different from that of
the Muslims in Bosnia, or the Albanian majority in Kosovo by the Serbs.